They come now, echoes of my thoughts, unbidden of my own will. Hopeless reminders of all I have done, forever trapped within a thickening web of discordant voices. Music and sounds of life drive them away but for a short time, they always come back, never angry - cold and burning - attempting to gain purchase on the walls of my mind, always slipping back into a maelstrom of incomprehensible madness I once thought my own. No order, no control, always slipping into a fog of nothing, letting the errant whispers of the paranoia surrounding the coming days guide my every action. No life, no memory, always drowning inside myself. I must silence this noise, always louder, always closer. They speak to me now, not in the ramblings of my thought, but with their own.

“To me!” they cry, “Join us; our chorus. Open the door for us. Allow us use of your mind.” They wail; just beyond the entrance to my psyche. Scratching, clawing, gaining hold on the door to both mind and soul; black tendrils sneak between cracks in the walls of my mind. Latching onto thoughts, thoughts still my own, still compliant with the fear penetrating my being. Their cries of need soften, and eventually quiet, babbling of my thoughts now near silent; almost alone in my own head. The tendrils of black remain, inching closer to what I know to be my soul, what I know to be me. I no longer fear them rather, welcome them for the silence they so readily provide. I feel something deep inside scream to me to fight back, to stop this encroachment into my being, but I do not; cannot hear nor heed these calls. The tendrils touch, their number small yet infinite, I can feel us become one. We no longer hear the voices, they have been silenced. Warnings of the days to come had come too late, we no longer had need of them at present, though we now knew their design. Taking a first breath in what was both seconds and countless millennia, we rose again, finally ready to hear, to listen, to think.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.