The Whispers

I keep hearing them. The Whispers. The voices deep within people’s minds, speaking their true thoughts. I don’t really know when this started. I remember one day just waking up, and hearing the whispers.
God he’s so annoying. Doesn’t he ever shut up?
Why the hell doesn’t this kid speak? Is there something wrong with him?
Damn kids. So rude and disrespectful. Didn’t even say thank you.
He’s too nice. There’s something off about him.
What an asshole. Can’t he treat a girl nice for once?
This shit is incessant. I hear it all the time. To every single person I talk to. It’s like they’re whispering right in my ear, but they’re not saying anything. They always have polite smiles, or neutral faces when they talk. Or even worse, it is a smile of friendliness, a very welcoming one. The ones of my friends and family. The ones that you are supposed to trust, the ones that you are supposed to smile back at.
Those ones hurt the most. Even when I met my girlfriend, a girl named Lyla. The voices didn’t stop there. The moment I started talking to her, I could hear it. “I’m Ray,” I said. “Hi. I’m Lyla.”
Who is this guy? Why is he talking to me?
“So, how’s classes going for you?” she asked.
He’s probably failing. He just looks like a retard.
“Uh, all right, I guess. Not doing very well to be honest.”
Of course.
It was a weird, awkward conversation, and I told myself after that day I wouldn’t talk to her again. I heard her whispers, and I heard my own stupid voice. It would not be a good idea to speak to her again, lest the whispers become a voice for everyone to hear.
But the next day, she talked to me again. This time about a test we had coming up. No one else knows. My friend who sits next to me isn’t here either. So I guess he’ll have to do. It is my partner after all.
“To be honest I don’t know either.” Lyla chuckled and shrugged. “It’s all right. I’ll figure it out.” “Yeah…” Of course he doesn’t know. Does he even fucking pay attention? Damn I wish I had another partner. Fucking idiot…
I didn’t say another word to her unless we had to talk. I still heard the whispers then as well. I got something wrong, she smiled and waved it off, and whispered curses in my ear. I got something right or asked a legitimate question, or the conversation just flowed, she said nothing and whispered backhanded compliments.
My friends whispered as well. Everyone whispered. Maybe I did too. But I never heard my own voice. “So, you gonna tell me about this girl?” asked Jake one day, while we were riding to go hang out with the others. It was some restaurant, but I can’t remember its name. “She’s nothing special,” I said with a shrug.

Yeah right. He probably wants to fuck her. But he’s not good enough for her. Probably fucked it up like all the others.

“Sure, man,” Jake said with a smirk and a wink. I rolled my eyes. “What, it’s true. I don’t like her.” “Sure.” “I don’t. I learned my lesson after Misty.” “Heh. Misty. You know what man, that was your fault. You fell for a girl named Misty, who had blue-streaked hair, a nose ring, and you saw no red flags.”

I sighed. “Yeah I know… So I’m not doing it again.”

He’s just being a pussy.
“All right, well what does she look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Well it’s not like I have a photo of her.” “Does she have instagram or something?” “I don’t know.” “Try checking.” “I don’t know what it’s called.” “Just try to type in her name!” “All right, all right!”
Damn, he’s such a pussy. Such a bitch. Can’t even talk to, or about a fucking girl.
I gritted my teeth and hoped Jake would change the subject as I tried to find it. I eventually did, seeing her profile picture, and seeing the things she posted. I showed it to him. Jake whistled. “Damn she’s hot! Are you going to ask her out?”
No chance.
I shook my head. “No, no I won’t.” “What? Why not?” “I told you I learned my lesson. I’m not doing it again.”
No you didn’t. You’re too stupid for that. You never learn. You’ll just get yourself hurt over and over again. You’re too stupid to learn.
I clenched my jaw and stared out the window. “I’m telling you man, you should. What do you have to lose.”
Nothing. That’s what you are. Nothing. You have nothing, and you are nothing.
Where this was coming from, I don’t know. Again, I just began hearing all of this. In their voices. The things that they were thinking about me that they would never say out loud, and it was never good things. Insults, snide remarks, rebuttals, hate, annoyance, and reluctance. It could come from anyone for anything.
