Dead Inside

by Chandler Morrison

Consider this your goddamn trigger warning.

“That’s how it’s always been. It’s all I want. It’s what I crave.”

“I wish you were dead.”

“Sometimes I kind of wish I were dead.” “You would be perfect.” “Maybe everything else would be, too.”

But sometimes, you take one last glance over your shoulder, and though there’s never anything there, you’ll get one final jolt of the chill, alarmingly potent in its presence, and then it’s gone, and you’re still alive, and you take comfort in the deceptive notion that, with your back to the cemetery, death is behind you, and not waiting patiently ahead.

But not me. I live for that chill. I want death neither behind, nor ahead, of me, but around me and within me.

The living are dangerous. They inflict pain. They’re so fueled by greed, a lust for useless material shit, a smoldering desire to fit in . . . and they’ll hurt and betray and destroy whomever they must in order to get anywhere close to all of it. None of them are any different. Not even Helen, really. She craves conformity, longs to be one of the rest.

I’m not going to take any fucking Tums.

Reading back my old highlights and I took some Tums like 10 mins ago lmaooo

And just because I’m okay with being me, doesn’t mean I think there should be more of me. There should not be more of me. You have to kill it.”

I close my eyes and massage my temples as I feel a headache begin to settle in, burrowing itself into my skull and building a thorny nest.

I’ve been chugging Red Bull and averaging three pots of coffee per night, just so I can remain somewhat alert and capable of motion. Coffee makes me nauseous, and I fucking hate Red Bull.