Categories > Celebrities > Slipknot > The Day The Whole World Went Away
Disclaimer-I do not own Slipknot. This story is entirely fictional. I do not profit from these stories
As the years began to pass, I expected the ghost to appear like a common unwelcomed guest. I went through some heavy contemplation in those times. I was confused, of course, as to why it was constantly leaching onto me. Why was I the one it wanted? Why was I chosen? Philosophies of destiny and fate would race through my mind, but I would never come to a conclusion. I had little knowledge of what I was dealing with, and also no real religious foundation to confide in. After all, would anyone on earth even know what it was, when in reality we have such little amount of information gathered on the subject of the supernatural?
The 90’s came quickly, it seemed, and with that came the invention of the Internet. Slow and primal at the time, it would probably take you 10 minutes to load a web page. But suddenly a new window was opened for information regarding anything and everything. It was pretty impressive, to say the least.
A friend of mine had a computer—one of the ancient dinosaur computers—and had Internet access at his pleasure. He let me cruise on it after showing me that he could find the raunchiest porn sites and his very own email address. That’s when the idea began to form in my head about the possibility of finding some help. I mean, if a guy could find girl on girl on goat porn, there must be some sort of information regarding ghosts, right?
I spent a few hours surfing his page and searching for paranormal experts in the US. Since the Internet was so primal at the time, there weren’t many outlets for certain things, especially regarding the paranormal. But I was lucky enough to come across a man in California who specialized in paranormal research and managed to find his phone number.
Once I left my friend’s home and returned to my apartment, I dialed his number to get some more information. Dr. Wallace Engel was his name, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at UCLA in California. Although his lectures consisted of mostly the study religion in modern America, he specialized in the pursuit of knowledge in the paranormal realm. This seemed to be my best option if I wanted any information, and I was desperate for it.
I managed to schedule an appointment with Dr. Engel at UCLA, which I a trip I was more than willing to make. On a Saturday afternoon, after saving a decent sum of money for gas and food (I decided to sleep in my car, since I could barely make enough money for food at all), I finally left Iowa for California in a beat-up Chevy truck, eager to meet Dr. Engel.
I was optimistic during the drive to Los Angeles. I had never tried to find help about the ghost that constantly disturbed my life, and this new progress made me happier than I had been in a long time. Most of my life was spent quietly wishing the apparition away, silently suffering in the spirit’s captivity. So, armed with nothing but a road map, some food, and a bag full of clothes and a toothbrush, I trekked across the States towards Los Angeles for UCLA. It took me nearly 28 hours, stopping only to fill up my gas tank and occasionally to sleep for a few hours. My anticipation denied me any real rest on the trip—the sooner I get there, the sooner I could meet the doctor.
I finally made it near Los Angeles late Sunday evening and I stopped my car at a rest station off the interstate to sleep for the night. My meeting with Dr. Engel was at noon the next day, so I figured it would be best to get some decent rest that night. I barely slept though; optimism, fear, and anticipation roamed in my head and kept my mind at unease.
The next morning, I made my way into the city and followed the road signs to the UCLA campus. I parked my Chevy in a parking garage before heading into the campus on my search. After stopping a few times to read a campus map, I found the building that housed Dr. Engel’s office, and my nervousness was greater than ever.
I came across Dr. Engel’s office on the second floor of the humanities building, set near the end of a long hallway. The door was slightly ajar, and after knocking on it tentatively, I heard a shuffle from inside. A short moment later the door opened, revealing a tallish man with dark hair and glasses perched on his nose. He wore khakis with a green button up shirt, and he gave me a reserved smile.
“Ah, just in time.” He said rather listlessly before moving to allow me entrance.
We shook hands and made the usual introductions. His demeanor was rather stiff and passive, as if he was holding himself back from making any outlandish remarks or movements. He motioned to the chair near his desk, and I sat down as I studied the book spines on the shelf behind his desk. It was lined with Philosophical and Religious works: Nietzsche, Marx, and some others I didn’t recognize. At the very edge of the shelf were some paranormal books—the sight of which made my heart race.
