The Darkness

Prologue

I've never liked the darkness.

I remember when I was 10, and how I thought that monsters lived in the darkness, ready to chop me into pieces and eat me if I dared even close my eyes for a second, and my fears only grew worse and worse with every night I couldn't sleep out of fear that they would snatch me from under the bed and take me down with them.

I would tell my parents about it, but they wouldn't listen. They just thought it was a normal childhood fear, and whenever I woke them up about a noise coming from my closet, they would just tell me to go back to sleep. But I couldn't. I would stay awake for the next few hours, flashlight in hand, waiting for my clock to hit 6 AM and for the sun to slowly start pouring in as I finally fell asleep- until an hour later when my parents would wake me up.

This triggered a sort of insomnia that prevented me from sleeping at all, even after my fear of monsters became more and more irrational to me, and even my dad had to admit that it wasn't healthy, so they took me to something they called 'sleep therapy' that was supposed to cure my insomnia, but it didn't really work. At last, the doctor suggested sleep medication, and out of sheer desperation, my parents accepted.

It helped for the first few nights, but soon things started going out of control. I started seeing shadows in the corner of my room, but whenever I turned over to look at it, it disappeared, only to return in my peripheral vision a few seconds later. There were also sounds- groaning, whispering, mumbling, all of which felt like they were coming from something right next to my ear. 

The worst part were the nightmares. I would always have the same nightmare that I was in a small black room, laying down on the only piece of furniture in the room, a bed. A voice would whisper into my ears, before something would snatch my legs and pull me under the bed, slowly dragging me away until I couldn't see the light of the room anymore, and in the darkness, I could hear the sounds of my bones snapping and twisting in inhumane ways as my arms would melt away into the void. 

12 nights in a row, I tried to scream, but all that came out was a screech of pain and suffering. 12 nights in a row, I felt the bones in my ankle pierce through the skin. 12 nights in a row, I saw nothing but the darkness. 

And you know what the worst part was? That every morning, I would wake up as if none of this had happened, even though it had felt too real to be a dream, and that every night I knew that if I fell asleep, it would happen again. So, unbeknownst to my mom and dead, I stopped taking the medication. It stopped the dreams, sure, but once again I couldn't sleep.

So, even as I sit in this vast, empty void with the sounds of inhuman screams echoing around me, I feel glad that I have a flashlight with me to chase away the monsters.