The demons. They had resurfaced. He thought the recovery was working… He thought he had made progress. And there they were. Clawing. Craving. Consuming.
They had been after him for years, like children chasing an ice cream truck down a never ending road, their exhausted legs never beginning to ache. They had been torturing him for years.
A bump rose from under the carpet, writhing as if in agony. It wasn’t. But that made it seem all the more frightening. The man took a step forward, searching the room. The lights flickered. His pictures on the wall shivered.
Suddenly, the table to his left was knocked by the demon. It began to tip toward him, the lamp sliding the opposite direction. The man paused, frowning, his heart racing to an unfamiliar beat. His glasses reflected the light from the lamp, about to crash. It stopped and stood still, fixed at an angle, the table beneath it at another.
The man wiped beads of sweat from his brow. The demon was attacking more and more forcefully, fighting to be heard from its hiding place. He grabbed a chair and swung it over his head, ready to win. Ready to finally beat the demons.
He took a deep breath. Took another step forward. Any minute now. He was ready to conquer them.
The demon under the rug rolled around, taunting him. The man’s expression changed as he realized what he was up against. His arms began to shake under the weight of the chair, still poised above his head. He bit his lip, a determined look still on face, but the uncertainty creeping through his expression.
His time was running out. Recovery, relapse. Recovery, relapse. That had been his pattern for so long. He didn’t want to relapse anymore.

Two weeks later, the man sat down across from another man, about his own age but much wiser, and began to share his story about how he finally smashed the chair into the demon under the rug. He had stood, contemplating, for far longer than he should have, but he had followed through.
The man across from him sighed deeply and smiled. I’ve been working with you for a long time, and I think the demons might finally be gone, he explained. It was all in your head. You’ve beat the demons inside you. It’s time to say a formal goodbye to the years of self-hate, insecurity, worrying, and nagging. It’s over.
He was a free man.