Whispers

‘It’s just a little white lie,’ he whispers into your ear. ‘You’ll finish that report after you play the game…your mom doesn’t need to know exactly when you got it done.’ You call out that you’ve finished, the video game shaking in your hand and you hold your breath and listen. When her footsteps fade down the hall you force that feeling of guilt away with an unsure smile.

He’s a little one…still young. They start out small, too.

‘So many people do this; it’s not a big deal,’ he murmurs inaudibly as you nod your head and shove the pack of cigarettes to the bottom of the drawer, hidden beneath neatly folded shirts. ‘Good, now no one needs to know and you can smoke whenever you want,’ he cheers in his unheard voice.

He’s a bit older, a bit bigger. And he accompanies you everywhere you go.

‘If they didn’t want you to cheat, they wouldn’t give you unsupervised exams. You think everyone here is actually following the honor code?! No one is…why should you?’ His voice is firm. Watching you copy the answers from the book, he chuckles imperceptibly.

He’s an adult now. And he thinks he has full control over you.

‘You have no choice,’ he screams silently into your soul. ‘She’s given all her attention away with nothing left for you. That other woman will give you comfort. Call her, go to her. It’s your only chance for happiness.’

He sits between you and the woman who carried you through the years, consoled you in the dark and reflected your sunshine in the light, the one who planned to stand by you and lift you up, even if it meant that would cause her to drown. He sits between you, his presence tangible, causing you to look upon her with disdain. His laughter tears apart your life as he places it on his shelf as another trophy won, another paradise so gracefully brought to rubble.

Following his whispers – one by one – from his child form till he became a titan, you watched goodness collapse and your world crumble.

There had always been another voice, you know. There had been an inner feeling, guiding you away from him, urging you to remain pure, pleading with you to ignore the whispers.

It’s still there, that inner feeling. It’s not too late to tune out his whispers.

Tune out his whispers and tune in to you.