TELL OF YOUR FRIENDS THAT I'M CRAZY AND DRIVE YOU MAD

THAT I'M SUCH A STALKER, A WATCHER, A PSYCHOPATH

maniac,

Reality is falsely perpetuated by the dreams of your past, a web of memories that fold over each other elegantly inside one's mind. Your mind. To say that you can tell the difference between right and wrong, life and death, Mother and Sukuna, would be a bold lie. You are slowly losing your sanity, bit by bit, like a drunk stumbling into a well, falling all the way down. It happens to you often, these moments of absolute madness, torn between wanting to be loved and hating yourself; you disappear but you always come back.

Although, you're never the same. I mean, how can you be?

Even now, in the clutch of another nightmare, your mind is bitter with all the things that torment you. When the world stops at your mercy, then it feels like you can see yourself split into two, as though you diverged from yourself when Mother died. You stand over your ten year old self and her eyes are hollow yet the tears seem so real, pearled and bleak as they slip down her cheeks. The irises are dead as if you were the one who died that day. Your hands are shaking and there are more hands, clawing at you and Mother, the limbs of curses.

"Wait! No! Stop!" You hear your thoughts but your lips don't part; what haunts your pale face instead is a washed-out ghost of a smile.

You put your hand over your heart, burying it deeper. If you could run away from this memory you would, because you know what happened that today; it's etched into your bones even if your brain tried to protect you by erasing it. The past isn't just time long gone. It runs deeper than the eye ─ it's a feeling.

The nightmare twists once more, a self-sabotage that is a sweet romance. It's as if you're telling yourself all the things you never would but wanted to through these dreams. You self-sabotage, destroy yourself before someone can get the knife. You push them away before they can leave you.

If you let them in, they'll just ruin you like last time. You thought you could be 'you' but there is no 'you'. Where did you go after she died? Did you run away, again? Because, you're just a puppet. Your strings tighten each day until veins bleed and the red slicks down your throat with bile.

And Mother controls you. You never did let yourself become free from her. Underneath the skin and bones and blood, you are made of bad decisions, irrationality and malfunctioning. You experience and yet, you still make the same mistakes. Behind the sadness of a parent, the mask to please her maker, lay a Mother that lacked a heart to give to her child, a ghost trapped under the thumb of a god. Simply put, you sympathised with her. How could you not?

In order for you to forgive the unforgivable, you repressed everything about yourself, redid yourself, blotted out the bad things and pretended your lips could quirk into a smile like nothing was ever wrong.

Your ten year old self turns, hair whipped against the wind, flesh painted in the shades of glory, stitched into the name of forsaken god; her eyes are so empty, though you stare into them forever, there is nothing inside them that an angel could fix. "Why did you do it?" She flattens the edge of her voice, holding it soft like a blanket. So why did the words strike into your heart brutally?

Junpei slouches next to her, "Why did you do it?"

You stumble, "D-do what?"

"Don't play dumb," Suddenly Mother sit ups, hands folded gracefully on her palms. Even her voice is delicate, like a flower teething in spring, a chirpy bloom, nothing that indicates the manifestation of darkness buried beneath a cracked soul. She picks out letters and threads them together. Her neck is stiff but she still turns it, evoking a chill down your spine; you can't meet her eyes, "We know what you did. It's only a matter of time before everyone finds out."

When you don't reply, standing there with a blinking, confused expression, her smile becomes a little more pointed... a little more sharp. Careful, she's going to make you bleed.

They all kill you with that one look. Junpei and his sad eyes, a doleful expression because he was too fucking young, shoulders slouched per usual, hands digging into the pockets of a never-been-lint-rolled-before pair of trousers ─ and the first thing out of his mouth would be excitement because Hey, did you see the new Conjuring movie out now?

But he'll never talk again. He'll never smile again. He'll only feast on your fear and watch you decay because you can't hold yourself together anymore, not when you keep seeing all these awful things. He saw the shredded remains of his mother, cried in the room that she bled out in, holding tight to bloodied bed sheets and a cold palm. The ice cubes pooled at Nagi Yoshino's torn torso are nothing now, just comedy for a crowing god to watch humans try to defy the impossible.

Then there's Mother and gory bones that elicit a rancid tar, dribbling blood; she is reminiscent of every nightmare you have ever felt trapped in, lost in, because of her. Her veins protrude and skin slims down, sticking to her and hanging out at the bits where fangs and claws tore them out. Her face is half gone, one eye out and her smile is bloody ─ she enjoys it. She loved you enough to kill you without you knowing, to empty you out because she thought it was the greatest gift of all; to be a vessel for a god is a treasure for her, to you... it's enough to make you sick.

And you. You. You. You. Ten year old you is rotting inside out from a drunkard of a father and a manipulative, loving mother, from the whispers of the curse behind the doors and under the tables, from the metallic taste of blood, how your stomach churns against it's potency. The power electrifies your veins, fizzes out your personality and charisma. She made you weak but gave you strength in the worst way possible.

Before you can open your mouth and admit it, the mist dreamily washes away the three entities and the nightmare is over.

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

What awoke you was the blinding sunlight from a curtain-less window. You'd been nagging at Gojo-sensei for months about how your room lacked a pair, especially since Itadori and Fushiguro had some; you know it will take time for him to get around to it, but you guess you can wait a tiny bit longer.

