I Let the Devil In

Tale of a possession like no other (mine).

May 08, 2025

Antonio da Corregio, Jupiter and Io.

“His imagination is once again incited, excited and suddenly again a new world, a new enchanting life with its glistening vistas flashes before him. A new dream is new happiness. A new dose of exquisite, voluptuous poison! Oh, what does a real life have to offer him!”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights and Other Stories

"These violent delights have violent ends."

― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

I look up and meet the metallic gaze of Jesus, his head bent towards me from his cross. I feel the hard headboard against the top of my painfully pulsing skull. Hanging from the wall above, the crucifix gleams vaguely in the dark room, the light of a screen tracing Christ’s gaunt limbs with a silver thread. There is no pity in those forged eyes, only judgment and superiority. He stares down at me, his arms welded to the cross, indifferent to the suffering that consumes me, deaf to my pleas. A hiccup of anger shakes me on the bed, and between my teeth I curse the one who watches me from up there, the one to whom I owe my submission, the one who takes me at face value but grimaces resentfully as soon as I express a need, an anguish. My soul has cowered so much before his contemptuous eye that the walls tremble at the corner of my eyes, and in the gloom seems to close in on me. A spasm twists me and I vomit, a burning jet that does not release me. I hear a broken voice, and realize it is mine. I can’t take it anymore. Help me, please help me. The nausea has been going on for almost an hour now, so strong that it is pinning me to the mattress and making me doze off. I have not fully fallen asleep, but my face and limbs seem covered in lead. Apart from mine, pathetic, pitiful, and vulnerable, there is no other voice, but I feel a presence. Something is waiting in the dark, at a safe distance from the crucifix. It does not observe me with eyes, and it does not study my suffering body. No, its incorporeal vision pierces every cell, ruthlessly visits the inside of my heart, of my skull, with a benevolence that gives me goosebumps. I know this thing has been around longer than tonight, but I have just accepted its presence. It remains silent, but takes up space between the closing walls, weighing on my ribcage. It is not trying to get in, it is waiting for me to invite it in, with the patience of an angel and the smile of a demon. A last effort to open the eyelids. The face of Christ and his contempt. The dim light becomes intolerable. I desire full darkness. I long for something to join me and cradle me. My lips part weakly to pronounce the call I know has been budding in my soul these last three weeks, sown in my thoughts to open a door I refused to open in myself. The door where I had locked away the monster's influence. The invitation echoes in the air. It is done.

No turning back, I let the Devil in.

How did it all begin? I was just a child. A child most often caught between four walls, walls that were already closing in as soon as the monster's voice echoed through the house. A voice more terrifying than any other, slashing flesh and spirit through concrete blocks and cloud-printed wallpaper. A voice that formed a duet with another voice, pleading and crying. Her voice. The one who gave me life, the one who sang me to sleep, the one who told me stories full of wonders that enchanted my little soul. The one I loved not out of factory parameters, but out of admiration. And with each passing day, through the walls, I could feel the monster hurting her, crumpling her like a ball of paper between his fists, gradually scraping away everything I admired from inside her, with the fangs of his destructive voice. The words I heard in their respective throats I understood only too well, and in my too-young brain I could already feel the fatality of death. I spent my nights preparing for it, making sense of it, without succeeding. The world around me succumbed to it, and I wandered like a specter at funerals that further reduced the space around me. In moments of desperation, I would run out of the house and into the garden. But where could I take refuge? I had nowhere to run, so I ran inside my head. All I had to do was to use a magic portal: the swing at the back of the house, far from their eyes. The oscillation of the strings produced an illusion of freedom, of escape, and my imagination welcomed me like a protective cocoon, filled with close friendships, stimulating worlds, and joyful, fulfilling adventures. I was a child; wasn't that what children do? I was convinced that those I met in the school playground also had such intense games, imaginary friends, and above all, that this would dissipate when I became a teenager.