Dr. Engel took his seat at the desk before sliding open an attached drawer. He pulled a notebook from the drawer and set it upon his desk. “So, getting straight to the punch, you told me over the phone that you believe you’re being haunted by a ghost?” He opened the notebook and began to write something I couldn’t make out.
“Yes, that’s right.” I said quickly.
“How long have you resided at the home you live in now?” He asked, not looking up from his notebook. The way he talked reminded me of all the nonchalant doctors I visited as a child.
“Um, about 5 years now.”
“Are you aware of any significant events that happened in your home? Perhaps a death or a fight?” He queried.
I frowned slightly. “No…But I don’t mean that a ghost from my apartment is haunting me. This ghost has been with me since I was young. It’s been following me.”
Dr. Engel stopped writing and looked up at me quizzically. When we spoke on the phone a few days ago, I didn’t exactly go into specifics on my situation, just mentioned a ghost haunting me regularly. I inwardly cursed myself for not telling him more over information the phone.
Dr. Engel cleared his throat. “It followed you?” He repeated, pressing heavy accent on ‘followed’. He was looking at me from over the rims of his glasses, his eyebrows set high on his forehead. I only nodded.
The professor sat back slightly in his chair, lacing his fingers together in concentration. “Please explain when you first started noticing this.”
“I, uh…I was 5 when I first noticed it,” I started, “I was in bed at night when something opened my door and walked into my room. I heard its footsteps. And then it didn’t happen again until I was 8—I saw a shadow at the edge of my bed. It kept coming back after that.”
“So when did you realize it was following you?” Dr. Engel asked, still watching me intently.
“When I was 17. I moved into an apartment a couple hours away from my parents’ home and saw it at the new place.”
“Are you sure it’s the same apparition?” He asked.
“I’m pretty sure it is.” I said, feeling self-conscious of Dr. Engel’s searching eyes. “Its shadow was the same height as the one in my old house—Same footsteps and banging noises from inside my house. I moved again after that and it showed up at my new apartment, too.”
“Are you sure?” He repeated again, this time more slowly.
I felt a lump rise in my throat. I could detect the seriousness in Dr. Engel’s voice, and I wondered if he actually believed me. I didn’t expect to come across any skepticism from the doctor—I had been so eager to hear what he had to say that the thought never crossed my mind. Making a conscious effort to hold eye contact with him, I answered him just as seriously: “Yes, I’m very sure. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
He paused for a few moments, ignoring his notebook to study me, before finally speaking again. “Has it physically touched you?” He continued, this time sitting up in his chair. “Have you felt any sort of phantom hands or something like that?”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t, but I’m pretty sure it cut my hand. Here, you can still see the scar.” I held out the palm of my left hand towards Dr. Engel. He looked at my palm, his eyes held something I couldn’t determine.
“Now, are you sure it did that?” He said again.
“Yes, I’m sure. There was nothing else around that could have done it. I promise you it had to be whatever that thing is.”
Dr. Engel was silent. The tension in the room was thick, and I sat quietly in the chair waiting for his next question. He remained motionless for a moment, seeming to decipher his next words.
“It’s unusual,” he started rather slowly, “for a ghost to follow an individual from place to place. Ghosts tend to remain in one location, since the spirit creates a connection with physical landmarks or buildings that aroused some sort of passion in their life. Living humans are tricky vessels—ghosts don’t attach themselves to humans.” He paused again, this time turning his chair and grabbing one of the paranormal books from the shelf. The front cover displayed the title—Angels, Demons, and Ghosts. I remained silent as he flipped through the thick, glossy pages covered in illustrations. He stopped on a page that had an illustration of a huge, ugly creature with mangled wings.
