Mind Steps FWG-FB 300 word flash fiction based on the picture below. Psychological Drama- Triggers-Mental Illness

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

My mind steps out into the darkness, a downward path leading nowhere. The light shines just enough so I can see my feet before me. I take each step carefully, counting aloud as I go.

Uno.

Dos.

Tres.

Cuatro.

Wait…. I can’t remember how to say five in Spanish. How odd, I learned those numbers as a child sitting on my mother’s linoleum flooring in front of the television. I think the show was called Sesame Street. 

Mother.

Madre.

My mom blames herself for how my brain works. “I should’ve done this. I should’ve done that… …. Differently.” She says this all the time. I hate it, especially when she sighs after speaking.

I tread this ground alone, with caution, aware my surroundings calculate and sometimes add up against me. Okay, nearly always add against me. I’m not meant to amount to anything as a person. I rarely believe what I’m told but I wholeheartedly believe that…. I’m nothing. NADA!

Father.

Padre.

I can’t keep a father. I’m not son material, sounds kind of funny. People say mother can’t keep a husband. But it’s not her, it’s me. That makes me laugh a little. “It’s not you, it’s me.” How many times have I heard that one.

I keep telling myself to stop thinking but even the occasional self-inflicted punch to the dome doesn’t halt the thoughts.

………My voice echoes down here. I don’t like it. It frightens me. 

“Gerald, dear, are you stuck in that dark place again?” Mother opens my bedroom door without permission a lot. I don’t like that either, I’m a grownup.

“Cinco. That’s it, number five is cinco.” Something always holds me back from taking that fifth step. It’s reality, reality comes with my final move. I don’t like reality.