Hannah Clukies

The Voices Made Me Do It

I was ten years old when the whispers started. At first, they were quiet. Little voices urging me to do little things, like breaking my mother’s dishes or slashing my father’s tires. My parents brought me to the doctor, and she asked me why I would smash my mother’s china. The voices told me to do it, I had said. If I don’t do what they say they scream so loud until my head hurts. She had only smiled at me and told me the voices were only my imagination. She told my parents I only wanted attention. I tried to tell them how the whispers never left, and how they always wanted me to do unimaginably horrible things. They denied me again and again, dismissing the voices as a need to be seen. They didn’t understand how insistent the voices became in the next six months.