“From what you have told me, it sounds like what’s following you isn’t actually a ghost.” Dr. Engel started, turning the open book towards me. “It sounds like a demon.”
I blinked, feeling a little astonished. “A demon?”
“Demons tend to link themselves with an individual and pursue them from place to place.” He said. “From what I understand, they usually torment certain individuals for most of their lives. It’s rare though, I don’t hear much about them. The stalking instances you’ve described, plus the physical cut on your hand—those are possible signs of a demon. I’ve heard a few instances were demons can physically touch or harm an individual.”
I listened to him intently, but within me my stomach was turning in knots. Part of me was terrified, while the other was skeptical and wanted to call him out on a lie. I was so torn between believing him and writing him off as a lunatic. I tried to control my breathing to avoid giving away my anxiousness.
Dr. Engel seemed to sense my uneasiness. “Of course, I can’t make any real assumptions until I see this for myself—this is just a tentative diagnosis.” He said.
The office was silent again. My mind was too busy conflicting thoughts of what was real and what was false. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. My eyes locked on the open book and I studied the drawings on the pages. One creature had dark brown, rough looking skin, a long neck and equally long torso and legs. A large, open mouth was stretched across its hideous face adorned with sharp teeth, and its two large eyes were deep black. Another drawing of a demon was on the opposite page, this time slightly smaller with reddish skin and a severe hunch that exposed its spinal cord. Its face was as sinister as the last pictured demon as it looked over its right shoulder and at the reader—feeling like it was looking right into my soul.
“If you’d like, I could attempt to get funding from the university to research your issue.” Dr. Engel started again. “This would be a project I would be interested to take on. We’d have to have a psychological evaluation first, though, to make sure—“
“Can you stop it?” I asked softly, interrupting his offer. My eyes didn’t leave the book.
At this, Dr. Engel sighed. “I’m not sure. Exorcism is a common way to rid demons, but only in situations of possession. There’s no real solution for demons that haunt an individual instead of taking over a victim’s body. At least none that I’m aware of.”
A palpable tension settled into the silence that followed his admission. My eyes now locked onto an empty surface on the desk, still unable to process the idea that a demon was following me. A demon? An actual demon? It sounded like something out of a bad horror movie. I rubbed a hand over my face in bewilderment.
Dr. Engel turned the book back towards him and began flipping through the pages again. “I can give you so more information about demons, that way—“
“No, no that’s ok. I should be going.”
Without another word, I stood up from my seat and made way for the door. I couldn’t bear another moment in that office, with so many cohesive thoughts rushing my head and paralyzing my senses. It was indeed irrational, especially since I booked the appointment and drove so far to meet Dr. Engel, but terror won over good sense.
“Sir, wait—“
“No, I’m going. I’m sorry.”
My feet moved on their own accord, stepping one foot in front of the other like a heart would beat involuntarily. I quickly paced away from the office and down the corridor, not even bothering to see if Dr. Engel was pursuing me.
The next few moments were a blur. The walk across campus seemed to last only a few seconds, and I pulled out my car keys like it was a muscle memory reflex. It was as if I was on autopilot—my body working itself, as my mind was lost in a mess of confusion.
I drove straight home, only stopping to fill my gas tank. I didn’t even stop to eat or sleep. Much of the ride was spent in the same dazed state as before, but this time due to numbness that left me devoid of thought. Too much befuddlement left my head drained.
After a day on the road, I was opening the door to my quiet apartment. Inside, nothing looked different, nothing looked disturbed. The past two days felt like a dream. Pressing my back against the door after I closed it, I slid down to sit on the floor, feeling tears welling up in my eyes. I felt like a fool, driving all that distance to find out information that sounded like it came straight out of a B-horror movie, and yet it left me more scared than ever. What was I to do now? How could I ever be expected to continue on with my life with this piece of information looming over me like a raincloud? All I could think about were those pictures in Dr. Engel’s book, and wonder if one of those creatures was the thing that kept me from sleeping so many nights. It was just too much to bear.
