I

have been aware that there is something living in me for many years. I share, unwittingly, what life I have been given with this non-being. I feel that every waking hour of mine is spent thinking of its hold on me, wondering how to rid myself of it. I cannot say whether there was ever a time that I was free of it. I have learned to mark the passage of time by its development within me and to remember the years by its advances. It regularly shifts into new positions, becoming more comfortable with parts that were previously mine and inviolate. But it never abandons an area; it travels farther into me, simultaneously maintaining its hold and reaching into me more deeply. Yet there are some days when I think that it has not grown at all, that I have simply become more aware of it and its unnatural bulk hiding from my consciousness. But one thing is certain: it has grown more sophisticated. Its techniques of camouflage are more specialized, more precise than before. As my capacity to understand it grows, its complexity increases. As my perceptions sharpen, its form and nature mutate, escaping my pursuit.

I have not always been at war with myself. When I was a child, I actually drew pleasure from the thing: my own personal playmate. Together, we went on many adventures and flights of imagination. We governed outlandish cities and played as if we had super human abilities. Other children - typical children - were jealous of our relationship and they begged to be a part of the worlds we created and abandoned, but I guarded the images and scenarios that the thing whispered to me and was secretly astonished by their detail. With its help, I fabricated wild amusements, and I soon became an indispensable member of my childhood community. At school, it helped to select the proper words and write stories that engaged adults and classmates alike.

All of the attention I received as a result of my collaborations drew me entirely into the ephemeral realm of the intellect. I had no use whatever for the outside and viewed the sporting events that so fascinated my father as absurd folly. I felt the exhilaration that accompanies the power of creation and was respected by all who witnessed me wielding it. I lived with the continuous fear that it would one day stop supporting me.

I spent nearly all of my time in imagination, following the lead of my invisible guide. For most of my peers, these make believe journeys I led were just interesting recreations; but the thing within allowed me to think of little else. When my companions outgrew fantasy, it was unseemly for a boy of my age to play alone; the channel for my creativity and my only means of expression were forbidden by the rules of my bourgeois society. As a result, I became introverted and given to violent rages. The slightest provocation incited my acerbic temper. My family attributed my vulgar conduct to natural childish behavior. How was I to explain that living within me was an active being capable of expressing foreign, unaccountable thoughts that were, of late, becoming uncontrollable?

The thing provoked my fits by clouding my mind, impeding my understanding, frustrating me to fury. It laughed when I received punishment, and it grew strength from my anger and confusion. I was consumed by the idea that I was divided, that a sinister twin had developed within me, furious that it was forced to live within the shell of its own brother; a living being, deranged by its incarceration and unleashing its frustration upon its prison.

I was not entirely powerless against the abuses of the thing. When I went without sleep, its chatter became nonsensical and harmless. I fancied that I felt it starving when I went without food so I changed my eating habits to punish it when it obstructed my academic performance.

During my school years, the thing within had become compliant. I believed at the time that the righteousness of my pursuits prevented it from dominating my mind, only to realize that it was, for whatever reason, just inactive; it was lying dormant, waiting to launch its final, greatest assault. As I grew physically, the thing within me matured. It was no longer a plaything or guardian angel. I deduced that the thing sharing my life was an incorporeal being that was drawn to a living soul and was trapped within; an evil being, in fact, that talked to me and talked through me. It has tried to free itself, and I am the victim of its efforts. It has grown weary of tormenting me and it now wants to return to its home.

Or so I then believed. My delusions of possession were simply additional extensions of my imagination. I know now that it is no wayward spirit or evil demon sent to torture me. My life has been a paradigm of mediocrity, so why would a being span space or time to interfere with me? No, this is no simple case of possession, for if it were, I would have used my family's religious influence to obtain a pack of priests, ready with their arcane ceremonies, to exorcise this devil from me and end my terrible ordeal altogether. This thing is more sinister, its implications far more dire.

Somehow I have created Another. I can feel its struggles within, and while it was initially amusing, helpful, and at times bothersome, as a man, now I am now paying the price. I have something in me that is at once part of me and alien. I have no evidence of its origins or of similar cases. But a lack of historic justification does not change facts: I have sensed and I have heard another being residing in me. It murmurs to me, reminding me that I have not beaten it - that I cannot beat it.

I often fear that others can hear the noises it makes, but I am confident that only I understand its jargon. I am aware that it can read my thoughts, that as I develop better modes of psychical defense, it can prepare. Because of this it will continue to elude me. It has become demented at the thought that I hold the power of life, that I am the vehicle.

It sometimes requests that I perform abominable acts, but I have always been too strong for it. However, its efforts are unrelenting, and now I find myself growing weaker and more vulnerable to its attacks. Its persistence is unnerving. It never stops. Even when I sleep, it continues to babble, and I dream the horrible images it feeds me.

I have devoted my life to the investigation of this thing. Years of costly and penetrating study have come to no avail. It savors my attempts to best it, and it mocks my many failures. It knows that I try to explore its nature, find its name, make it something definite, tangible, fightable. But its elusiveness is distracting. It flees to remoter parts inside me, and I follow its progression, hoping to find its root. I carefully probe my own interior and find that it knows every dark corner, that it can hide with uncanny, alarming precision. On these excursions, I find alleys of myself that I had never known, and discover that it has been there before me, making that place its province, preventing me from exploring the possibilities of a new location. It guards its territories with ferocity. There exists, in my own body, places where I dare not venture.

It does not seem to care that I am the host and without me it would die. Or maybe death is precisely what the thing wants. Perhaps it is driving me to kill it, an insubstantial thing, in the only way it can die. Its existence is an extension of my own, I must have created it somehow, and perhaps I alone am able to destroy it. Maybe it finds its existence as repulsive as I, and it wants to end the misery of its survival. But I have been unwilling to surrender wholly to it. I continue to fight. Unfortunately, I am the battlefield. After every skirmish, it remains unscathed, but bits of me are forever scarred, changed. Years pass, and these battles become more and more desperate, yet the outcome is the same. To forsake the fight would signal submission and so I must proceed, mauling myself until there is a victor.

Sometimes I dream of being free of it. Without it, I would be perfect. I could live fully. I would be allowed to do what most men can do, without restriction, without thinking. I know that the price of that freedom is my distinction. I wrestle with my individuality and pray for release.