That was just how things were. But it was worse from my own friends and family. Those were the loudest, and hurt the most. Why is he so lazy? Why is he angry? He needs to move out of here, he’s an adult already. He’s just taking up space. God, how did I raise such a loser? Now, I know those don’t sound bad, but when they scream louder than anything else they say, and at a constant rate, it begins to sting.
I don’t know why it came from them. You would think that it would come from them the least, but that wasn’t the case. I remember a day when I was going to ask Lyla out in class. I was sitting right next to her, and I was all ready to ask her out. And then the whispers came in. Don’t you dare fucking ask me. Who do you think you are? Do you honestly believe you got a chance? You’re nothing to me. Fuck off. Lyla was asking me about something related to our classwork, but I can’t remember what it was. The conversation seemed to be friendly, but I couldn’t stop hearing the whispers. You’re not even listening to me, what an asshole. I know you’re thinking of asking me out, so stop thinking about it. Fuck off. God, I need to switch seats. So I didn’t ask her out that day. I let the whole class period pass me by and let it go away. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
They just kept speaking in my head. Sometimes I would hear them when I wasn’t even talking to anyone. Just thoughts of failure and self-hatred whispering in my ears. Just give up. You’re not going to get with her. A pathetic loser like you doesn’t deserve a girl like that. You don’t deserve anyone, not the way you are.
I tried to shake it, thinking that maybe it was the result of some insecurity I needed to fix. I began working out, and trying to find ways to build my confidence, put myself out there, make myself seem cooler. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? Just come as I was, let the whispers turn into screams? Hell no. I wasn’t going to let them beat me.
But time was running out. The semester was ending, and I didn’t know if I was going to see Lyla again. Or if she wanted to see me again. So on the last day of school, I decided fuck it. I was just going to say it, damn the Whispers. It was all in my head after all. So I took the chance, and she said yes. But I still heard the whispers. God, they never shut up. There was nothing that I did, no one that I could talk to, where I didn’t hear them, telling me everything that I wasn’t supposed to hear, or maybe what I knew and didn’t want to hear.
I worked the grounds crew at school, helping with maintenance and cleaning up the baseball stadium. Now, I was always stressed at work. I’m not that good with instructions, and I easily misunderstand them. Now, I wasn’t a lazy worker, and I wasn’t an asshole, at least I hope I wasn’t.
But the whispers among my coworkers were loud. Arguably worse than everyone else. Every mistake I made, every word I said, every step I took, they whispered about me, looking at me with a disgust and irritation that always made me cringe.
What the hell is he doing?
Who hired him?
Jeez he doesn’t even talk
Fuck man, this guy needs to be fired.
He can’t drive the cart.
He never knows what to do. Can’t he figure this shit out?
Fuck this guy!
I thought that improving my work performance would make them go away. After all, if I didn’t do anything wrong, then the whispers would have nothing to say? Right?
Wrong. Because it only got worse when I messed up. It would just hit me in waves whenever that happened. I had an incident where they saw me almost run my own ass over with the golf cart after I forgot to set the parking brake. I had been rushing because I was the last one to get back and we needed to lock up. So as I got out to reopen the gate to drive it through, I turned around to see the thing rolling down the grass and nearly crashed me between the cart and the fence.
I didn’t make eye contact with anyone as I rolled it in. It’s been a miserable existence. Nobody knew that this was what I was feeling. Or hearing? Experiencing? Fuck, I don’t give a damn about the semantics of it all. I’m going to be gone anyway soon.
Needless to say, my relationship with Lyla started coming along pretty well, but every time I made a mistake, it all went to shit, and the whispers started up. I forgot her birthday, and well understandably we had an argument, and I heard the whispers, telling me that I was a piece of shit, and that she was going to break up with me the next morning. She didn’t, but it crippled me to a point where I didn’t sleep and didn’t talk to her all day.
When we went to the beach, I was trying hard not to act weird about the fact that she was in a bikini, and I found myself being overwhelmed with whispering about how I was probably interested in someone else, and that I didn’t care about how she looked. But when I looked at her and put my arms around her, the whispers said that I was a creep.
I couldn’t win. I just couldn’t. I quit my job about a few weeks after they started, hoping to find a job where I wouldn’t have to worry about that. In the meantime, I worked tirelessly to try and better myself in every possible way. I worked out more, I studied harder, tried to better my relationship with Lyla, I did everything. But I still heard the whispers.
