Those Who Wait As Shadows

Curling shadows sat in silent mockery, watching with glinting eyes as I stared back, frozen in their haunting gaze.  I'm suffocating in the thickest blanket and my sobs are lost in the sea of laughing shadows.

Here, in this world of dark imagination, every fear springs to life, haunting me in their horrible ways.  I try to escape them.  I close my eyes, but I here the creak of a floor board and the sound of the whispering wind winding through the tree branches just outside my window and I know it's them.

I try to call out for those I know who will save me, but somehow it seems my voice is trapped within, as if it too were too afraid to come.  The sound of the clock tick-tocking next to me sends shivers down my spine.  I know it's them, slithering around me, waiting for the chance to pounce.

I know it's them.

I sit back in my bed, older now, seeing the same things I had when I was younger.  I know it's them, the shadows and darkened forms of the things I knew so well, the influences of my foolish fears.  They weren't foolish to me then, and they aren't foolish to me now.  For I know that if I let my imagination drift just far enough, those foolish fears will come back to torture me.

I know it's them.