You throw your legs over the side and lazily stand up, zapped of all energy. That dream had shaken you, drained the life out of you. You felt powerless, and still do. No amount of Cursed Energy could tell you your worth, not when you have lived sixteen years for nothing.

As you rub your eyes, feeling your muscles tug as you stretch, a cold breeze hurries in from an open window, scathing and unforgiving. You wince, feeling it brush your cheeks and blink, the red of your eyelids straining out the sun in front of you.

But peace is only momentary. Surely, you should know that by now?

Serenity is a series of fragments, small and sharp, striking your thumb when you try to hold on for too long. It was almost comical at this stage how the gods belittled your few moments of tranquility, stealing the last bits of hope that fought in your heart, that you could be okay. That you, with your anguish and tears and years of trauma, could blot it all out all over again.

If you did that, if you sold your soul again for peace, it would just come back, just like how your nightmares haunt you. Bits and bits all flooding you at once, feathered with remnants of dark emotions, of memories that were repressed within you so far in that you felt like your body was being snapped in two. Sukuna was playing with you.

You wonder, snatching a glimpse of yourself in the tall mirror, if you were losing yourself. Everything you once thought was attached to your personality suddenly felt obsolete, unoriginal, dull. It paled to everyone else, to people like Itadori with their quirks and their human-like smile and imperfections, little beauty marks beneath their eyes and dimples on their cheeks, and childhood scars from falling over on bikes (unlike your ones that make your throat dry from all the blood.)

Ever since you spoken to Sukuna, read your Mother's diary, you are slowly changing. You feel as if you had become artificial... fake... inhuman. If you prayed hard enough at time to whatever pathetic god was willing to listen to your cries, maybe you can walk out from this nightmare. Walk out from Cursed Energy and monsters and a thousand year-old god.

But then wouldn't you walk out on everyone who supported you? Believed in you? Befriended you? The thought of Itadori's face when you drop off the face of the earth and abandon your convoluted life, struck you with an uneven sadness.

It's your life, you remind yourself, feeling your ribcage wobble somewhat with shaky breaths. You steal another gaze at yourself in your reflection, wondering you were made of porcelain. Oh how fragile did the reflection of yourself seem to you. What looked back with unwavering patches of inhumanity was not you, perhaps the old you, the girl who died the moment she woke up. This girl... the one whose skeleton you wear and thoughts you dirty, she died a long time ago.

Your eyes seem bleak with misfortune, a mournful black eclipses the other colours, drowning them out. They stare, unable to fathom, unable to sustain a peaceful dream, merely existing, attempting to shade the world in with a palette of demons. Your hair is flimsy today, messed up and unkempt. You rarely keep it in check, finding it hard to take the time to care about yourself. You'd much rather tie it up in a ponytail and train than let Nobara spend two hours straightening it (apparently haircare is a long process).

And then, once you blink, you stagger back, a quickly drawn breath escaping your lungs. Mother stands next to you, as if she was always there. You turn immediately, feeling her ghastly breath, mellow and sweet, dancing on your skin like flower petals.

Her voice is hoarse and quiet, like the echo trapped in a seashell. It feels somber and distant but she's whispering right into your ear, her nails digging into your forehead as her palms massage your temple.

He's waiting for the right moment to seize control, [F/n]. He's waiting for when you're at your weakest.

Her hands travel slowly from your head, a playful hug ─ a mother's hug. In reality, it feels so uncannily like a noose, like a god has wrapped you around their finger, choking the life out of you.

It's ironic your first thought went to a noose. Maybe you could predict your mother now, even if you can't remember the 'real' her.

Because as soon as you draw another breath, she clasps her hands around your throat like a clamp and begins to tighten. Your body thrashes and writhes and you choke, trying to speak but unable to. The startled panic in your eyes is like an animal being dragged to the altar for a sacrifice.

Those animals are too shocked to struggle, to even know what is happening. Blood spurts when the knife's edge falls over their throat and eventually their struggles grow weaker. And eventually... their kicking lessens.

And then they lay pitifully still.

Is that what's happening to you now?

No, no, no. I'm not weak... I'm not weak... Sukuna is not taking me to his Domain. Sukuna is not taking me to his domain.

Even if no one could hear you, maybe indulging in an internal soliloquy was what you needed to hear, because those words form a litany of prayers being uttered in panic, syllables tripping over and skipping into other words, garnering some sort of strength.

You will not die. Not today. Because no matter how bad the monsters and demons get, you can't possibly give into them, to become them, to listen to them. If you did, then your darkest fears would become true. You'd lose all sense of your self, rendered a vessel for a god, forgoing your sanity in order to become lifeless.

So, you think about how everyone will be wondering why you skipped Hashbrown Wednesday ─ your favourite day of the week ─ and why you aren't at training or in the library pouring over another book, and your hands reach up to your throat and snap off Mother's brittle fingers.

Itadori returns to your mind like a newborn god. The impression of his figure silhouetted against the dark moon when nightfall arrived, the way you had left each other swarming with overlapping thoughts. That feeling cried inside the essence of a fragile soul, tethered and knitted, as if an emotional earthquake threatens to fracture everything. And even though the guilt of wanting him created a hurricane inside you, the decay and rubble that remains from it still craved for him.

I will not let you win. You think of Nobara and what she said to you back at the Exchange Event, of what Itadori said, of what Gojo-sensei murmured when Junpei died, and your resolve returns.

Because you're in my head and I won't let you kill me...Sukuna.