And I cried, hard, for the next few hours, still sitting against the door of my apartment. I wished my mother could be here like she did the first time it came, and give me her wordless comfort like she always did. But I remained alone in my home, lost and upset, wondering how I would live my life from that moment on.
-----
When I was about 11 years old, my parents were on the verge of divorce. I never knew the grounds for why they considered divorcing, only that my parents were going to leave each other and I would be a commodity of their failed marriage. It left me reeling, upset, and there would be moments when I would beg them not to divorce. I tried so hard, worried so much, for the security of their marriage. I would mull over their possible divorce, wondering when they would finally tell me that they were officially separating.
But after weeks of worrying and crying, my emotions gave up on the hope and I fell into ignorance. I pretended things were ok, talked to them daily like I always did before, like nothing was wrong. I no longer had the energy to worry, so I decided to play dumb and assume that everything would be ok. Eventually, after months of ignorance, my parents patched things up, and did not divorce.
The same route of ignorance I took in this situation went into the situation with the demon. When I couldn’t handle the pressure that was laid upon me, I went into a passive state of oblivion. The footsteps in my room? I ignored it. The shadow looming over me? It wasn’t really there. I refused to acknowledge the real problem and instead chose to deceive myself. It was cowardly, but I didn’t know what else to do. I no longer wanted to seek help, not after my meeting with Dr. Engel; I couldn’t bear to imagine trying again. There were times when the nagging thought would remind me of my situation; that it was stupid on my part to ignore it, but it wasn’t enough to make me take action again. The demon was part of my life, and suddenly I was accepting it. It was routine again, just like before my trek to Los Angeles. There seemed to be a silent compromise—if I didn’t confront it, it wouldn’t hurt me. I never opened up about the demon to anyone else, never even considered it.
And that is how the years passed, and the years then turned into a decade. My secret remained safe, my silent slaveholder constantly keeping me at its mercy. But, before long, this would soon change, and I would find myself more haunted by it than ever.
As the years began to pass, I expected the ghost to appear like a common unwelcomed guest. I went through some heavy contemplation in those times. I was confused, of course, as to why it was constantly leaching onto me. Why was I the one it wanted? Why was I chosen? Philosophies of destiny and fate would race through my mind, but I would never come to a conclusion. I had little knowledge of what I was dealing with, and also no real religious foundation to confide in. After all, would anyone on earth even know what it was, when in reality we have such little amount of information gathered on the subject of the supernatural?
The 90’s came quickly, it seemed, and with that came the invention of the Internet. Slow and primal at the time, it would probably take you 10 minutes to load a web page. But suddenly a new window was opened for information regarding anything and everything. It was pretty impressive, to say the least.
A friend of mine had a computer—one of the ancient dinosaur computers—and had Internet access at his pleasure. He let me cruise on it after showing me that he could find the raunchiest porn sites and his very own email address. That’s when the idea began to form in my head about the possibility of finding some help. I mean, if a guy could find girl on girl on goat porn, there must be some sort of information regarding ghosts, right?
I spent a few hours surfing his page and searching for paranormal experts in the US. Since the Internet was so primal at the time, there weren’t many outlets for certain things, especially regarding the paranormal. But I was lucky enough to come across a man in California who specialized in paranormal research and managed to find his phone number.
Once I left my friend’s home and returned to my apartment, I dialed his number to get some more information. Dr. Wallace Engel was his name, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at UCLA in California. Although his lectures consisted of mostly the study religion in modern America, he specialized in the pursuit of knowledge in the paranormal realm. This seemed to be my best option if I wanted any information, and I was desperate for it.
I managed to schedule an appointment with Dr. Engel at UCLA, which I a trip I was more than willing to make. On a Saturday afternoon, after saving a decent sum of money for gas and food (I decided to sleep in my car, since I could barely make enough money for food at all), I finally left Iowa for California in a beat-up Chevy truck, eager to meet Dr. Engel.
