I’ve always been oddly comfortable with the thought of death. Not in a suicidal way, but just in that it’s never really scared me. The thought of it seemed less like leaving behind everyone I love, and more like... returning. Like, finally going home. To the earth, the stars. It seemed easier.

My therapist, Dr. Greene, thinks it’s because of an incident from when I was younger. Is that the right way to word it? An accident, maybe? It doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that I almost drowned when I was seven, and apparently, I’ve developed this complacency towards the thought of death as a PTSD triggered coping mechanism.

I’m not sure I completely agree. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, really—though I suppose that’s the problem—but I’m pretty sure I’ve been strange my whole life. I’ve told all this to Dr. Greene, of course. I’ve been seeing him since I was seven, and I trust him, after all. He knows all of this, we’ve been over it so many times.

I knew how to swim at seven years old. I didn’t almost-drown in a lake, or a swimming pool, but in the bathtub in my own house.

I asked to bathe in the tub with bubble bath and a rubber duck—the works, naturally—and my parents complied. Again, I knew how to swim, and they knew I knew how to swim, so they had no problem with it. And, I was seven; I was a big boy, and didn’t need them to watch me bathe, for Christ’s sake.

So, they went downstairs to the living room while I bathed. I was having the time of my life, trying to stay in the warm water as long as I could—until my fingers got all wrinkly—so I could put off going to bed for as long as possible. As I brushed some bubbles aside, I noticed my “friend”.

Again, I’ve always been strange. Everyone has an imaginary friend at some point—or so I’m told—but my imaginary friend was never quite so friendly. For one, he was smarter than me. He spoke like my parents did, with language and vocabulary that far surpassed my own at the time. For another, he told me what to do, it was never the other way around. It was never anything bad—I never heard voices telling me to kill or anything, fortunately—but he did often make me eavesdrop on my parents, or not eat certain foods.

Most notably, he’d always try and get me to stay up all night, and, being young, I never could. When my parents found me half asleep the following days, they questioned me. And, when I admitted I was so sleepy because I couldn’t sleep at night, my academically oriented parents—nothing to ruin his performance at at school!—swiftly put me on sleep aids. My “imaginary friend” never let me hear the end of it, but I never knew what he expected me to do. My parents handed me the medicine and the cup of water, then waited for me to drink it before tucking me in at night. And, I didn’t lie to my parents. And, I liked sleep. I didn’t know what he was so angry about.

As an adult now, remembering this old “friend”, I’m just as alarmed as you probably are. Like, what the hell, right? And I haven’t even mentioned yet how he was only visible in reflective surfaces, and that he looked like nothing less than a demon. Well, he looked like young-me, I suppose, like my own reflection, except he had hundreds of little, sharp teeth—like needles—and I’d always thought his eyes completely black. They weren’t, but the reality wasn’t any better.

When he was feeling aggressive, he would do this thing where he’d snarl and look to the side without turning his head, as though he could see something I couldn’t, and that’s when I could see the tiniest sliver of white sclera. Knowing his iris, or his pupil, or whatever was just that swollen-looking was far more disturbing than if the entire eye was black. I don’t know. Like when a dog looks at you from the corner of its eye, and it looks dangerous, like you don’t know what it’s thinking. Or a horse looking to the side, and seeing the whites of its eyes as it stares at you without moving, tense. It’s just... disturbing.

I can remember being keenly afraid of this “friend”, but trusting him, because he’d never done anything to hurt me, necessarily, and he’d been there for as long as I could remember. I’d thought it normal for a time, even, to have your reflection talk to you.

Yeah, I... I was a fucked up kid.

Anyway, back to the incident. The accident? I need to look that up or something.

I was in the tub. I was sitting with my legs out before me, my hair tied up in two pigtails because my mom thought it was cuter than a shower cap. My legs were stretched out before me, and I was sitting. I know I said that already, but it’s important, because when my “friend” stared back at me in the reflection of the water, his disfigured, troll-like face sort of looked like it was between my legs, if that makes sense, and I didn’t like that. I tried to sit up, or swim away from him. As if that made any sort of sense. I could see his face reflected in every bubble, in every ripple of the water.

Yet, somehow, for some reason, when he told me to dip my head in the water, I did.

I had complete control. Complete support of my upper body. Complete control of the pace and my limbs. I was awake, I was lucid, and I knew how to swim.

There is no excuse for the feeling of claws tearing into the tender flesh of my face as it broke through the surface of the water, or the panic resulting in complete disassociation from the entire event as I felt my body propelled into the tub with a splash. Like a fucking vacuum had sucked me in, I dove into the tub.

Apparently I had been screaming, because next thing I knew, my parents were yanking me out of the water and demanding answers. What happened? Did you slip? Why is your face bleeding like that? Honey, you’re bleeding. Why were you screaming, why are you crying? Oh, sweetie, my poor dear. You must have fallen asleep.

I know you’re scared, but everything’s alright, Greenie, nothing's going to hurt you.

You’re alright, baby, you’re safe.

Anyway.

PTSD, because of that. Makes sense, I guess. I haven’t seen my “friend” since. Dr. Greene asked me why I called him that, and I admitted it was because I didn’t know his name. I’ve known him since as long as I can remember, and I’m not sure why I don’t know it—I just remember not having one for him. Dr. Greene then asked me why I thought this “friend” had left me after the bathtub incident, accident, and before I even acknowledged that I knew, my mouth was working for me. Words flew from my mouth without my consent and I replied, “Because he knows I won’t answer to him anymore. He has no place here, because he lost my trust.”

Dr. Greene seemed to be trying very hard to seem impartial, but I’ve been seeing him since I was, well, seven. I could tell he was proud of me for that answer, and honestly, so was I. I’m eighteen in three weeks, and that’ll make it eleven years of being normal. You can bet your goddamn boots I was proud.

Too bad it didn’t last.

On my eighteenth birthday, I woke up to a headache that could kill—were I a lesser man—and aches and pains all over.

I’m a tall guy already. I wouldn’t, like, cry if I’d hit another growth spurt, but at this point, I was starting to resemble a goddamn giraffe. If my neck was any longer, I’d be classified as one, I swear to you.

But the aches weren’t from a growth spurt. Oh, no, I actually preferred a growth spurt, because at least I could easily blame that on genetics. What. The. Fuck. Was I supposed to blame overnight horns on? Horns.

Like a goddamn cow.

Like horns.

What the fuck?