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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Decent-Technology959 on 2024-10-11 18:09:37+00:00.

When I was nineteen, I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). By that time, the disease had already carved its mark into the skin of my hands, and left the scars along my back. It had marred my shins and knees, and overall left me with a terrible secret. Some things, I fear, are not meant to be shared. I wonder how much of this story will fall into that category. It is worth saying to those of you who complain about the arrangement of pens on your desk, saying “I am so OCD!” take a moment to consider my words.

What I have to relate begins when I was around eight years old. I will leave the sob story out of it for now, and say only that I lived in a neglectful, addicted home, where I (an only child), could do practically anything I wanted. If you’re privy to the matter, I had all of the pre-existing conditions to allow this illness to take hold. My home life was unstructured, unpredictable, and marred by a fear of rare, but imminent violence. Strange men, drugs, alcohol, you get it. 

The disease first appeared to me as a general nervousness creeped into the recesses of bright and early childhood. I was anxious about people in particular. From the time I was able to talk, my mother has recalled hearing me say

“No mommy, say…” followed by whatever it was I was so anxious to hear. This is not a clear indicator of OCD, but it seems to track with the tendencies that followed me to the present. My mother had no way of knowing what drove me to make these odd requests. She thought (I believe) that I was just trying to get what I wanted.  Sometimes she was right. It was the times that I needed her to say “no,” to me, or to say something a second or third time, that she should have caught on. I wasn’t interested in getting things from mommy. I was afraid. This is what differentiates OCD from a general orderliness, or a desire to be “in control.” If mommy didn’t say “yes,” or “no,” at the right time, I was certain that she was going to die.

I want you to let that sink in for a bit. Suspend disbelief just for long enough to form the picture. I had a very vivid imagination. To my little six. seven, eight-year-old mind, if mommy didnt do what I wanted her to do, her face would swell and turn purple. Her eyes would darken and lose focus, and her breath was that gurgling rattle that even a child calls death. The truth is that I had seen her in a state not unlike this more than once due to her drug usage, and that image appeared in my mind every time the desire occurred. I was sure and still am, to be frank, that the consequences for one failure could be the death of someone that I loved. This is what motivated me to drag myself down beneath the earth, and in no figurative way, to experience the hell that was our odd, secret underworld.

OCD is one unlikely element that contributed to this story. Oddly enough, that is the rational part. The other lies in the fact that our little trailer park existed on the outer fringes of what are likely to be countless miles of unexplored tunnels in the Mammoth Cave system. This is where OCD and unfortunate circumstances meet in my life.

Imagine an eight  year old girl, thin and wiry with dirty blonde hair crawling through the woods on her hands and knees. She is humming a song, dragging a naked barbie along with her in her left hand, and pulling back the thick weeds with her other to follow a thin little creek.  I wasn’t concerned about the dirt, nor the germs, nor the messy arrangement of my hair. My jean shorts and t-shirt would be no more stained coming out of these woods than they were going in. That’s when, suddenly, the creek disappears. The melodious trickle of water stops abruptly, leaving my song to the wind as this curious stream drops into a hole in the ground.

The hole was at the base of a hill, and it was only about five feet deep. Three of the walls of that hole were dirt, and the fourth was a stone curtain on the side facing me. The creek flowed discretely into an opening just under the stone curtain.  I was a curious child. To me, that cave could have been the entrance to a magical fairy kingdom, or a buried treasure, or any measure of wonderful things. It was also a gaping mouth at the bottom of a stone face. When I crawled to it, I realized it was breathing. Where I sat, legs crossed and Barbie in my lap, I could feel air being sucked into the hole.

Something about it unnerved me. It was the same feeling you get when you look into a storm drain, like even entertaining the thought could drag you in. I don’t exactly remember what happened next, but only that I left in a hurry. Either my mother called me, or I heard something, but nonetheless I scrambled out of that hole and ran the way back home. This is where the memory kindof picks back up. I was lying in bed, and it hit me. I had left my barbie in that hole in the woods. To a normal child, this would be a problem, and perhaps even a big one. They might cry or become anxious. Not me. 

I knew, as if it were the verdict of a judge, that if I did not go and get my barbie, my mother was going to die. This is strange even for me. My OCD doesn’t usually work this way. Usually its compelling me towards a task that is right in front of me. Challenge plus consequence equals compulsion. This was more like a sense of unrightness. Something was missing, it needed to be replaced, and now. I knew what I had to do, and I knew why I was going to do it, so that tracks, but something about it calling me out into those woods just doesn’t make sense even to me. 

So, little me and my pajamas made my way to the trailer door, stopping only when I saw the moonlight through the crack of the blinds. My mother’s room was just down the hall. I could check on her, and go to bed for a bit. Standing there, my hand idly on the door handle, I pictured myself returning to her room once, twice, three times. I knew she would be fine. I also believed she wouldn’t be. I knew she would be okay in the morning. I also believed from the bottom of my heart that she would be dead right now unless I went. I hope this is as confusing for you as it has been for me.

You’re reading this, so that means I went. The path was not hard to find. Once I reached the creek, it was just a matter of following it to the hole. I should mention the pale street light outside of our trailer. It was bright and ugly, but I  thought to myself that it would be a good way to get home if I got lost out there. It was the first of a few odd things which just so happened to save my life that night. The woods were much larger, and much noisier now than they ever were during the day. I thought for sure that I had passed the hole, stopping to turn back at least twice. Anyone who grew up in or around wilderness has felt this effect. The woods stretch at night.

The hole snuck up on me. I had stopped for a third time, sure I needed to turn back now, when I realized that I was standing at its edge. The thing was much wider, much deeper to me now than it had been just hours before. I lowered myself in, and felt around for Barbie. To my dismay, Barbie wasn’t there. I searched once, twice, again. The more I fumbled around, the more vivid the image became. Her face was pale, slightly purple around the eyes and lips. Her eyes were shut this time, filled with shadow. Her mouth was slightly open, and from her lips a gurgling, rattling breath escaped her. It was her last. 

That is when I felt the air sucking into the mouth of that stone face again. My stomach twisted at the realization. This thing had sucked Barbie in. I was sure of it. And even more sure was I that I had to go in and get her. The deterministic thought was so forceful that it served to alleviate some of my fear. When I approached the opening, crawling on my belly to see, the fear returned in full. It was black. There was no way that I would see there. Thankfully, I had come prepared. In my back pocket, I had brought my Cinderella flashlight. 

Cinderella’s crown was semi transparent plastic, and I remember changing its AA battery only once from the time I was four. Now, she shined just brightly enough for me to see the four or five foot drop to the cave floor. I was a very skinny child, and the opening to the cave was just large enough for me to slide through. Here is the next odd thing which saved my life: I slid in feet first on my belly. The upper lip of the opening caught my shirt, and caused me to brace with my elbow. The lower lip carved a fairly deep cut under my right elbow, and it pissed blood. I remember landing on the floor of the cave and just squatting there, crying and bleeding until I convinced myself to look around.

No Barbie. That was for sure. The cave went on far beyond the reach of Cinderella’s light. I was crouched in a little room with two openings. To my left, the stream turned and trickled down further into the earth. To my right, the room slanted down like an attic, leaving a sliver of a tunnel in the back right of it. I shined my light around once more, making as sure as I could that I wasn’t leaving Barbie behind, and I prepared myself to go home. 

This is my last coherent memory of that night. I’m sure that may be unsatisfying to you. I spent much of my teen-age years hamming the story up for people. A man would come up from the cave, or a demon, or maybe once or twice I explained it as a giant spider. Either way, I spent so much of my life explai…

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