I am the monster in the dark. The shadow under your bed, the lurking presence beyond the barred door. I am the sickness that lingers in closed air, the footprints that disappear beyond the body they have taken. I am night-terrors, the voice that whispers in your mind that your fears are more than superstition. My voice creeps up your spine, my fingers leave a trail of blood. I am danger, terror, the thrill of near-defeat and the despair when the fight has left you. I am stories and legends and whispers in firelight, never admitted but always felt.
There have been times when I have wished to be more; or perhaps less. But those times have never been, and the days creep longer. Every moment I slip into transforms me further into what I am imagined to be, and I grow tangled in their expectations. Each drop of blood proclaims, “It’s true, it’s true, it’s true.” When does my obedience become truth? When does the path I unwillingly walk seep under my skin, become who I am instead of what I am? Am I too stained by it ever to be washed free?
Is there, after all, an end to forgiveness?
A woman screams and the sound says yes. Yet the way they look at me with hope in their eyes says no, I will change you, this time it will be different, and somehow this difference will erase the years of agony, the empty years. Yet when I swallow those eyes, still proclaiming the hope they see in me, what do I then become?
What am I? And when will it be too late to continue to wonder, to see the hope and think… there are times… when I have wished to be more…
Today’s image comes to you courtesy of Rene Blais. Check out his work on His Facebook Page, and see more about him on Lucid Dreaming’s Contributors Page.