I was optimistic during the drive to Los Angeles. I had never tried to find help about the ghost that constantly disturbed my life, and this new progress made me happier than I had been in a long time. Most of my life was spent quietly wishing the apparition away, silently suffering in the spirit’s captivity. So, armed with nothing but a road map, some food, and a bag full of clothes and a toothbrush, I trekked across the States towards Los Angeles for UCLA. It took me nearly 28 hours, stopping only to fill up my gas tank and occasionally to sleep for a few hours. My anticipation denied me any real rest on the trip—the sooner I get there, the sooner I could meet the doctor.
I finally made it near Los Angeles late Sunday evening and I stopped my car at a rest station off the interstate to sleep for the night. My meeting with Dr. Engel was at noon the next day, so I figured it would be best to get some decent rest that night. I barely slept though; optimism, fear, and anticipation roamed in my head and kept my mind at unease.
The next morning, I made my way into the city and followed the road signs to the UCLA campus. I parked my Chevy in a parking garage before heading into the campus on my search. After stopping a few times to read a campus map, I found the building that housed Dr. Engel’s office, and my nervousness was greater than ever.
I came across Dr. Engel’s office on the second floor of the humanities building, set near the end of a long hallway. The door was slightly ajar, and after knocking on it tentatively, I heard a shuffle from inside. A short moment later the door opened, revealing a tallish man with dark hair and glasses perched on his nose. He wore khakis with a green button up shirt, and he gave me a reserved smile.
“Ah, just in time.” He said rather listlessly before moving to allow me entrance.
We shook hands and made the usual introductions. His demeanor was rather stiff and passive, as if he was holding himself back from making any outlandish remarks or movements. He motioned to the chair near his desk, and I sat down as I studied the book spines on the shelf behind his desk. It was lined with Philosophical and Religious works: Nietzsche, Marx, and some others I didn’t recognize. At the very edge of the shelf were some paranormal books—the sight of which made my heart race.
Dr. Engel took his seat at the desk before sliding open an attached drawer. He pulled a notebook from the drawer and set it upon his desk. “So, getting straight to the punch, you told me over the phone that you believe you’re being haunted by a ghost?” He opened the notebook and began to write something I couldn’t make out.
“Yes, that’s right.” I said quickly.
“How long have you resided at the home you live in now?” He asked, not looking up from his notebook. The way he talked reminded me of all the nonchalant doctors I visited as a child.
“Um, about 5 years now.”
“Are you aware of any significant events that happened in your home? Perhaps a death or a fight?” He queried.
I frowned slightly. “No…But I don’t mean that a ghost from my apartment is haunting me. This ghost has been with me since I was young. It’s been following me.”
Dr. Engel stopped writing and looked up at me quizzically. When we spoke on the phone a few days ago, I didn’t exactly go into specifics on my situation, just mentioned a ghost haunting me regularly. I inwardly cursed myself for not telling him more over information the phone.
Dr. Engel cleared his throat. “It followed you?” He repeated, pressing heavy accent on ‘followed’. He was looking at me from over the rims of his glasses, his eyebrows set high on his forehead. I only nodded.
The professor sat back slightly in his chair, lacing his fingers together in concentration. “Please explain when you first started noticing this.”
“I, uh…I was 5 when I first noticed it,” I started, “I was in bed at night when something opened my door and walked into my room. I heard its footsteps. And then it didn’t happen again until I was 8—I saw a shadow at the edge of my bed. It kept coming back after that.”
“So when did you realize it was following you?” Dr. Engel asked, still watching me intently.
“When I was 17. I moved into an apartment a couple hours away from my parents’ home and saw it at the new place.”
“Are you sure it’s the same apparition?” He asked.
