EXIST (part 2)

I believe my family and I were shipped here secretly by the AAUP (American Association for Unexplained Phenomenon). Sounds like a bunch of mad scientists hired by an evil mastermind to help conquer the world, and it’s not far from the truth. I was given a new identity. They kept my name though – Anna. I guess it is as mainstream in America as it is in Bulgaria.  You’d think with them being so smart, they would have come up with a more original name to call me. But I guess, it all had to be arranged pretty quickly and none of them cared to bother, so I just went on as Anna. Short, boring, mainstream name, kind of under the radar. I feel OK with it though, and I have grown to like it because I feel it suits me – me being equally boring and unnoticeable, and well…short. But I was over the moon excited when I heard I call myself differently when I’m asleep. And this name really suits my other ME. My Mr. Hyde persona – M.

I imagine M. as the better version of me – stronger, smarter, and braver. And I constantly have this eagerness to impress her, and feed her by learning all these new things. The frustrating thing is that as me, I can only learn so much. I get tired, and bored, and distracted. But M. then remembers everything. As far as I know, she can speak up to twenty languages, including Bulgarian – which I don’t. For her a swift look in a dictionary and some recorded dialogues on cassettes does the deal. She is like the better sister and I swear, as much as I love her, sometimes I want to kill her.

But I need her for now, until I know how to destroy her.

And this realization is why I’m here in the first place. Hiding from the AAUP. From Hex. 

I heard I wasn’t the only one. They were doing the same experiments on a boy eight years younger than me shipped him from India when he was four years old. Found him riding some sacred elephant 40 kilometers from his village. His mom sold him to the AAUP the next morning. 

Then there was the girl from Kiev, her dad by some twisted turn of events – the head of AUP in Russia. I think she was submitted as soon as she started sleep-talking. At least she didn’t have to travel far from home and could see her dad every day. Finally, I heard about this boy my age who tried to kill himself.  This guy had stolen a pen and injected himself with the ink, going into a coma. Unfortunately, his sleep-walk version had somehow pushed the fucking venom out of his bloodstream and then drawn a fucking picture with the ink on the floor. I did find the irony extremely amusing but it also frightened me.

I don’t want to die. I. But I need to take control over my body and in order to do that, I need to kill M. And I know they won’t let me do that, they need her to become me… but I’m afraid I might become her altogether. So how do I survive against myself? I don’t sleep? For how long before my brain fries out and I lose it? But I feel hopeful, closer than anyone else, being the only one who escaped. And as the days go by, I feel stronger and stronger fighting my deMon, capital M.

II.

                                                                 OBSSESSIONS

I have learnt that a thought can obsess your mind so badly, it becomes your only mantra, no matter if you’re awake or asleep. When I was still at the AAUP, they had me memorize all kinds of things – from children’s songs to longer poems and as I grew older and my learning capacity expanded equally, I recited Voltaire, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, ect.  as a morning routine. And then I did it while I was sleep-talking. In Latin. And Greek, and whatever language I felt like speaking. It was so bizarre watching the tapes – even I couldn’t understand myself. But then this idea came to me – if I wanted something bad enough, and though about it every now and then, M. did it. So now I had to get out of there and this wasn’t just a thought to pass through my brain but my one and only obsession. GET OUT OF HERE. FIND SOME PLACE SAFE. GET SOME MONEY. DISSAPPEAR.

And soon enough M. did it. To this day I have no idea how. She was like a wish-granting genie. Puff!-and I am lying on a mattress in the middle of a wooden floor. This bright yellow light cutting my face in half. For a second I think it’s just another day, starting on the operating table. But then I feel the light is warm. So I look around and here I am, fully clothed in red shorts and an ”I-HEART-NEW YORK” T-shirt, my right arm feeling sore underneath some bandages plus my whole mouth hurting badly. I’ve got a watch on my wrist, telling me it’s a little past twelve. And this room – empty, except for a broken sink with an equally broken mirror on top, a wooden table with some REAL cash on it (like a whole bunch of them) and a chair with a sports hat and some kind of an envelope on top. So, my first thought for a long time now is not “GET OUT OF HERE” but “WHAT THE FUCK?!” Where am I?  The other question comes second.     

EXIST

  BLANK SPACES

My wish is simple. I want to exist. See? Easy enough. Though, when you have my disease, you might think it’s the most difficult thing to achieve. I have blankspace. You might also call it somnambulism. But, in the end, it all sums up to a bunch of blank spaces in which you don’t exist. Still, you breathe, your brain works, you do things normal people can’t, just because they limit themselves, overthinking it, doubting. Like, you can hang from a skyscraper just on your pinkie because you concentrate all your power on one thing. And you can speak, and understand, and reciprocate a feeling, but it’s not really you because you’re just dreaming. And in the morning, you don’t remember anything. Blank spaces.