The swing broke under my weight. I landed on a cushion in front of the cassette and CD player, with an AM/FM radio recorder, headphones over my ears. Music was the most important discovery of my life. Some people danced to it, sang to it. As for me, it ran through my spinal cord at full power, delivering an explosion of light and pleasure at the back of my skull. My torso swaying like a metronome, my mouth chanting, I reopened the portal I had discovered in my childhood. But the world I was entering had changed. Fantasy was dead, it was just a parallel version of the real world in which I was evolving. A version without the monster, which still thundered in my ears and in my nerves. A version without the bullies who had sensed my vulnerability and attacked with their words. Like all teenagers who did not fit in, those who had tasted the bile of a Christian education and did not know what to do with their anger, I turned to the hymns of the outliers, the ones that made the fallen angels dance. A rebel with a causality.

The uniform I assumed allowed me to find lateral avenues of socialization, where music served as a temporary cement, first in the schoolyard then online. I soon realized that I got on better with people with mental struggles, but I never found the courage to tell them about mine, impressed by their official DMV status, the depiction of their issues in a cult movie by a glamorous actor, and the support they received from the mainstream culture. This thing inside me that was taking up so much space in my life could not get past the tenuous door of my lips, firstly because no one asked me how I felt, and secondly because of the shame it brought. I was scared no one would take me seriously, like, oh you're tripping on music and that's it? No, that was not just it. For me, music works like drugs, with some genres and artists more potent than others; an addiction with no financial cost and no dealer, with the paraphernalia available in my head 24 hours a day. Music helps me to get high, which in my case means into daydreams. While in them, I pace, move my arms randomly, laugh and talk alone, my face twitches, I do not see days passing, and once I crossed a road without paying attention to the cars. I retreat inside my head each time things get too stressful, and I am in agony when I come back to reality. This is not a walk in the park, it is going through hell and having the demons calling you by your name like you belong. Not really a conversation to have with a new friend, is it?

I remember standing in the center of a capital city one day, watching people move around me with ease, and feeling like I was inside a glass bubble, wondering, so, is this how people live? However, I was not the antithesis of a living person, I passionately wanted to live, besotted with reality, as if it were a tremendously fascinating piece of art. Through the filter of my imagination, I sometimes came across father figures, brothers, male best friends, fewer female besties, lots of supportive coworkers, and, regularly, the one. Daydreaming about real people had its perks; they always ended up disappointing me, and then I just had to break up with the idea of them. But if they did nothing wrong, I had to invent it, with the risk that my brain would trick me with wholesome redemption arcs. Out of sight, out of mind worked harder for someone like me. The character enticingly begged me to come back, tempting me again. A whole conversation in the desert, with the most handsome devil, who has as many faces as possible.

I blamed it on a fantasy of a savior coming to rescue me from the monster who has started to use his voice against me, on unrequited love and the broken heart that went with it, on an intimacy issue inherited from the violence I had witnessed as a child. Unable to make meaningful connections, I drifted away, the oceanic currents of my imagination taking me back to the reefs of the chimeras I had created for myself. The warmth of a skin that does not exist, the laughs of a thousand jokes I never heard from real mouths, the unconditional support that you should provide to yourself directly but conceal behind a fictional face.

When you say I love you to the void for too long, you start to hear the deformed echo of your voice and think that someone talks back.

And then my life took a bad turn. I had taken a gamble on life, betting everything on a project that would get me out of the glass bubble for good. When I ran out of money, spare rooms to squat in, and options, I had to come home. Back in this house, where not a speck of dust was not tainted with personal and professional failure, with negative thoughts, and PTSD. The glass bubble got thicker, and reality and its inhabitants so remote.

I cannot pinpoint exactly how I came to listen to Laetitia's music. My brain had already encountered her songs, in their rather mainstream rock style, and had probably noticed the importance she gave to the bass guitar. I had found myself in a situation that forced me to re-explore myself, to find ways out, so I guess the inventory had also dusted off some old stored-up aspirations. As it happens, I have a bass guitar in my soul. I have played countless basslines in my mind, headphones on my head, fingers in the void. With Laetitia, it started with one song, then another, and all of a sudden, this musician's entire repertoire took center stage in my brain. No bassline was more intoxicating than hers, they seemed made for me. Laetitia’s music played way too well with my inner demons, a real-life red kryptonite, heroine injected directly to my brain and soul: supersonically addictive, rapture-inducing, and yet subtly destructive. I could almost feel the weight of the instrument, the vibration of the strings through my body creating a spinal bliss. I played Laetitia’s songs so vividly my back hurt, as that of a true bassist would after long hours of live concerts. And precisely, there I was, on stage. I, who had never been to a concert before, who shunned gatherings and crowds, who had never imagined myself setting foot in an arena, I leapt like a will-o'-the-wisp alongside the singer and her musicians, amid the pyrotechnic effects, moving confidently downstage towards a captivated audience. The electric joy I felt evaporated as soon as the headphones were put back on the shelf, when I resumed my material tasks or was called to dinner. I should have known better: the worst the life, the possibility of happiness the more dangerous.

