I want to rupture my eardrums.
With my fingernails, a shard of glass—I don’t care. I would give anything for a few seconds of silence. Even though I know it wouldn’t help. They’re not outside me. They’re inside. Too deep to ever get rid of.
There are so many of them that I stopped trying to tell the voices apart a long time ago. They talk over one another, blending into one endless roar, whispering, laughing, crying, demanding things, begging for others. Sometimes it feels like there are hundreds of them. Sometimes thousands. I press my palms over my ears, squeeze my eyes shut, slam the back of my head against the cold wall, but nothing changes.
They’re still with me. Always.
When they locked me in the psychiatric hospital, they told me they would help me here. That I would be safe. They only made things worse. A psych ward isn’t a place where the voices disappear. It’s a place where they feel at home. They live in the corridors, behind the ward doors, in the rasping laughter of patients and the way they talk to empty spaces. Sometimes I think these white walls are soaked through with other people’s psychoses. That if I could just get out of here, they would stay behind. But I know that’s a lie.
Because I heard them long before I ever ended up here.
Somewhere beyond the metal door of my room, I hear movement. Footsteps. Slow, unhurried. I don’t recognize these.
Which means there’s a stranger here.
The doctor is talking to someone nearby—I recognize his footsteps. Then a syrupy voice seeps through the crack beneath the door.
—...She’s a perfect match for what you’re looking for. Schizotypal disorder in all its glory.
Someone else has come to gawk at the freaks, like we’re exhibits in a free circus.
I don’t move. I sit on the floor with my head resting against the edge of the hard bed, staring into the white nothingness. My black hair falls over my face like a shroud. I don’t care who’s walking around out there. The footsteps stop farther down the corridor, and the stranger asks a few short, clipped questions about medication, about stability.
A door creaks. The footsteps fade. After a while, the creak comes again, followed by footsteps. The stranger mutters, disappointment clear in his voice:
—She’s just crazy.
Amazing, isn’t it? Crazy people in a psychiatric hospital. What a fucking paradox.
I give a crooked little smile at my own joke. Because there’s no one else here to laugh.
They’re coming back. Apparently, none of the “little animals” caught this gentleman’s interest. Maybe that’s for the best.
And then, from the deepest corner of my mind, cutting through the screams and the noise in the hallway, he comes through.
Amid all this endless chaos, there’s one voice I hear more clearly than the rest. He never shouts. He doesn’t need to. He speaks softly, almost gently, and that’s exactly why he seems louder than all the others. I don’t know his language. At least, I shouldn’t. The words sound foreign, as though they belong to something ancient, something that has no place in human speech. But I understand every one of them.
It used to scare me. Not anymore. Now it only sends a faint shiver down my spine sometimes.
He has always been with me, from the very beginning. He knows everything about me. He knows what I’m afraid of. He knows things I don’t even remember myself. The others are screaming again now, drowning one another out, while he repeats the same sentence. Over and over. As though he’s waiting for the moment I finally stop resisting.
My lips are dry. I barely feel them part as I whisper the foreign words that have been burned into my memory aloud:
—Aera nova imminet. Lilith iam evigilat.
Everything beyond the door falls silent.
The footsteps stop dead. And then... they start again. But this time, they’re coming straight toward my room, each step deliberate and measured.
I don’t move, but through the curtain of black hair, I see him. A gray-haired man with dark, almost black eyes is staring at me through the barred window. The doctor and an orderly hover behind him, confusion written across their faces, but the man is looking only at me.
—Constant auditory hallucinations, delusions, impaired perception of reality... —the doctor launches into his rehearsed explanation. —In other words, schizophrenia. If the other girl wasn’t suitable for you, then this one certainly won’t be. She’s seriously ill, and it’s highly unlikely that she...
—Open the door, —the gray-haired stranger cuts him off. His voice, dry and bored until now, suddenly carries a distinct note of interest.
—Mr. Van Wright... —the doctor protests. —She takes a whole handful of pills. There’s no point in her!
—Open. The door.
The doctor lets out a tired sigh but obeys. The lock clicks. The man steps across the threshold of my room and slowly crouches down directly in front of me, trying to catch my frozen gaze.
—What’s your name? —he asks quietly.
—Roxana, —the orderly immediately cuts in.
—I wasn’t asking you. I was asking her, — Mr. Van Wright snaps without even turning his head. He leans a little closer. —Roxana. Can you hear me? Repeat what you just said.
I slowly, very slowly, raise my head. Black strands slide away from my face, and my eyes meet his. Hundreds of mad voices are still screaming inside my head, but for the moment, they’re drowned out by the icy whisper of the one voice that matters.
—Aera nova imminet. Lilith iam evigilat.
Delight flashes across Mr. Van Wright’s eyes. Almost childlike—certainly not the kind of excitement you’d expect from a man his age. Suddenly, I wonder if I’ve made a mistake by doing what he asked. Maybe I should have stayed silent and pretended to be as crazy as everyone here insists I am.
—Do you know what that means, Roxana?
I say nothing. Maybe I should keep playing dumb while I still can. Mr. Van Wright catches the hesitation in my eyes. He smiles and carefully places his hand over mine, barely touching me.
Human warmth feels like boiling water. I barely manage not to recoil. Spending so long in the hospital has turned me into a wild animal. Even though, in reality, I’m just a nineteen-year-old girl.
—Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you, — Mr. Van Wright says, giving a small nod as if reassuring himself as much as me.
For some reason, I want to believe him. Still, I don’t rush to speak. I study the man in front of me.
Mr. Van Wright doesn’t pressure me. He waits patiently, as though he already knows I understand the translation but wants to hear it from me anyway.
And I give in.
—A new era is coming. Lilith is already awakening, —I whisper.
That’s enough to make a radiant smile spread across the man’s face. He looks at me differently now. The way a dying man looks at water. The way a beggar looks at money.
Mr. Van Wright rises without taking his eyes off me.
—I’m taking her.
The doctor looks at him, then at the orderly, then at me. He seems about to say something, but for some reason changes his mind and simply nods indifferently.
—I hope you don’t like this place, — Mr. Van Wright holds out his hand to me. —Because you’re never coming back here.
I lean forward the moment I hear those precious words. I’ve been waiting for them for so long. It feels like a hundred years. In reality, it’s been three.
My hand reaches for his on its own, and suddenly my palm is resting in Mr. Van Wright’s. For one second, all the voices fall silent. The silence inside me feels strange and wild, almost frightening—and yet, at the same time, peaceful. Good.
For the first time in years, the only voice inside my head is my own.
