Myriad Istoria

I Am.

    I know when you come to sleep. I'm right there, after all. I watch you silently everyday at the same time, as you tuck yourself in. All the lights are already off. 

    I simply stand there, watching you, an aura of sightless dreams surrounding you, swirling and pulsing. The cloud of plasmatic gases is brightly lit on most days, but when I get tired of seeing you happy...

    I'm the one that gives you nightmares. 

    Then the cloud turns a murky black, with bits and pieces of white strewn here and there like stars in the night sky.

    Not beautiful, but annoying. Why must there always be something good in something bad? Why must there always be some source of light even in the darkness? Is that how balance is maintained?

    Anyway, back to what happened that day.

    You woke up, panting and sweating from a particularly disturbing nightmare, filled with sounds, but not sights. Nothing to see in your dreams, just like you have nothing to see when you're awake. 

    You can never be brave when I'm around. And you weren't that night, and I knew it. I emerged from the shadows, and you heard me shuffling around. Of course you did.

    You were terrified.

    You weren't able to shout or call me out. Your voice stuck in your throat, fighting to be freed, but your fear held it back.

    I held it back.

    You began to sweat profusely and your face distorted into creases and terror. You faced the wrong direction as I walked up to you, silently and calmly. I laid a hand on your shoulder and let go of your voice. You jumped.

    At last you screamed the deep, scratchy scream of a scared, sleepy youth. Your shaking hands reached out around you and scanned your dark surroundings over and over again. 

    You cannot touch your fears, young man. 

    You may be blind, and you may rely on your hands for your living, but I am not one you can touch and get by.

    How terrified and angry you feel, that you cannot turn on the lights like any one else and make me non-existent. How angry you are at your fear of the darkness -- the never ending darkness. How you shiver and quake, how you tremble as you get out of bed and feel your way to the useless light switch and still turn it on. 

    How your brain struggles to comprehend that the light is a futile attempt.

    You will never understand. As you scan the empty room once again with your outstretched arms and lay down in bed once more, I stand over you.

    Somewhere in the corner of my heart, I feel pity. But mostly, it's a sense of power. 

    And a sense of regret that you aren't able to see the face of your fears.

    But then again, I do not truly feel. 

    I am not living, I am not being.

    I simply am.

    I am your greatest fears.

    I am the one you constantly battle.

    I am the one you take for granted, when you're alone.

    I am the monster under your bed.

- Anonymous