Psychosis

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had these demons in the back of my head. They’d been hiding in the shadows, in the dark recesses of my mind for so long, waiting to surface. I think I must be crazy. I remember the first instance that really drew the monsters out. I’d been offered a line of cocaine at a party and in mere minutes, I was on top of the world. I felt unstoppable. However, as the night progressed I began to come down from my high and fear settled in. Time seemed to slow down and my vision intensified. My heart beat faster than usual, and I began to lose my grip on reality.
I was sitting in the center of the couch in the living room of whoever owned the property. To my left, my friend Bob sat munching on a bag of Cheetos. The walls around me were convulsing, but I knew it was a trick the drugs were playing on me.
This is normal. I told myself.
Before long, though, I saw a silhouette standing over me. I stared into the face of someone unfamiliar. Their eyes were bloodshot, most likely from smoking, so I paid them no notice. But this guy didn’t move. He just stood over me, his eyes boring into me. He said nothing while he stood there, so I finally asked him what he needed.
“Who’re you talking to?” Bob managed to say between mouthfuls of Cheetos.
I frowned. Didn’t Bob see him? “He’s standing right-” I paused, because when I looked back to the spot where he had been standing, he was gone.
I became uneasy after that episode, but I continued to abuse cocaine after that night. When sober, everything was worse than it had been that night at the party. The only way to make my inner demons disappear was to be in that manic state again. But every time I came down from my high, the nightmares—and my reality—were even more horrifying than before.
In just hours before I’d be involuntarily placed in a mental facility, I had my final trip. Everything proceeded smoothly at first. I’d been playing watching my brother play Silent Hill and for some reason, I felt compelled to look in the mirror. I walked into the bathroom and scanned my reflection in the mirror. I looked the same as I had this morning, except the bags below my eyes had intensified. My eyes focused toward the reflection of my face until I was startled by a face in the mirror. A face that didn’t belong to me.
The owner of the face began to speak, but I was unable to decipher what they had been saying. They made only muffled gurgling noises, as though their tongue had been cut out. The speaker’s jaw began to detach as they spoke, leaving only threads of skin connecting the upper half of their cheeks to the lower half. I couldn’t refrain myself from screaming.
My mother rushed into that bathroom to find me curled into the fetal position on the cold tile floor. She had me sit on the couch with my brother while she and my father spoke in the kitchen. I couldn’t understand their conversation, as the closed door muffled their voices, but it was clear when they returned that I would be going away. My parents thought I was crazy. At the time, I didn’t believe such things, but now I have nothing else to explain why I feel the way I do.
I sit alone at a small table in the corner of the ward’s cafeteria, analyzing the faces of those around me. All of their faces are unfamiliar to me, but the sight of unfamiliar faces is nothing new to me. I had been introduced to so many doctors, nurses, janitors…all of their faces had been muddled by my mind.
Not many people stood out to me here. We all wore the same outfit: gray sweatpants and a similarly colored gray t-shirt. Forms of self-expression could only be seen in the way these men and women wore their hair, or whether they had tattoos visible. Most of the women had hair that fell flat to their shoulders in various colors. All of the men had standard nearly-buzzed hair, although some of them had let their hair grow out. The faces of these men and women were very plain, not striking to my interest. There was no patient older than thirty in the ward, but some looked older than others because of their varying ranges of sanity.
As I scanned the room, my eyes stopped on someone who didn’t seem to belong. While everyone else in the room seemed to have a constant look of apathy plastered on their face, this man was smirking. At what, I wasn’t sure. He had dark brown hair that extended to just below his shoulders. He sat at a table with several other men who seemed to look to him for entertainment. He kept the crowd lively(or as lively as one could be under these circumstances). He seemed to be telling the other men at his table a story. While they ate, he hadn’t even touched his food.
The man caught me staring at him and he stopped whatever he’d been saying. His lips curled into the same smirk I’d seen only moments ago and he rose from his table and began walking towards me.
“Hello, stranger,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
His words were like water; they flowed out of his mouth almost provocatively. He was the type of person who knew how to speak, knew how to compose himself. I was drawn to this man, who was seemingly flawless. I wasn’t one to speak often, and he seemed to read that much from my actions, because he continued speaking.
“You shouldn’t be alone. Solitude can make you crazy. Or, judging the circumstances, crazier.”
“Touche,” I replied, staring at my food.
“I’m not one for introductions,” he said, “but you can call me Ghoul.”
Ghoul led me to his table and left a space for me next to him. His “friends” accepted me easily and I was thrown into their conversation. A guy that appeared the same age as me spoke up.
“This is your first night, yeah? Have you been assigned a roommate?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “His name is, uh…Frank?”
The table grew quiet and each of the men exchanged glances. Ghoul had an unreadable expression on his face that seemed to fall somewhere between nervousness and excitement. It was clear how unaware I was, because the guy who had originally asked about my roommate went on.
“Frank used to be Ghoul’s old roommate,” he explained, “but the kid went mad and started telling the doctor’s he was being tortured. The doctor’s found no sign of danger, but they gave the kid his own room after his…episode.”
“Speak of the Devil…” Bert slurred, his eyes following a boy as he walked by.
The boy, who I gathered was Frank, was short; he couldn’t have been taller than five feet. His black hair fell into his eyes as he walked by. He sat down a few tables from ours and played with his food. The group became bored and continued talking (I think they were having a debate about whales?) but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the kid. He seemed as normal as one could possibly be. As I watched him, his head rose and his eyes met mine. I read his expression to be fearful, but of what, I was unsure. He dropped his head and continued eating.
I began to feel uneasy about what my first night may hold in store.

Notes

I've never written horror style fanfics before so feel free to tell me if I'm failing miserably, or what I could add to make it better.
I'm mainly going to be writing based on my own fears, but I'd love to hear yours. :*