Author's Game Entries

*Task Five: Paranoia/QF

(A/N: This wasn't originally a song task at all, it was more of a free-reign-ish task with loose guidelines. As pointed out by another author who spotted the song in my entry, this entry is greatly influenced by the song Control by Hasley.)

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      Alone.

He couldn't do it, stay with the others that is, he just couldn't do it. They're all insane. The ones leading the group don't even want to help, they're marching the others into their graves, all for their own benefit. And the ones just following them blindly, well, how can they be considered any more sane?

All it took was a little whispered excuse and he was able to slip away, backtrack into the night and leave them all behind. Nicola looks back now, but they're already gone, and he can't hear the sound of their obnoxious chattering anymore, nor is the bobbing lights from their phones visible. Nicola is utterly alone.

And this doesn't scare him, not really. He's not scared of being alone anymore, it's what he may face while alone that scares him. He's standing still in the center of a dark clearing, the light of the ferris wheel nowhere in sight, and the nearest tent not even within sprinting distance. To him, everything in the dark seems alive. The blackness is awake with shadows and monsters, flitting just beyond his vision. Too close for him to see.

The night feels like an entity around him, pressing against him as if trying to suffocate him, and through it he can feel what seems like the gazes of others upon him. He's not the only one looking around here, but who else is with him he can't tell. He knows they're here, just behind him or two meters ahead; he can't tell, but they're here. Their gaze is hard pressed against him and chilling, like spiders crawling over the back of his neck. Nicola feels the fear building up in his heart like a burning ember, threatening to sear a hole into him and stop his heart's beating.

He has to move, standing still here is driving him insane.

Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, Nicola starts to trudge forward, to who knows where but forward none the less. He doesn't feel the gaze leave him though. In the darkness, Nicola is hyperaware of everything around him, even more than he usually is. He can hear the rustle of the grass in the faint wind, and can hear the night creatures at concert. Cicadas and crickets, owls and tiny little creatures scurrying through the underbrush near by, they all fill the night with sounds. Even though he can't see them in the light of the waning moon, half hidden by dark clouds, he still knows they're there because of this.

Likewise, he knows that something else is here as well. A faint sound of footsteps on top of his own make it clear; they're either here, or Nicola is just paranoid, and he's imagining it. And that would almost be worse, if he's imagining it.... Imagination can be truly terrifying.

As a journalist of sorts, Nicola's done his fair share of creative writing, and he's become well acquainted with the demons that hide inside his mind. Demons like anxiety, addiction, self-hate, and many other emotions that can easily lead to depression. But those aren't the worst, there are also the irrational but forever-there fiends, the ones that elicit fear. The ones are always there in the dark; ones that tear him apart every time he leaves the closet open before turning off the light, or when he forgets to check under his bed before falling asleep. Ones that beg him to write about them, so that they'll never die out when he's dead.

These are the villains he most fears, the ones that keep him awake till the the first shreds of morning shine through his curtains, the ones that never leave him alone. He's not alone, not really. Not ever.

Nicola tries to ignore the feeling of their growing presence in the back of his mind the same way he always does; keep walking, keeping his head down, not looking up. Usually it works. But now, now it's not. He can hear each of his breaths in the suddenly quiet air, hitching in his throat and burning a chill all the way down into his lungs. He can't hear anything but that, that and the sound of his footsteps sinking into the soft ground with a constant squshh, squshh. It's like even the ground is telling him to be quiet.