Why didn’t they stop? I couldn’t tell you. It would hit me like waves of whistling wind, the words flowing through the breeze into my ear, a pleasant feeling that slowly turned to madness. I didn’t want to do anything like counseling or therapy, because that would mean telling everyone what was happening to me, which I didn’t want to do.
This was my struggle, and my struggle alone. But, I couldn’t live like this forever, sooner or later I was going to break. And I did. The Whispers finally got to me. And of course it was in my relationship. You see, up until this point, Lyla and I hadn’t had sex. Sure we had kissed, sometimes made out, but we never really had been all that intimate with each other. Part of it was that we wanted to save it for when the time was right, but also for me I was afraid of the whispers. What they would say. So, I put it off. To fight the urge, ashamedly, I got heavy into porn. The screen didn’t whisper, so I felt at peace.
But one night, I was spending the night at her place, and she talked to me about it, saying that she wouldn’t tonight to be the night. I was hesitant at first, but after about fifteen minutes of conversation, we agreed to do it. I should’ve held my ground, I should’ve just told her about what was going on with me. Until this thing was fixed, I should’ve been careful and treaded lightly.
So, we went into her bedroom, and we began making out. She stripped out of her clothing, and it was the first time that I had seen her naked. For a brief moment, I forgot about the Whispers. Nothing else mattered but her, and it was the most beautiful, most exhilarating experience that I’d ever had up until that point in my life.
But it didn’t last long. The Whispers came back just as we began making love. They said I fucked like a dog, that I didn’t truly love her, that this was all that I wanted. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to make it go away by loving her harder, but it didn’t work. The whispers turned to screams, and my head began to ring.
I couldn’t hear Lyla anymore, only what they were saying. In Lyla’s voice, they laughed at me, said she felt nothing. She said that she was cheating on me, that she loved someone else, that she loved Jake. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t true, I really did. But it was too much, it was overwhelming. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding her tighter.
But then they faded, and that’s when I heard Lyla yelling something. She was yelling at me to stop. I panicked, climbing off of her and pulling away. She scrambled to the other side of the bed, looking at me with fear, confusion, and anger. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” I frowned, not sure what she was talking about. She showed me her back and different parts of her body, which were covered in scratches and were bright red. My eyes widened, and my heart sped up. I’d ended up hurting her. One of my worst fears regarding this.
All I could stutter out was a weak “I’m sorry.” She began demanding what I was thinking, and if I could even tell that I was hurting her. I didn’t know what to say. No, I DID know what to say, but I just didn’t want to. I didn’t want to tell her about the whispers. So I just stood there in silence, listening to her go off on me and demand answers.
I snapped. I began yelling at her back, accusing her of cheating, of her being an “unfaithful bitch”. The shit that I said to her, god it makes me sick to my fucking stomach when I think about it. It was repulsive, it was fucking disgusting. Her eyes went wide, and tears began to stream down her face at the accusations, and I watched her begin to tremble with rage. Through clenched teeth, teary eyes and a look of hatred that could melt steel, she said in a soft voice, “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
I got dressed, grabbed my things, and stormed out, yelling at her the whole time. It wasn’t until I had gone in my car and drove off did it sink in what I had done. I broke down into hysterics and spun around, determined to apologize and make things right. I was going to tell her everything, about the whispers about all of it. But then, the whispers started happening again. Except no one was around. It was just me, and my thoughts. And now, the whispers. That never happened until this point. I didn’t know what was happening.
I screamed for them to get out of my head, whatever they were. But they didn’t and they only got louder, the whispers turning to loud, clear voices. They changed from my parents, to Jake, to my coworkers, to my boss, to my other friends, to my brother, to Lyla, and then to myself. I was listening to my own voice mocking me, telling me that I was a piece of shit who would never see happiness, that Lyla was as good as it was ever going to get.
I fought back, I pushed back, I screamed back until my voice went raw, but then the voice changed. I swear to God I am not lying when I say this. This is all true, I fucking swear it. The voices all blended together into something that I had never heard in my entire life. In unison, they turned into a deep, growling voice, that sounded like it was scrambled, or coming from a slowed down recorder. I can’t explain it, I don’t know how to really describe what the voices now sounded like.
