I Am Not Mad

I lied...
I lied and with each lie, I watched as your face broke into an ugly wide grin. I watched your eyes light up in fake happiness as you yourself lied and told me you're glad I couldn't see them again. 
I lied and with each lie, I watched as you so proudly gloated over how right you were. But you're always right, aren't you?
I lied and with each lie, I felt power, golden and pure, coarse through my veins. 
I lied and with each lie, I laughed at your simplicity. At your idiocy...
You imbecile... 
You really thought that they vanished, didn't you? 
You really thought that I could no longer see the way they look at me from the corner of my room? That I could no longer feel their hollow, empty eyes staring right into my wretched soul?
They follow me around everywhere. Like a vice, their claws dig deep into the flesh of my neck.
They feed on my fear, but no one believes me so I lie. 
I lie and I lie and I lie, because if I don't I am mad. If I don't I am no longer deemed worthy to mingle among the sane and I am thrown into a pit of torture. 
You try to blind me. 
You say it is to heal me. 
You say I am sick.
But I am not.
I AM NOT MAD!
You don't believe that and I don't expect you to. You do not see what I see or hear what I hear. You cannot feel them. The shadows... 
At least they look like shadows. 
You cannot see the blood as it drips from their deformed jaws. You cannot see their bodies: Hairless, pitch-black, rotten tree branches curling around each other to form what looks like the body of a man. 
You cannot see any of them. 
But I can. I can feel them in my bones, I can hear their voices in my mind.
They are there, right inside of me and there is nothing I could do to drive them away.
Mother, you have to believe me. I am not mad.