Yet I sometimes recall things – a place or a person I’ve met during my sleep walks. And it feels like déjà vu, bizarrely familiar, yet somehow very distant. It’s confusing what my brain can do and when I watch myself on the tapes I record while I’m asleep, even I get scared. You might say it’s not ME who’s doing all those crazy things. And it really isn’t. So I’m starting this diary before it is too late and I don’t exist anymore.

I must go back to what I do remember for certain, in order to explain this…thing that is happening to me. So, I’m maybe three-four years old, just started walking properly. My mom has told me I learnt to speak when I was just short of four months old and just sat in my crib, like a talking doll. Always talking, even in my sleep. First she couldn’t understand what I was saying, sounded like a bunch of baby-talk, sounds and syllables, and later it began to scare the crap out of her and my dad. I was repeating everything I had heard throughout the day. It must have sounded so creepy. Of course, back then recording devices were not something every family had lying around in their house, so she had to bring me to the nearest hospital for observation through the night. It was kind of a fascinating thing to watch – a baby of just five months having these strange meaningless monologues while asleep. And they monitored me for a while, powerless without the proper technology. So, in the end, everyone decided it would be best to bring me back home and wait until I became older. But then I started walking.

Now, this particular day, my mom and dad had taken me for a walk at the zoo. It was kind of a reward for me walking for the first time without falling flat on my face. And later that night, for the first time, I hadn’t made a sound. No imaginary conversations, no parrot-ly repeats of everything said throughout the day, no humming of the songs I’ve heard somewhere. Total silence. For which my parents were extremely grateful. I reckon that to them, this day must have been some kind of a miracle – me learning how to walk and me not sleep-talking for the first time on the same day! Or so they thought. My mom was a light sleeper and I guess it is, to a great extent, my fault. Back in the days, the baby phone hadn’t been created, so my crib was placed in the guestroom, only a door away from my parents’ bedroom – far enough so they can sleep without me blabbing all night, yet close enough to know I’m alright. So, when she heard some sticky footsteps on the tiles and a doorknob screeching, she woke up, alert. I imagine her in her nightgown, breathing heavily, walking slowly toward the guestroom. Tiny sweat droplets on her forehead, fingers cold and sticky on the door.  Her heart pumping madly when she notices I’m not in my crib and the balcony door is wide open, cold night air rushing into the room. So she traces me to the apartment’s balcony – a small space with just one window open, too high for me to reach. And yet I’m standing right on top, holding the frame of the window, feet on the verge, baby hair swinging behind me like a cape.

She must have been terrified. Standing there, seeing that. Child-devil. Unexplainable. She would have wanted to scream, to call my dad, to run away and never come back. But she didn’t, she just stood there, being afraid that if she spoke, she might scare ME and I might fall down. She must have looked around, searching for an explanation where there wasn’t any and then she approached me, crabbing me by the forearms and holding me so tight to her chest that I couldn’t breathe. And she didn’t breathe as well. 

That’s how my father found her – holding me tight front of the open window, looking crazy as if she’s about to throw me away.

She got admitted into a psychiatric ward afterwards for attempted murder. They let her go eventually, when my somnambulism was proven, but neither she, nor my dad were ever the same after. Though, I think they felt very relieved to know I’m not Satan’s daughter, just suffering a weird disease. And adjustments had to be made. That’s when my family and I got a green card (when nobody ever got one) and were shipped to America. I was submitted for further testing and surveillance, so were my mom and dad and when they didn’t find anything wrong with their DNA, they disappeared. Dead. Or so the AAUP told me.

My growing up was tests and tubes and experimental treatments. Lots of talks to lots of doctors, hours in little white rooms with stuffed animals by myself, listening to classical music or watching brightly-colored slides. With my brain attached to hundreds of wires. And after all that, what they found was that I wasn’t super smart, or had some cool superhuman ability. I was completely normal and boring. While I was awake, that is. And then came the night. And my brain lit up like fireworks, and I could play any instrument I was given, and replay every music piece I’ve heard, no notes needed. And I could do other stuff too, but ultimately it wasn’t ME doing it, was it?

See, the most frustrating thing for them was that they couldn’t control it…me. Now, if only there was a way I could still do all this tricks and be conscience of doing them. If I could reach 100% of my brain capability while awake, too? Could be the answer to the next step in evolution.  

I heard they had found it. The way. But now…they just need to find me.