The Pretend Darkness

My younger brother told me he was overwhelmed by school stress and had developed depression. I tried to help by encouraging him to seek treatment, drawing from my own experience with the illness.

However, my mother blamed me, accusing me of passing the depression onto him.

She took me to a witch, who locked me in the house. Every day, the witch used willow branches to drive away evil spirits, beating me until my skin was raw, forcing me to drink filthy water, and making me bleed.

"This is the only way to banish the evil and bless your little brother."

After enduring days of torment, my depression worsened, and I chose to end my life.

However, when I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day my brother first confessed his depression.

I looked at my body—whole and unharmed.

This time, I will make them pay for everything I endured.

"Mom, nothing excites me anymore. Every time I'm at school, I just want to jump off the roof."

Hearing those words sent a chill through me. I watched my crying little brother grab our mom's pants as he sat on the floor. That was when it hit me—I was living my life over again.

In my previous life, this was the day when everything started to fall apart.

In my previous life, I had just finished cooking dinner when I heard my brother sobbing as he confessed to the crushing pressure of high school and his thoughts of ending it all.

I had battled depression myself, so without thinking, I shared my own struggle with him.

I told him about my journey to healing, hoping to inspire him to get the help he needed to get better.

However, my mother got it all wrong. She accused me of giving my brother the illness on purpose.

"The Jones family has never had this cursed disease. It must be you, you little troublemaker, envious of your brother, infecting him on purpose!" she screamed, hurling the cruelest words imaginable at me. She even went as far as to torture me with the help of someone as cruel as a witch, until it killed me.

After I died, my spirit stuck around long enough to hear my brother bragging on the phone to a friend. That was when I found out he was faking depression, inspired by a classmate who took a break from school because of it, just to get out of going.

Well, if he had wanted to know what depression was like so badly, he was going to get a real taste of the nightmare I went through in this lifetime.