It always happens when he’s alone in the car. The voices. They don’t stop. They tell him things… things he doesn’t want to know. They tell him that he's being followed while he drives home from school, or that he’s not alone as he turns down the country road. He rarely drives alone now. Last time the voices came, they wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t occupy his mind with anything other than the terrible  things they would whisper to him. He tried to tell his mother about them, the voices and the things they would say. She said he was paranoid, and that it’s the stress of high school on his mind. The thing is, nothing was stressing him out. He couldn’t pinpoint at all where they’d be coming from. He racked his brain day after day trying to find a cause and a solution.

The last time he tried to get help, it did him more bad than good. The voices only said to him that it would get increasingly worse the more people he told. He wonders if he’s the only one who’s ever had this problem. Have there been others with voices inside their heads? Others who couldn’t tell a soul? He feels a ping of empathy for those people. He knows how it feels. He understands the confinement. He understands how it feels to be trapped in your own head, and not being able to get out.

He planned on driving out to the countryside… alone. He needed to get rid of them. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to face his inner demons. He said a quick goodbye and i love you to his mother, as he wasn’t sure if they’d consume him.  

He slouched as he drove, as if he could hide from the voices in his head. He thought about his mother, and all his friends at school. He tried to focus on anything other than the voices. He tried to think about everything he’s wanted to do. That would help him get through it. Think of it as motivation. He wonders how long it will take; how long he’ll be alone on this country road. Tonight they were telling him a multitude of things; they told him to pull over, and step out of the car. They told him to swerve into the nearest telephone poll, so that everything would stop.The swirling chaos could easily cease.  They even told him to drive off of the cliff just up the road. He knew that this wasn’t the way to end it. If he wanted the voices to stop, he’d have to face them. He drove at a quicker pace now, beginning to feel overwhelmed by the low chuckles and whispers in his mind. There were many voices tonight. They all spouted gruesome things, but some worse than others. These thoughts stayed in his mind as he drove, like a mural painted on his conscience.

“Watch out.”

“Drive faster.”

“Crash into that ditch.”

And worse of all, “Don’t look in the back seat.”

When this pops into his head, he’s driven mad. He begins to turn his head, but he halts, realizing that this is what they want. They want him to be afraid. They want to control his mind. He won’t let them have the satisfaction. He won’t let them take control of his life anymore. He’s done everything they asked for. He’s isolated himself, and he’s been scared at night while waiting for their return.

They begin to get louder. They are no longer whispers, but said in a normal speaking volume. He feels his head start spinning but is determined to stay on the road.

He presses on, the car still running steadily along the black pavement. It’s completely dark now. He starts to worry. He hates the dark. It reminds him of nothingness, of being alone. The voices are now yelling; They’re screaming. He can’t focus anymore, and he loses control of himself. The car swerves left and then right, until it finally rests in the trunk of a large tree. He doesn’t wake up. The voices won this time.

Not all are so lucky. Many live on with the voices still in their heads. They still whisper their horrid whispers and chuckle their horrifying chuckles. Maybe no longer as loud as they used to be, but still a low and constant reminder that you can’t always control your thoughts, and that your mind isn’t always your own.