Chapter 2: Blissful Silence.
I don't remember when it started exactly, but I think it was around my tenth birthday.
Strange voices began whispering in my head, the words they spoke illusory and incomprehensible.
At first I thought it was a messed up prank so I just ignored it, but no matter how many days passed the voices refused to disappear.
When I think back on it, I realize my way of handling the situation was bizarre to say the least. Instead of running to my parents, I chose to keep the voices a secret.
They were always overprotective of me so the last thing I wanted was to give them a reason to worry. There was also the fact that I thought I had awakened mind reading power and feared that the government would come to take me. A child's imagination sure is a wondrous thing.
I had to go on with my life pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary. It was like trying to walk through a haunted house without reacting to any sounds or jump scares.
Before long I started to believe I was losing my mind. The illusory murmurs didn't make sense, after all, and trying to decipher them felt like a really bad idea. Still, I refused to tell anyone about them.
Unfortunately, one can only ignore the voices in their head for so long before they start affecting their life. It didn't help that they got louder and more frequent with time. They didn't get any less confusing, though, and as if that wasn't bad enough, I started seeing strange images in my dreams. I don't think I got a good night's sleep since I became fifteen. By that time the voices became a constant in my life, always whispering their incomprehensible jargon directly into my head.
I had to dampen them one way or another. That was when I got into heavy metal. I wasn't really a fan of the genre, but the chaotic tunes helped keep my sanity.
I knew that wasn't a long-term solution, but it was better than being thrown into a mental hospital and pumped full of drugs.
When everything failed, death became my only hope. I was too much of a coward to take my own life, however, so I chose to suffer in silence as I waited for exhaustion to do its job.