Twisted Mind

When Michael was little, he was mostly neglected by his mother, who was always on heroine or cocaine or whatever drug she could afford that day.  Her 'boyfriends' (if you can call them that) would abuse him, either physically or sexually or both.  One day when he was eight, his mother didn't come home.  Eventually he determined she had taken off with one of her guys.  Michael was evicted from the only place he could pretend to call home, and started living on the street.  When he had lived in the "house", the only light in his life was the girl next door, who was always playing with her toys in the yard.  She had the most beautiful face Michael had ever seen.  He watched her through a crack in the wall on the days when he ended up locked up or else hiding in the broom closet at the back of the house.  Michael dreamed of being able to go play with her in the yard.  It was the only thing that kept him sane, this crazy daydream of something that most people would find inconsequential.1

The years after he had started living on the street, Michael went through horrific event after horrific event, each one leaving its emotional scar, each one twisting him a little more inside.  Mostly he spent his time in some street corner rocking back and forth, or talking to people he thought were there.2

The people he thought he was talking to were everyday extras that his mind had created to make him feel like he existed at all.  He would say hello to the milkman, or nod to the newspaper vendor, or get into a tense argument with a drug dealer, all that weren't actually there.3

On the nights he couldn't fend off sleep, Michael had horrible flashbacks to the events of his childhood.  He would wake up in a cold sweat, shaking, and every time he woke up he would discover a slash or a bite mark of some wound in his skin that was bleeding.  The bite marks all fit his own teeth alignment, and the scratches or gashes matched items around him, or else if there was nothing around, they would be areas scratched wildly through his skin, and his fingernails would be all bent back.  It didn't take much to tell that these were self-inflicted, although Michael had no way of controlling it.  Sleeping frightened him more than anything at all.4

One day Michael was lying on the ground shaking slightly, and looking for once at the people walking by, when he saw her.  It had been nine years since his eyes last rested on that beautiful face, but there was not an inch of doubt in his mind as to who it was.  It was the girl next door, the only thing in this world that he had ever been attached to.  Without even blinking Michael stood up and followed her.5

For months he followed her.  This had given him a new purpose in life.  One day when she was eating her neat little home-made sandwich on a park bench, he approached her.  She looked a little frightened, but resisted saying anything rude.  Michael stuttered and mumbled his way through sentences, until he finally got out that he had lived beside her so many years ago.  He told her that he used to watch her playing in the yard, and he told her that she had been the light in his life.  Then he stood awkwardly beside her, not knowing what was next.6

The girl stopped eating and looked at him with a very odd, confused look.  Then she muttered "I have to go" under her breath, and scuttled off.7

Michael continued to follow her, but the made-up people were becoming more common, and were interfering more and more with his day to day "life".  But every day Michael grew more obsessed with the girl.  This was insane, he didn't even know her name.  But he knew that he loved her, and he would do anything to protect her and keep her happy, even if he couldn't let her know.8

One day the girl turned into a dark alley to take a shorter route to a deli for lunch.  As Michael turned the corner after her, he saw someone step out of the shadows behind her.  A tall, menacing man dressed completely in black.  Then Michael saw a knife in his hand.  Michael pulled out his own knife and ran down the alley towards the man he saw approaching his love.  The next few minutes were a blur.  Blood flew everywhere. Michael heard the girl's scream, and then his head hit something sharp, and the last thing he heard before he blacked out was the girl gasping desperately for breath.  His last thought was that despite his best efforts, the man in black had killed her anyways.9

When Michael woke up, he saw the girl lying beside him, blood draining in a straight line from her body to the gutter.  She was dead.  But then nothing made sense.  It was his knife protruding from her.  There were no signs of another person ever being there.  Her purse was lying undisturbed beside her, and all her wounds matched his long knife clearly couldn't have been made by the small knife the man in black was carrying.  This didn't make sense.  This didn't make any sense at all.10

The police rounded the corner to see a young woman lying in her own blood, and a crazy-looking man of the same age, rocking back and forth in a corner.  They immediately went for him, and cuffed his hands behind his back.  Then they asked his name.11

"I know who this is!" one of the officers exclaimed, "It's that crazy skitzo street freak.  I pass by him all the time on the way to the office.  He's always talking to people that aren't there, or rocking back and forth in a corner like when we found him."12

When they got to the police station, they strapped him down and gave him a mild sedative.  Then they called in their psychiatrist, who was referred to as "the doctor".  He tried explaining to Michael that Michael suffered from schizophrenia, but Michael wasn't even listening.  They eventually gave up for the night and locked him in a cell.  That night Michael saw a man dressed in a black cloak enter his cell.  The man told him that all this was true, and then Michael watched the man pull a second knife out of Michael's coat.  Then Michael watched as the cloaked man diced up his wrists.  The room slowly faded and Michael was no more.13

----14

The death certificate stated cause of death as suicide.  As far as anyone could tell, Michael had scratched through all the skin and some flesh on both his wrists using his fingernails.  No one ever doubted it, and no one would care anyways.  Michael existed no more than the characters his own mind was always making up.  Like the milkman, the vendor, the attacker.15

And the cloaked man?16