The hallucinations come. Each step I take I can feel the invasion. Like an infection, it spreads. The coldness is an agony worse than any horror I have ever felt before. It is not so much the shivers, the chills, but the scattering madness of the darkness within. I can feel the pull and I know it will not be long. No. Not long at all.

Arms held wide my fingers stretch. It is playing with my mind. The darkness. It hovers over me like a wayward soul. Teasing. Taunting. Covering the eyes blind. Things unseen that can never mend the mind.

A total meltdown of emotional imagery. Last night was the beginning. Last night was the breaking point. Dare I go through it again? Hahahaha, go through it again? It is never going to end.

Last night the darkness came. No. Really. I was there. I saw it. It crept in as the village slept cozy in their beds. It is not an ordinary darkness. Nor an inky blackness. It is indescribable. I could say it was a blindness for neither moon nor stars gave light. Nothing. A vast emptiness.

It crawled like a night thief slowly devouring everything in sight. Once it has you it will not release the hold it has on you. It does not cover you then bypass. Oh, no. It gathers you in its murkiness, drowning in its shadows.

I scream, but I can not hear it. Yet I can. Does that make any sense? I cannot hear my own scream, but I can hear the echo as it follows the Shadow Beast. What else can it be called? There is no other name that would do justice, yet Shadow beast seems so tame for the destructive beast that lurks within its domain.

My mouth will form words, but the shadows in the fog steal them. No one can touch. No one can hear. Just a loud silence. Wait. A loud silence? How is that possible? Perhaps it is just the thump, thump of my heart. The beat catches the rhythm of the voices. Oh yes. There they are. Playing havoc with my mind.

I am surrounded. I cannot break free. Everywhere. Everywhere. I scream with as much passion and strength that I am allowed. It does not work. The voices only strengthen. They are causing much chaos and confusion.

I can feel the warmth of he tears as they slowly ease down my cheek. I feel…loneliness? Sadness? No. Something more. Hurt. Oh, how I hurt. It is not pain as the cut of a knife, but a heartbroken plea for help.

I need someone. HELP. PLEASE HELP. But no one can. No one can hear me for the Shadow beast has taken them. He has devoured them along with the whole village. I am the last one. I am the only one left to fight the beast within…but I cannot. How can I defeat this thing?

How can I survive with no one else to help?

If I retreat maybe he will go away and leave me be. Maybe he will release the village.

Backward I step. Easy…Easy now. He is still. The voices have stopped. Does he know what I intend? Another step backward. Another and another and RUN. Who said that? I do not know, and I had no time to find out for I began to run.

There was no light. Pitch black. It was as if the blindness struck. I tried to open my eyes, but I knew. I knew they were already open.

I could hear his thunderous roar. The boom drowning out the hundreds of other voices. I realized no matter how far or how fast I ran, I could not outrun the shadows creation. I was not gaining. My breath came in gasps and though I was tired from the run I had not moved.

I must give up. My strength has seeped into the darkness giving it more power. I stop. I sit, then I scream. There is nowhere to sit. I am falling into a deep, dark, abyss. Nothing. There is no longer nothing to hold me. I fall, and I fall, and I fall.

© Cynthia Clark