One day, suddenly, as I was anchored in reality, a joyful, confident “Hi!” sounded behind me. There she was, not just a perceived presence beside me on some fictional concert stage, no, right in front of me, her sparkling gaze studying me with interest, an amused smile filling her elfin face: Laetitia. The air around me quivered with static, and I realized I was no longer in my house, but in a musical instrument store. Bewildered, I did not know how to react. All the details were so sharp, I could almost smell the scents; I held a bass in my hands, as if to try it out. Tactfully, Laetitia pointed at it. “The Tobias Growler IV, excellent choice. You know, I'm a bass player first and foremost, and it's always important to encourage young musicians. Are you planning to buy it?” My brain was still clinging to reality, and it knew I did not have the budget. But the scenario was on, created by my neural connections to comfort me. Laetitia was not only going to buy me my first bass, but also teach me how to play it, and take me into her band.

In the days that followed, the scene was replayed, perfected, the dialogue rehearsed until it seemed right, certain details were changed, her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, my hoodie became a leather jacket, the light intensified, we were going to chat on a café terrace, and so on. Other scenes were added, in the tour bus, backstage, in a studio, in other spaces linked to Laetitia. But that was not what mattered. At a time when my morale was at an all-time low, isolated, and ignored by my true social relations, I became the focus of interest for someone who ticked all the right boxes for me. What mattered were the long, heartfelt conversations, the glances of complicity during rehearsals, the friendliness, the protective older sibling vibe.

Wherever I went, she walked by my side.

This was not my first fictional obsession, but a part of me knew it went too fast. My disheartening personal situation certainly explained it, but it remained a novel situation, with unprecedented symptoms. My brain stopped seeing any point in sleeping, preferring to extrapolate on my secret life. My projects, which up to now had served as a survival capsule to keep me afloat, no longer held my concentration. Words vaporized long before my lips, my memory became vacant. I moved through the material world haggard, emotionally exhausted by the drop tower from the carnival my life had become, sometimes high, sometimes brutalized by my personal misery. So stunned that I was unaware of the conflict at work between two forces for the acquisition of my soul.

What I was not was delusional. I knew fair well that I was not truly part of the band, I was just a fan with a wild imagination. Fan. I hate the word, the concept. It makes me uncomfortable, forced to face my weaknesses. Plus, I was too far removed from my high school years to relate to the fandom, which, moreover, had the menacing allure of a fan army. Normally reluctant to take an interest in popular musicians, the media circus surrounding Laetitia unsettled me. I did not dissociate enough to ignore the vaguely ominous marketing of the label, which did not match the unassuming artsy vibes of the band leader. Management exploited the aesthetics of cults to such an extent, and played so much on the intimacy with fans, that the whole mechanism mimicked a genuine cult with an almost sardonic complacency. The fans, referred to as Idolators, worshipped Laetitia. You did not go to a concert but to a Communion. The management assumed the role of the Coven. The band formed the Inner Ring. One morning I received a newsletter I did not remember subscribing to, congratulating me on belonging to that Inner Ring. The email was real. It shook me. Their branding and my madness were joining hands to twirl demonically.

