Bailey's face haunts the edges of my vision. The smile lines on her cheeks run deeper than the valleys of my dreams, spinning across my mind's eye in a frenzy as her laughter echoes throughout my entire being. I want to laugh too, but I am frozen in time. Without her.

Pain spirals down my back, but it's muffled, as though through a screen. Detached. My head feels bound in cloth. It wouldn't be uncomfortable but for the fact it renders me unable to hear anything but my mind, ticking away like an impending bomb, and leaving me feeling open and vulnerable to attack from all fronts.

I find myself lying in a room on my back, limbs spread. Four blank walls and a bare floor. No windows or doors. No visible light source, but a dim glow throughout. The corners are shaped with shadows, curving in on themselves and dancing timeless duets of dark paradoxical beauty. Colours and strung-out letters play in the air, some shooting about and skidding against the ceiling like comets in space. Others spin and spiral together, caught in an endless game of tag like little children at the park. Each shape seems to hold an aura; a feel. A memory. Each one holds a familiar face, a familiar scene. Things of my past, bubbling about in my head.

And then, lurking in the shadows, are the darker shapes; devoid of colour and that playful feeling, they cling to the walls and sprawl over one another, movements sluggish and clogging up the edges of my thoughts. These are the ones that hurt, sucking my blood and leeching the laughter from the others, until sometimes the days become so overrun with darkness I cannot move.

A violet bubble swims just above my body, and I watch as it brushes by my cheek, a momentary vivid view of my living room overtaking my senses, before disappearing once more as the shape moves on, taking with it the familiar scent of home.

Seeing the world like this is surreal. My head feels fuzzy, like someone stuffed it with cotton wool. I have the sense of pins and needles, and of my body, but I am unable to move or make a noise, or even properly feel my limbs, my skin. I'm there, but not there; here, but not here. I am everywhere and nowhere all at once. It's like I've transitioned to the passenger seat of my own life, and I have no clue who is holding the steering wheel anymore. Maybe it's been ripped completely off.

How has this happened? I try to reach for the answer, sifting through memories, watching as the coloured shapes scatter across the room, whirring round and round like a hurricane. But despite the obvious activity taking place in my mind, I draw a blank. My frantic scavenging only brings me darkness, the room snapping from my vision as quickly as it came. I lay in the darkness for an eternity.

The smell of freshly baked bread is the first thing I become sensitive to. My mum's; she's cooking in the kitchen back home, and the smell has drawn me and my brother, Will downstairs. Three years older than me, he has the beginnings of a beard on his chiselled jaw, brown stubble that somehow suits the wind-swept look he carries most of the time. Definitely the looker of the family. Behind him fifteen year old me trails, lanky form with shoulders hunched and hands shoved deep into the pocket of my favourite dark blue hoodie. I still have that somewhere.

I stare at younger me as he enters the kitchen, eyes locked onto his face. His jaw is rounder, less well-defined, and his eyes sparkle in a way they haven't in a long while. His mouth is frowning, but the occasional twitch upwards of his lip betrays to me the smile he is hiding. How typical of me- an expression I held quite consistently as a teenager. There is a smile on my mum's face as she hears our footsteps. She always knew how to make us come running.

I watch, hypnotised as mum takes the bread from our rusting oven, that old pair of flowery oven mitts covering her hands and half her arm they're so huge. She places it on a wonky cooling rack that wobbles at the extra weight. She steadies it with one hand, the other depositing the empty tray into a sink of pre-prepared cold water. Her hand goes to her hip, and she turns to face us, leaning back against the counter with a mischievous expression on her face.

"Ah, so you boys are able to leave your rooms without dropping dead. For a moment there, I was worried." Her eyes flash with internal laughter neither my own nor my brother's face share, though I would be laughing now if I could.

My brother rolls his eyes, fetching a bread knife from the rack to hand to our mother. Younger me grabs a pot of strawberry jam, a butter knife and some plates. I watch my mother take the first cut into the fresh bread, trying not to let my mouth water too much.

"Can you put the knife in the dishwasher, please, Will?"

"Sure." He turns with the bread knife in his right hand.

And then I am doubled over in pain, tears rolling down my cheeks as my brother stabs me in the chest. I stare down at the knife in shock, then I look back up at him with wide and watering eyes. The eyes of a child. He is nowhere to be found. The kitchen disintegrates around me as my blood falls to the floor around the driving edges of the blade buried deep in my chest.

His voice is familiar. His voice is unfamiliar. I was hearing it for the millionth time and yet hearing it like the first. It has been too long since I last saw him, we have grown too far apart. It has been too long.

I shove the memory away with clenched fists, squeezing my eyes shut against the pain. I really need some kind of warning before a shock like that. Blood seeps from the wound down my front, staining my already mud-streaked shirt and creating a hot, sticky patch I can feel through the fibres, even those well away from the original injury. I clench my teeth against the pain, jaw tight. I cannot stop the flow, just as I cannot stop these tears. It's all such a mess.

I let my body slump against the dusty floor in surrender to the agony, bleeding out onto the rough wood floorboards. My blood seeps into the grain, coating my mind in a thick layer of metallic red haze, until I am breathing it in. I choke, violently lurching forwards as my hands simultaneously spring to my throat. Acidic vomit is drawn up from my stomach. I retch again and again, trying to rid myself of even my guts themselves. It does not work. I am left with a raw throat, and my entire body aches. I can still taste it in my mouth. A moan escapes my lips.

My hair hangs around my face like an oily, tangled mop. The ends trail in the dirt that layers the floor, accumulating more grime amongst the darkened curls. I am unrecognisable. I press my nails into the backs of my hands, hoping to find some solace in the familiar gesture. I only succeed in bringing myself more pain. The salt from my tears runs into the breakages I make in my skin. It stings.

I lay on the floor crying tears that should have run out long ago, the floorboards around me darkening as I shed the life from my veins.