“I’m pretty sure it is.” I said, feeling self-conscious of Dr. Engel’s searching eyes. “Its shadow was the same height as the one in my old house—Same footsteps and banging noises from inside my house. I moved again after that and it showed up at my new apartment, too.”
“Are you sure?” He repeated again, this time more slowly.
I felt a lump rise in my throat. I could detect the seriousness in Dr. Engel’s voice, and I wondered if he actually believed me. I didn’t expect to come across any skepticism from the doctor—I had been so eager to hear what he had to say that the thought never crossed my mind. Making a conscious effort to hold eye contact with him, I answered him just as seriously: “Yes, I’m very sure. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
He paused for a few moments, ignoring his notebook to study me, before finally speaking again. “Has it physically touched you?” He continued, this time sitting up in his chair. “Have you felt any sort of phantom hands or something like that?”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t, but I’m pretty sure it cut my hand. Here, you can still see the scar.” I held out the palm of my left hand towards Dr. Engel. He looked at my palm, his eyes held something I couldn’t determine.
“Now, are you sure it did that?” He said again.
“Yes, I’m sure. There was nothing else around that could have done it. I promise you it had to be whatever that thing is.”
Dr. Engel was silent. The tension in the room was thick, and I sat quietly in the chair waiting for his next question. He remained motionless for a moment, seeming to decipher his next words.
“It’s unusual,” he started rather slowly, “for a ghost to follow an individual from place to place. Ghosts tend to remain in one location, since the spirit creates a connection with physical landmarks or buildings that aroused some sort of passion in their life. Living humans are tricky vessels—ghosts don’t attach themselves to humans.” He paused again, this time turning his chair and grabbing one of the paranormal books from the shelf. The front cover displayed the title—Angels, Demons, and Ghosts. I remained silent as he flipped through the thick, glossy pages covered in illustrations. He stopped on a page that had an illustration of a huge, ugly creature with mangled wings.
“From what you have told me, it sounds like what’s following you isn’t actually a ghost.” Dr. Engel started, turning the open book towards me. “It sounds like a demon.”
I blinked, feeling a little astonished. “A demon?”
“Demons tend to link themselves with an individual and pursue them from place to place.” He said. “From what I understand, they usually torment certain individuals for most of their lives. It’s rare though, I don’t hear much about them. The stalking instances you’ve described, plus the physical cut on your hand—those are possible signs of a demon. I’ve heard a few instances were demons can physically touch or harm an individual.”
I listened to him intently, but within me my stomach was turning in knots. Part of me was terrified, while the other was skeptical and wanted to call him out on a lie. I was so torn between believing him and writing him off as a lunatic. I tried to control my breathing to avoid giving away my anxiousness.
Dr. Engel seemed to sense my uneasiness. “Of course, I can’t make any real assumptions until I see this for myself—this is just a tentative diagnosis.” He said.
The office was silent again. My mind was too busy conflicting thoughts of what was real and what was false. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. My eyes locked on the open book and I studied the drawings on the pages. One creature had dark brown, rough looking skin, a long neck and equally long torso and legs. A large, open mouth was stretched across its hideous face adorned with sharp teeth, and its two large eyes were deep black. Another drawing of a demon was on the opposite page, this time slightly smaller with reddish skin and a severe hunch that exposed its spinal cord. Its face was as sinister as the last pictured demon as it looked over its right shoulder and at the reader—feeling like it was looking right into my soul.
“If you’d like, I could attempt to get funding from the university to research your issue.” Dr. Engel started again. “This would be a project I would be interested to take on. We’d have to have a psychological evaluation first, though, to make sure—“
“Can you stop it?” I asked softly, interrupting his offer. My eyes didn’t leave the book.
At this, Dr. Engel sighed. “I’m not sure. Exorcism is a common way to rid demons, but only in situations of possession. There’s no real solution for demons that haunt an individual instead of taking over a victim’s body. At least none that I’m aware of.”
