Sin... Break Free

I want to break free. I have to break free. I've got to break free from this prison that wraps bars so tightly round me. I need to break free.

Who knows? Who knows what it's doing to me?

I've fallen so far. I've fallen so far that I don't know just what is or isn't real. I've fallen so far.

I know. I know I've fallen so far.

It's strange and so true, how the screams they haunt me as they do. But I know that I'm sure, I can't walk out the door! But, how I need to break free, oh yes, I wish I could break free.

I just have got to break free.

I wish life could go on. I can't get used to all of the cries, taunting inside, splitting me wide open, like a knife. I don't want to carry on. God knows, and I think He's always known.

Oh, you've really got to see, I've got to break free.

I have to break free. You have to agree..

I want, I want, I want, I want...

...to bring an end to me.

Sin... Peter...

I'm told that a single match can burn a thousand dreams. As the Olympic Flame can light the fire of hope in a million hearts, one tiny match can turn hope into hell.

Meet Peter.

Pyro Pete, of course. What else could he be called?

Well, he could be called a lot, and was. Scum. Murderer. Filth. Many more that I can't bring myself to repeat here for fear of them tainting my tongue with their tragic touch. Mostly he was called Pyro, though that would often be followed with him being spat at in the face, with a good cough-up of phlegm added for effect. A kind of physical full stop, or exclamation mark. Or two by four.

I simply called him Peter. My disgust prevented me from putting any effort into cannibalising his name. He didn't deserve the firing of my neurons that it would take to decide which pseudonym I was going to attach to his despicable derriere.

He knew the family. Don't they usually? He blamed it on the voices.

Again, don't they usually?

He was possessed, he said. A demon had taken him when he was sitting on the toilet one Friday morning, apparently. When things should have been exiting, something entered. And it told him to.

They were evil. The father, who worked too many hours but always made time for his children and his wife. The mother who worked too, but was always there to pick up her boys from school.

The boys. Twelve years old. Twins. Not star pupils, but doing all right, you know? They'd glide more than soar, but wouldn't plummet.

Well, until Peter - or the demon within -struck that match.

Then their wings were burned. Then they were basted in their own tears. And there was no need for the mother to collect them from school or help them with their homework. And the father didn't have to go to work anymore, nor did he need to read to them at night, something he'd done since they were little and they didn't want him to stop. But he did stop. He had no choice. The books were gone. He was gone. They all were.

One match burned all their dreams.

And now he's in here with us, because of that demon he says told him to.

They should keep him separate, for his own safety. But they don't. Is that because they don't care? Or is it that they do?

He's still here, but, somehow, I don't think it will be for long. Retribution sneaks along the corridors of a place like this, hiding in shadows, waiting until it's time.

Maybe it'll be today.

Maybe tomorrow.

Sin... The Scream...

I'm feeling fuzzy headed today.

Did someone come into my room in the night and inject cotton wool in through my ears? Did my brain leak out from my nose, pushed out by the fluffy white intruder? Or did I sleepwalk to a fairground and eat so much candy floss that it filled me up from my tootsie toes to the tip-top of my head?

Either way, I feel fuzzy headed.

My eyes don't feel completely open. I've looked at my reflection in the window and I seem to be the same person I was yesterday. Tired from sleeping too much or not enough, drawn from life taken me by the hands and pulling me every which way at once.

But that person isn't me, is it? I don't look like that. I don't look like the life is slowly being sucked out of me as if I have an invisible leech hanging off my back, and every hour is lunch hour. I don't look haunted.

But I am, aren't I. I am haunted. I have the cries to keep me company each night. I have the knowledge and the memories. I haunt myself, my own guilt a spectre that follows me, tapping me on the shoulder every so often and shouting 'BOO!' in my ear.

I think it and my shadow gang up on me sometimes..

In my head, I look... better. I look healthier for a start. Those bags under my eyes aren't suitcases for the darkness in my soul. There's more volume in my hair.

There's more hair...

If I put my hands to my cheeks, I could do a passable impersonation of Edvard Munch's The Scream.

In my head.... there's more of me. I don't mean I have clones walking around. I'm not bumping into myself or having to share my lunch with... what would be the collective term for a group of Me? A Shiver of Sins? A Sin of Sins, in fact? Either way, I'm not playing host to a Dabble of Doppelgangers.

I mean, I am more present. I'm more here. More substantial.

So where did I go? Has my body walked off and I'm not actually me but my shadow?

Is that why I'm fuzzy headed? Because, in that abyss inside my head, there's only darkness?

If so, who turned out the lights?

Sin... Bonfire of the Sanities

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, porridge, poetry and plots.

Hmmm... Don't think it goes quite like that, does it? Isn't it something about gunpowder and treason? I'd ask the goodly Mr. Fawkes, he was ever the bright spark, but I hear he went with a bang.

Hardee-har. I'm so hilarious sometimes. Sometimes. Honest. You've got to laugh, haven't you? Or you'll cry.

Ask my father. He'd laugh. I'd cry.

Anywho. Gunpowder, porridge and pus. I mean plot. I think.

I'm a bit hazy-wazy-double-dazy today, so you'll have to forgive me. Well, I suppose you don't actually have to... I can't force you to. It's entirely your decision, but a (un)healthy dose of Risperdal has me dancing with the pixies and snorting fairy dust - much like Luscious Lily was prone to do.

I had to. I had to kick off so they'd give me that little prick of purgatory that washes away - or at least dilutes - the cries and the memories. They came on a little too strong this morning and I felt as if I had the entire audience of a Justin Bieber concert in my head, except the atrocities that caused it were more horrific than even that. It doesn't often take me that way. Not quite as bad. They're there almost constantly, but it's a wave in the background, the cries little more than a far off sea-gull's call.

This morning, however, I was center stage, and no-one was throwing their knickers at me or hoping I'd invite them backstage for a 30 second fumble.

So I threw a wobbler and they were kind enough to catch it and administer their antidote. Wipe you out, that's their philosophy. Drown your sorrows in a sea of drugs. Or throw you in Room 101. Depends on whether there's a 'D' in the day or if they can be arsed, I suppose. There's no rhyme nor rational behind some of their decisions.

I was thankful, this morning, that they'd had their leg over last night, or they couldn't be bothered with the fight to drag me off to the Room. It was the drugs that I wanted, and today the Verve were wrong. The drugs did work. To a certain extent. Enough to dull the roar and to soften the screams.

It's Bonfire Night tomorrow. A celebration, of sorts, of a plot to blow up the government and all who sailed in her. If I could control this beast within me, I wonder if I could let off fireworks of a different kind - an all consuming fire that would reduce my guilt to a glowing pile of ash and embers.

Then I could be the phoenix rising, born anew, and my salvation would be at hand.

Let me hear you say 'I believe!'

No? Yeah... Probably right. There's been enough fireworks from me to last a thousand lifetimes, even though those thousands didn't last very long.

They don't let us have a fireworks display, of course. Not even sparklers. I don't blame them, to be honest - this is an asylum, after all. There's enough fireworks on a daily basis without adding fuel to the fire.

Today, I feel like a Catherine Wheel. Dizzily showering off sparks, as round and round I go.

Where I stop, nobody knows.