Most days go by without too much thought. You get up, make some coffee, start the car, and go to work. The weekend comes and, if you're so lucky, you're free to lay back, have some fun, probably spend that paycheck. You start the week over again and so on. There are 24 hours in a day, ever day, last time you checked. It's a long ride - life- and the road is not always pretty. We surely experience hiccups. There might be times when you are driving on a four-lane highway, somewhere far from home, and the car shuts off. Sometimes the person that finally restored our faith in romance and gave us hope stops responding to our messages. What I'm saying is, we all got the shit end of the stick at some point.
It is also true, however, that some people experienced more of that end of the stick than others. Undoubtedly, we live in an age where we are living for longer than ever. While there is much time to be filled with love, meaning, a career, and fulfillment, there also leaves much room for, well, bad things.
See, I hate to use the word "bad". It's generic and basic, but I really just mean it here as a generalization. The reason being that everyone has their own idea of a "bad" experience. Whether it be due to humiliation, unfairness, or flat-out fear, the memory is tied to negative emotions. Studies have shown that, unfortunately, negative experience can be felt more strongly and for a longer time than a positive. We are our experiences. No matter how resilient and functioning you may be, no matter how much time has gone by since, we all have that thing we went through that scares the living shit out of us.
When the sun leaves the sky and the moon comes out and dusk falls, it comes out for a lot of us. It's deep in your mind, for sure, as you've naturally attempted to forget. There have been times where you thought you've done just that. But then you awake out of nightmare in a cold sweat. That's what it is, really: your nightmares, a bully's taunts, shadows that seem to move through the dead trees as you drive on a dark and unfamiliar road. It's pure darkness.
Darkness. I think that's why the nighttime is associated with strange and spooky happenings. You can't always see in the dark, and things can hide in it. Fear of darkness is pretty universal, despite that it is literally merely the absence of light. Basic chemistry. Our perception of color is produced by the reflection of light off of objects around us. Even though we know that the darkness itself can't hurt us, we have our dark places, where our worst fears and most negative thoughts live. Darkness is a good description of what I saw and heard that August, but a better word is blackness.
We can't always prevent what happens to us, but here's a bit of advice you might want to heed - don't take the overnight flight if you can help it.
Who says the past can't hurt you?
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Shadow Effect
HorrorI would like to begin this tale as a short story. I had posted the very first draft on another platform, which got deleted for violation of strict content guidelines. This would be the early version of the story in its entirety. If anyone is readin...