Trickery V

I can't STAND this anymore.

It is two years to the day since I first realized what has been going on, every day becoming worse and worse.

My journal is my only link to sanity.

I am ready to cast aside sanity.

My bed is my ship in an ocean of evil, barely afloat.

I'm drowning.

I must follow them.

The cool waters of the ocean will fill me and grant me.

Trickery IV

Bulbous, sickly yellow eyes.

They adorn every shadow, peek through every crack.

The voices are louder now. Follow! Come! they say, leading the way into terror, down into dank caves of insanity.

I can barely get out of bed in the morning. I leave all the lights burning all day and all night, trying to banish them, banish the darkness from which they spawn.

All night last night, I would sleep, only to be awakened again, paralyzed, their Presence crushing me until exhaustion drove me unconscious again. The fourth time this week, though I get little sleep even when their attentions are elsewhere.

And now it's night again.

Trickery III

My nightmares are getting bolder.

I was walking home from work today—I quit my office job and took a part-time position at the grocery store a few blocks from my apartment so I could come and go in the daylight—and as I put my key into the handle, one jumped from the shadows at me, tiny, pale, hungry eyes boring into my soul. I flinched and crouched, flailing at it, whimpering incoherently.

I swear I have never seen a child so frightened before in my life.

But I think this incident amused them, my nightmares; now, interspersed with their whispers and chattering, I hear a mocking laughter.

Trickery II

The monsters of my subconscious have been ebbing and flowing these past months.

Sometimes they remain invisible to me, gripping me, as before, in that half-conscious state between sleeping and waking, terrifying but passing quickly. Other times, I see them lurking in the shadows as I go about my day. They appear as little imps, or goblins, or demons of some sort, their pale eyes boring into me from inside my desk at work or the angular outline of their twisted bodies skulking in the darkened rooms of my apartment. Sometimes they beckon me to follow them into their dark hideaways, but I ignore them.

It sounds so silly—a grown man, afraid of the dark!—but I know there is something real to it.

And I know that they're growing stronger.

One day I will succumb.

Trickery

Something was calling me. Something sinister.

It was strange to hear the Voice in the Darkness, not hearing with your ears or your mind but with your soul. It was pulling me, dragging me along whether I would or no. But slowly. The entire incident took place over a period of some years, but the calling had been growing inside of me for much, much longer. Decades, perhaps.

It was night when I finally realized what was going on. Yes, I know, it's always nighttime when these things happen. I think that's because, right before we go to sleep, we're most open to suggestion, and pehaps more aware of our subconscious than usual. Anyway, I lay there in my bed, thinking about the day, wondering what this urging was inside of me. And then, I realized that it wasn't coming from inside of me. I awoke from that half-dream state in a panic, but then I couldn't feel it anymore. So I went back to sleep.

When I awoke there was a presence there. I couldn't see it, I couldn't move, but I could feel it sitting, observing, and calling.

What do you want of me? I screamed at it in my mind. Its only response was its call.

And then, panic overtaking me, I fell unconscious.