A palpable tension settled into the silence that followed his admission. My eyes now locked onto an empty surface on the desk, still unable to process the idea that a demon was following me. A demon? An actual demon? It sounded like something out of a bad horror movie. I rubbed a hand over my face in bewilderment.
Dr. Engel turned the book back towards him and began flipping through the pages again. “I can give you so more information about demons, that way—“
“No, no that’s ok. I should be going.”
Without another word, I stood up from my seat and made way for the door. I couldn’t bear another moment in that office, with so many cohesive thoughts rushing my head and paralyzing my senses. It was indeed irrational, especially since I booked the appointment and drove so far to meet Dr. Engel, but terror won over good sense.
“Sir, wait—“
“No, I’m going. I’m sorry.”
My feet moved on their own accord, stepping one foot in front of the other like a heart would beat involuntarily. I quickly paced away from the office and down the corridor, not even bothering to see if Dr. Engel was pursuing me.
The next few moments were a blur. The walk across campus seemed to last only a few seconds, and I pulled out my car keys like it was a muscle memory reflex. It was as if I was on autopilot—my body working itself, as my mind was lost in a mess of confusion.
I drove straight home, only stopping to fill my gas tank. I didn’t even stop to eat or sleep. Much of the ride was spent in the same dazed state as before, but this time due to numbness that left me devoid of thought. Too much befuddlement left my head drained.
After a day on the road, I was opening the door to my quiet apartment. Inside, nothing looked different, nothing looked disturbed. The past two days felt like a dream. Pressing my back against the door after I closed it, I slid down to sit on the floor, feeling tears welling up in my eyes. I felt like a fool, driving all that distance to find out information that sounded like it came straight out of a B-horror movie, and yet it left me more scared than ever. What was I to do now? How could I ever be expected to continue on with my life with this piece of information looming over me like a raincloud? All I could think about were those pictures in Dr. Engel’s book, and wonder if one of those creatures was the thing that kept me from sleeping so many nights. It was just too much to bear.
And I cried, hard, for the next few hours, still sitting against the door of my apartment. I wished my mother could be here like she did the first time it came, and give me her wordless comfort like she always did. But I remained alone in my home, lost and upset, wondering how I would live my life from that moment on.
-----
When I was about 11 years old, my parents were on the verge of divorce. I never knew the grounds for why they considered divorcing, only that my parents were going to leave each other and I would be a commodity of their failed marriage. It left me reeling, upset, and there would be moments when I would beg them not to divorce. I tried so hard, worried so much, for the security of their marriage. I would mull over their possible divorce, wondering when they would finally tell me that they were officially separating.
But after weeks of worrying and crying, my emotions gave up on the hope and I fell into ignorance. I pretended things were ok, talked to them daily like I always did before, like nothing was wrong. I no longer had the energy to worry, so I decided to play dumb and assume that everything would be ok. Eventually, after months of ignorance, my parents patched things up, and did not divorce.
The same route of ignorance I took in this situation went into the situation with the demon. When I couldn’t handle the pressure that was laid upon me, I went into a passive state of oblivion. The footsteps in my room? I ignored it. The shadow looming over me? It wasn’t really there. I refused to acknowledge the real problem and instead chose to deceive myself. It was cowardly, but I didn’t know what else to do. I no longer wanted to seek help, not after my meeting with Dr. Engel; I couldn’t bear to imagine trying again. There were times when the nagging thought would remind me of my situation; that it was stupid on my part to ignore it, but it wasn’t enough to make me take action again. The demon was part of my life, and suddenly I was accepting it. It was routine again, just like before my trek to Los Angeles. There seemed to be a silent compromise—if I didn’t confront it, it wouldn’t hurt me. I never opened up about the demon to anyone else, never even considered it.
And that is how the years passed, and the years then turned into a decade. My secret remained safe, my silent slaveholder constantly keeping me at its mercy. But, before long, this would soon change, and I would find myself more haunted by it than ever.
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