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There’s a certain madness within all of us. An inner turmoil, the devil on our shoulder, our subconscious, the real you.

We lock the little bastard up. We keep him chained within ourselves and we never let him free. He writhes within the cages we create for him, and he’s dark and he makes us sick to think about. We alter him, put on a mask. We become what our parents wanted us to be, what our friends expect, what our God desires: we mask ourselves in blood and diamonds and we shield the world from our demon within us.

And he hates it. Every second. He tries to tell us what to do, tell us what he needs, the thing that will really make us happy. He knows better, he knows best. He wants another round. He wants to punch that motherfucker in his smug face. He wants to make you hurt inside the way he hurts. He wants to slit your wrists and then your throat. He wants to cut, and hurt, and bleed, and scream. He wants to break something. He wants to break you.

And the sad thing about it is that you want to be broken. You want to watch them scream. You need it. They are just puppets to your master. The little bastard knows it, too. He wants to console you. Wants to remind you what you really deserve. You’re a king. No, scratch that. You’re a fucking God. Their lives are yours. Don’t you get it?

This sick, fucked up little bastard – he’s the real you. You can disguise yourself however you want. But you’re violent inside. You thirst for blood. Sometimes, when you lie in bed sleepless, the damning fantasies that come to mind – you swore you would never think of that – never again – society says it’s wrong to think like that – why does it feel so right? He has the answers. All of them. He knows all of you! You could never be the person you are without him! He is yours and you are his and you fucking love it.

When you replay your life in your head, you can see what everyone else sees. The good kid who went to college, who got a job, got married, had 2.5 kids. Look at you now, you’re living the American Dream, look at you go, you’re envied, everyone wants to be you, look at the little one all grown up, look at the bank account! look… look…

But that’s not what he sees. He sees that day in the eleventh grade, when you were so angry you took that knife to school in the bottom of your backpack and felt the cold metal press into your back like the last vestiges of a secret. You didn’t act because he wasn’t developed enough yet, he wasn’t strong enough, but then you grew up more and he was there all the time, that day when you walked into the bar and saw the love of your life all over someone else and you wanted nothing more than to kill them, both of them… but you didn’t. You deserve it, you deserve all of it, all that rage that nobody sees. How do you get out of it? You can’t. It is part of you, he’s part of you, and you love him for it! He says, he does, what you don’t have the courage to.

He sees that day, that first day he won. When you were in ninth grade and got so drunk and high you couldn’t even see straight, but he was finally allowed free reign. How it felt to tell everyone what you really thought… how it felt to finally know that society confines you so much… how the taste seemed to burn through you and how sick you were when you saw yourself… but then that moment, when you realized that you had no right to be sick, that this was you, and that you would learn to love him…

That day you walked out of the church and you never looked back. The day you left them, or they left you: but either way, they’re gone now. The day you hung up the phone and ripped the cord out of the wall. The day you smashed your fist into the drywall and screamed with all the rage you could muster, but it still wasn’t enough for him, he wanted more, he wanted all of it… The day you bought that knife, cut, scratched, clawed, tried to make the outside reflect the inside, a way to make you love yourself…

You have no God, but the demon inside you.

Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this story are those of the fictional characters portrayed in the story and do not reflect the views and opinions of either the writer or the staff at Stories Space.