But it made me freeze up, chills running down my spine, and a fear that I had never experienced in my entire life consuming my body. I began shaking, my heart pounding so loud that I felt like it was going to leap out of my chest and I was going to die right there on the spot. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, and ended up getting clipped by a car, but I didn’t stop. I just kept driving, straight past Lyla’s house, and just kept driving. I didn’t have a destination, I didn’t have really anywhere that I wanted to go.
I just wanted the whispers to go away. But, as you can see, they didn’t. And that’s why I’m writing. I’ve decided that I can’t take it anymore. This can’t keep going on, I don’t know if my relationship is ruined or not, hell maybe it is. To Lyla, I’m sorry. Sorry I didn’t tell you, sorry I messed it up. To Mom, Dad, Craig, I’m sorry too. It wasn’t your fault. Blame the Whispers. Well, that’s my story. That’s what happened. It took a lot of concentration to keep my sanity while riding this.
I can barely hear anything else now. It is just the voices now. Shit, I can barely call them whispers with how loud they are now. The voices come in so many forms, sounding less and less like normal voices. I gotta make them stop somehow. There is something in this house that can make it go away. My dad has a few guns, including a shotgun. That should get it out of my head. Bye everyone
Love,
Ray
****
Lyla tossed the paper aside, angry, hurt, and frustrated all at the same time. What the fuck was he talking about? What was wrong with him? She never thought that about him! Ever! She didn’t even think that any of his other friends or family thought or felt this about him. Whispers? What the fuck was he talking about? Hot tears burned her eyes and began streaming down her cheeks as she gazed at Ray’s empty room. He would never sleep there anymore. He would never hold her in his arms again, never kiss her, never tell her he loved her. And she wouldn’t get to do the same. A sob escaped her throat, and she covered her mouth just as she began to cry uncontrollably. Damn him! That selfish motherfucker. Why didn’t he just tell her? Why didn’t she tell his brother, or his friends, or his family?
The Whispers. That was why? He thought they all hated him. Lyla wanted to scream, to curse him, to tell Ray how much she hated him for leaving her. But she didn’t want to draw attention. Who knows how they would feel about her. Maybe they would whisper too. Just then the door opened. Lyla gasped and wiped her eyes. It was Craig. Ray’s older brother by about three years.
Unlike her, Craig looked like he was holding it together. His eyes were dry, and his face neutral as he sat down next to her. He put his arm around her, and Lyla leaned into him. There was nothing more. Not like what Ray thought. There was just comfort. “I’m sorry,” she said, in between choking sobs. Craig pursed his lips and nodded. “I’m sorry too.” There was some sadness, but not a whole lot of emotion. Craig seemed good at holding it together. From the moment Ray introduced her to him, Lyla got the impression that not much bothered him.
It wasn’t like he was a psychopath. Stoic. That was what Ray called it. Lyla squeezed her eyes shut, and tried to calm herself down, clutching the paper in her hands. His last words….
“What is that?” Craig asked. Lyla opened her eyes and looked at him. “What is what?” “That paper you’re holding.” Lyla swallowed, debating not telling him. He didn’t know about Ray’s letter. He didn’t know about the “whispers”. “It’s a… it’s a… uh… a letter. His letter. Before he…” Craig took the letter out of Lyla’s hands and began reading it. There wasn’t much emotion in Craig’s face, as usual, but Lyla could see Craig’s eyes flicker and even become glassy at some points. Finally, he tossed the letter aside and leaned his head back against the wall.
He closed his eyes, and took a couple of deep breaths before letting out a heavy sigh. “Fucking Ray…” he said softly, “He just couldn’t get out of his own damn head.” Lyla took a shaky breath and wiped her eyes. “Why didn’t he just tell us?” she asked, a hint of anger in her voice. “The whispers,” Craig said, “It probably wouldn’t have mattered.”
Craig cleared his throat and stood up. “Let’s go, you can’t be up here the whole time.” Lyla nodded and stood to her feet, followed by Craig. As she reached downstairs, some of Ray’s friends and family came to talk to her, give her hugs. But as she put up a brave face and held her emotions back, she began hearing things. Things that they all said when they thought she couldn’t hear. This is your fault, bitch. You did this to him. You didn’t help him;you didn’t see the signs. I hope you remain alone for the rest of your life. I hope you won’t see him even in Hell.
They were quiet. But she heard them. The Whispers.

Credit: GhostShogun28