I also noticed the signs, as if a protective force were trying to divert me from my path of self-destruction. The wi-fi kept disappearing, Spotify stopped working, and finally my headphones broke, putting me in a state of unparalleled distress. Too hooked up, or should I say, consumed, I ignored these warnings. I also had voluntarily turned a blind eye to her growing frustration, she who had given me her life, sacrificed her life, always in the shadow of the monster. The latter still weighed every second on our lives. I felt the tension and despair inside the house but I did not know how to handle them, to soothe them, and it increased my angst, pulling me back toward fiction. Slyly, Laetitia’s branding had colored my mindset; the lure of a glorified darkness outweighed my actual bleakness. Delusions of grandeur, herd elation, and neural gratification are all dangerous traps for an addict’s mind. You cannot get TOO high. Because the fall is going to get brutal. That evening, my make-believe pride clashed so violently with my defective reality that it led me to a despicable act.

I have called the Devil, I have invited him in, but nothing happens. Suddenly, there is no one in the room, and I am alone and helpless on the bed again. Then everything becomes too violent. The noises. The light. Her voice, exasperated. She cannot take it anymore either. But I am gone. It is too much for my nerves, I have left my body, and what follows seems like a daydream, except this time, it is real. Everything reverses, to my greatest horror. The scene that followed is just insanity. The monster that I had escaped all my life now talking through me, I have become the monster. And there he is, an eldritch presence, on my side, offering an understanding face. An ungodly abomination. Malignant and unnatural. I wake up from this atrocious nightmare, this horrible sleepwalking, with the terrifying realization that it has all been real. Unerasable from memories. Not a scene in my head I could replay, rework, or forget. Unforgivable.

A permanent scar, showing exactly how deep in hell I went.

The shame of daydreaming removed, it induced a greater shame and guilt lodged deep in reality like an inoperable tumor. Instead of attacking my mental issue, I attacked the most important person in my life, I recreated the very act at the source of my psychic break. And I am not allowed to blame it on him, on society, or on the music. I made this decision on my own, I inflicted these things on myself and those I love while being aware of the problem and without doing anything about it. Now, I really needed to come back from there, because I would never be an innocent victim again; I owed it to her, I owed it to me. There is no need for exorcism: there is no Devil, only my brain. For my own sake, I need to put the pieces of my Rubix Cube back in the right order.

I got cold turkey, and every day I fight that uphill battle. I got withdrawal symptoms, headache, dizziness, shaking. I have to evacuate this poison, to mentally scream Vade Retro to the temptations. Because it comes back to reclaim me. Flashes of faces, of smiles, of voices. It feels like a phantom limb sensation, akin to loss. My heart cries out fictional names like a cat being skinned. A whole part of your life disappears, except it was never yours in the first place. I will be 40 year-old this year, but I do not feel them in my soul, for I have spent decades in a dream world rather than in the real one. On my deathbed, what would my daydreams be? Nothing. My reason is right, my brain is wrong. Instead of words of comfort spoken from inside my head by puppets created by random neural connections, I realised that I had the possibility to hear them from real people, that I needed to find these people. So, I hang on. I avoid listening to the music that triggers the daydreams. I am going to stay very far away from any marketing or behaviors detrimental to lonely minds like mine. I remember the burning shame of trauma dumping on a forum that evening. I remember the betrayal I read on the face of the one I hurt. The bruise may have vanished from her cheek, but the guilt still burns in my heart like a mark made with the devil's white-hot branding iron.

Today, I am one week free from maladaptive daydreaming.

I just would like to enjoy the music.

Important note: Maladaptive Daydreaming (also known as MD) is a real and painful mental health issue, a dissociative disorder/compulsive trouble/addiction to daydreaming. This story, loosely inspired by my personal experience, uses the diabolical as poetic license for catharsis rather than demonization. I hope it can raise awareness and show someone who needs it that they are not alone in this (and that there is a way out).

On average, a normal person can daydream up to 16% of a day. A maladaptive daydreamer spends 56% of it immersed in vivid daydreaming. The term Maladaptive Daydreaming was coined by clinical psychology professor Dr. Eli Somer. He defines it as an “extensive fantasy activity that replaces human interaction and/or interferes with academic, interpersonal or professional functioning.” MD currently has no official treatment protocol, and inflicts distress to many individuals around the world. If you think you suffer from this disorder, know someone who might, or simply want to help, you can consult these links:

· The International Consortium for Maladaptive Daydreaming Research

· International Society for Maladaptive Daydreaming

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Saint-Lazare, Writer

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