You’re mine, Dositheus.

I can’t get away from them. A multitude inside. Legion invites them and they come. Sometimes I don’t even hear myself screaming because the screaming inside me is so loud. I cut myself to remember that I am me. I wail to remember that I have a voice too.

You will never be free of me, Dositheus.

When Legion talks to me it is like death. It is like there is another me in the grave, and he has come to share his thoughts. Legion’s voice is my own, and he tells me where I can go, what I can do. I listen to him because I can’t refuse. Sometimes he controls me, and I disappear. It is not always so. Not when my mother comes to bring me food.

“Dositheus,” she says sadly. “Please eat, Dositheus.” She pushes the plate towards me. The demons inside me retreat for a moment. Legion is calmed by my mother’s presence. I am afraid that if I get too close to her that he will leave and go into her. She pleases him and I am terrified.

Eat, Dositheus. Do as Mother says.

I take the plate, dragging it across the ground with one hand, my eyes never leaving my mother. She smiles at me. I am still her son. She still loves me.

“Will you wear this?” she asks. She offers the tunic to me. It is fresh, never worn. She hold out the linen garment to me, her posture one of earnestness.

I look down my body- naked, scarred, dirty. “I can’t wear it,” I saw. “I’m not clean. It will stain.”

Mother smiles at me, a sigh of relief escaping her that it is me who speaks and not the demons. “I will bathe you,” she says, her eyes expectant, pleading. “Come home with me, and I will help you.”

I eat the food slowly, thinking.

We like it here among the dead. We will stay here, Dositheus.

“No. No. No,” I say. I repeat it too many times. I pull my hair until it begins to rip from my head. I spill the remaining food to the ground. “Let me be. Leave me alone.” The wailing begins and for a moment I don’t understand that it is me who wails.

My mother touches my arm. It shocks me from the screams inside me, the screams I offer. I catch her hand in mine. She has tears in her eyes. I let out a sob. She takes me into her arms like I am a child. I am a child. I am a child. A lost child. She smells like olive oil. She skin of her face as it presses against mine is warm. Her dress is soft. She cradles me until the sobs cease to wrack me.

You will not go with her.

Legion laughs at me. I pull away from my mother violently. I take the plate she brought and I fling it far from me as I scream. I rise from the ground and I scream into the sky. Over and over and over until I am hoarse and exhausted. I don’t know how long it went on. Too long. Too many demons. Too long inside me.

I look for my mother, but she has gone.