The Anxious Thing Inside

by Holly Pratt

Image credit: Hannah Xu on Unsplash

It’s hard to believe my mum when she says that I never had a twin. Because there’s something inside me, buried deep within. It’s like its own person, a sibling of sorts. It’s trying to protect me whilst offering worrying thoughts. Am I being punished for consuming it as it consumes me? That’s the only thing that could make sense, you see. 

It crawls through my insides, of that there’s no doubt. My intestines are its skipping rope, and to my brain it does shout. My stomach is its trampoline, and my ribs are a ladder. And, from time to time, it also plays on my bladder. But more often than not, it perches beside my heart. Kicking at it with force until the panic does start. It ties ribbons around my lungs in a façade of a hug. And brings out nausea, like some sort of stomach bug. 

I hate it. I hate it. But it’s hardly something new. Still, there’s at least one thing I can do. After talking and breathing and all other things, the doctor gave me pills so it would stop tugging on my strings. Each day that I manage to take the pill and swallow, this little creature grows weaker and hollow. It shrivels up until it can kick me no more. Instead, it just lies around, my innards like a floor. 

And it’s now that I realise just how much it controlled. Because ever since it shrunk, everything has grown cold. I’m numb in a way that’s so unfamiliar, my emotions so distant like that of a killer. But I don’t want it back, try as I might. Because even if it’s made it so I can’t cry in the night, at least I am free of the racket of fear. The one that made everything impossible to hear. 

Now it only comes back when those pills I forget. Fueled with vicious vengeance, it thinks it must get. And it batters me down, but I batter it back. With the swallow of a pill, it all fades to black. 

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Holly Pratt

Holly Pratt is a UK-based writer with a BA in Creative Writing and History. Unwilling to settle in any one genre, her work tends to explore queerness, weird horror, mental health, fantastical worlds, or some combination of the four. They've been previously published in Swim Press and Carmina Magazine; they have an upcoming publication in Free Verse Revolution.