The Nighttime World

And in that moment I swore I was held by chains And yet, in that moment, there were no chains. No physical chains. I was just entering the nighttime world. The world that exists in the very small crack between reality and dreamscape. And in this world exists the things that never made it all the way into our world.

First came the screams, the shouts, the begging, the cries for help from the souls of the hopeless. All different languages, all different dialects, some I'd never heard. The Nighttime world doesn't discriminate. For a moment, I was merely a visitor in the outlandish realm that held all the creatures that have been hiding from us. All the creations God gave up on. And some he had no hand in making. I prayed I wasn't their prime directive, that somehow they'd pass me up for better prey. Then..they noticed me.

I felt the heat of one thousand flames licking at my skin, trying to gain new ground with each rise and fall. Everything around me was red. The walls, the roof, the floor...everything a shade of bright, glaring red only seen on Hell's walls. And in that moment, I knew what the Nighttime world was. I was no longer in my own world, I was no longer in my room where I controlled what happened, no. I was in their domain. And they now had the control. They came in one by one, shadows of the corrupted deceased, the souls that heaven had no place for. They surrounded me, they closed in with their hollow eyes and evil grins accompanied by misshapen teeth..not quite fangs, but not at all human. They never spoke a word. In that moment, all the screams stopped. All the begs and pleas..they were closed out, these things wanted me isolated in their presence. My breathing stopped. My vision blurred. My heart and brain couldn't work in tandem anymore...the horror was unspeakable. Total silence..while the creatures of the Nighttime world hovered around me..all around me. And in that moment...came the one in charge. He was much larger than the rest, and somehow he commanded much more darkness in his figure than the rest of the shadows put together. He stood at the foot of my bed, all I could see were his piercing white eyes. Then he spoke. Just one solitary word.. "Wake." Suddenly I jolted upright in my bed where I had previously lain. My room was the same, my pictures and my ornaments...all exactly where they had been before this ordeal. No shadows, no screams..nothing. I turned on every light to make sure. I found that only one single thing had changed... The cross I had hanging above my bed...was gone.