Beyond the Darkness

All your life you have heard people tell you that being afraid of the dark was childish. That it was a stupid and irrational fear. But what those people don't know is that there is very much to be afraid of.

As a young man of 17, I have been told by professionals that I suffer from Achluphobia or in other words, fear of the dark. Multiple times I have told family and these professionals that I was never afraid of the dark, but instead some force that laid in wait beyond visibility. I would recall moments in my childhood when an over powering, dark, figure would approach me in my room and I would black out and the next morning I would be covered in bruises with no memory of the night before except for the being. The figure was no bigger than any man I had, at the time, met, but he was far stronger.

Every night I was visited by the figure I would experience traumatic recurring dreams. The dreams usually consisted of me and my loved ones walking through an iron cage maze that was rigged with booby traps. Every so often my perspective would shift from me in first and third person, to a family member being morbidly executed. The one death that never changed was my mothers', she would take the first step into the maze and be immediately skewered by spikes, left to drown and choke on her own blood and slowly bleed out.



Every time I retold my stories I ended being left with no choice but to recant them and "admit" to them being dreams. But I knew that there was a presence lurking in the darkness. It watched me growing up into a tall, strong, and smart young man and has left me for who-knows-why these last few years. But as I lay in my bed I hear the low, struggled, breathing just under me. The probing of unseen eyes penetrating me through the dense blackness of my room. The subtle creaking of floor boards and tapping of hangers in my closet.