Fear

I wake up to the blaring of sirens down the street, informing the neighborhood of a fire.  Even before I get up, I know the cause of it, and I become ill.  I barely find the strength to get up, but won't let him beat me.  I quickly dash down my street, following the smoke clouds and the sirens.

Within minutes, I approach the crime scene, which is surrounded by reporters, police officers, fire fighters, and throngs of the locals, who give me strange looks, as they always do.  They think that I am somehow connected with all of these disasters.  They are right, but don't exactly know the entire story.  As always, I ignore them and continue on. 

Once I reach the middle of the crowd, where I am completely surrounded by people, I begin my search for him.  I look for anything out of the ordinary.  A smile or wide eyes, that seem a little too white.  And then I find him, at the edge of the crowd.  He has transformed into a housewife, her entire family by her side, staring at the fire in awe and shock.

Her two kids are at the verge of crying while they hug their father's pant legs.  The father tries to be strong, but even he can't hold back his emotions.  They all display their true feelings, as does the housewife, only she is not crying.  She is smiling, one that is so malevolent that I flinch out of fear. 

When my eyes reopen, I find her family gone.  Or so I think.  I make my way through the  crowd, not caring about the cries of hatred towards me.  Once I reach her, she too is gone, and I see the entire family on the asphalt, in a giant pool of blood with each of their throats slit. 

A dark mass with the shape of a human body has replaced the housewife's position.  His whole body is black, but his eyes are white with black pupils.  Once he smiles, I again see white.  This is his most terrifying feature.  When you are in complete darkness, and he appears in the room, you can only see his eyes and his mouth, which is always in the form of a smile.  It freezes you in time, long enough for him to kill you with whatever he can find.

I stare at him, wondering what his next move will be, and then he pulls out the knife.  It is caked in blood, and before I can react, he leaps towards me, with the knife pointed directly at my throat.  I close my eyes and scream like a banshee.

I reopen my eyes and find him to be gone, yet I am still screaming.  Once it recedes, I stare into the faces surrounding me.  Some say hatred, others say confusion, but most say apathy.  They feel sorry for me, and he knows how much I hate that.  I relocate him, laughing hysterically with no one looking at him.  This angers me, and without thinking, I run into the burning building.  Shouts quickly follow, but I ignore them and continue on.  It turns out that the building is an apartment complex.  I don't know what I'm doing until I hear crying close by.  It's a little girl.  Even though I think of how clichéd this is, I still cannot let her burn. 

With surprising strength, I nearly destroy the door leading to the apartment, and quickly locate the girl through the sound of her voice.  I reach what I believe to be her bedroom, and see her jumping on a bed, laughing instead of screaming.  She's singing an unintelligible nursery rime, all the while completely unaware of her burnt surroundings.

I yell at her "You have to get out!  You'll burn!"

She quickly jumps off the bed, her back facing me.  As she turns, I can hear her say "Oh I'll be fine, but what about you?"  When I see her face, I shriek in terror, realizing that she is my greatest enemy.  He has done it again.  Her face is charred, her mouth almost invisible, yet she manages to smile and laugh.  I quickly run in the opposite direction, and go head first into a window.  It shatters and I descend into a pitfall of darkness. 

Then it changes to a beautiful afternoon in my neighborhood.  Kids are outside playing, joggers are passing by, listening to their mp3s, smiling as they go along.  I stare at them, wondering what is going on.  I begin to yell at them.  "What the hell are you people doing?  There is a burning building only two blocks away and you are relaxing?  Playing?  You make me sick.  I hope you all burn in hell!" 

My sudden outburst does nothing to their fun.  They stare for a few seconds and then go back to their mundane activities.  I then turn and see that I'm on the front porch to my house.  I look in the general direction that the fire was in and find nothing.  It was all a dream.  Or is this the dream?

My question is answered within the next few seconds, when the sky is coated in a blood red color.  It begins to rain, and as the precipitation falls, I can see that it too is red.  I soon begin to smell metal and know what this is. I look up at the sky, and it is pouring blood.  It ranges from dark to light, but no matter what, I can still smell metal, and it drives me to insanity. 

I look away from the sky and still see the kids and the joggers.  I try to yell at them to leave, but before I can I am pinned down to the wooden porch.  By now it has gotten a completely new paint job, and it sickens me. 

I try to get up, but all I receive is spastic movements from my arms and legs, as if someone has hammered nails to the outside of my clothes.  I look up and am blinded.  I scream in pain, and with my working eye, I see them.  Little shards of glass or ice, coated in blood. 

With my good eye I keep watch on the wooden floor, waiting for the next shard to drop.  After what feels like hours I figure out that there are two shards every minute, along with the rain.  I can feel them pierce my body, and I soon accept the pain.  I try to let go in order to pass out, but he won't let me.  I defied him by jumping out the window, by getting too close to his "masterpiece."  This is the price I pay.

After hours of torture, almost every inch of my body is covered by a shard.  When I see blood I don't know whether it's mine or the rain.  I finally begin to cry, and notice that it is regular.  I don't know how, I just know it's not blood.  The red sky soon begins to clear along with the rain and the shards.  My wounds disappear, the porch is back to normal and I regain my strength.

Without thinking I run into my house and up the stairs, the tears still there.  I stumble into my room, barely able to contain myself.  I shriek once again, and collapse onto my bed, not knowing if I'm out of the nightmare or not.

I stare out of a window, hoping to see sunlight, a blue sky, and white fluffy clouds.  Instead I see nothing but black that soon turns into a partial face. 

He quickly crashes through the window, a piece of glass piercing my right arm, making me flinch.  He takes advantage of this and glides right next to me, our faces only inches away.

"Dear Molly," he begins to say in a sadistic voice.  "You always try to beat me, yet you forget.  I am in control and always will be.  You should know better."

"No," I say.  "I'll find a way to beat you, no matter what it takes.  You hurt people all around the world with your "little disasters" as you call them.  I will stop you.  You won't exist and I'll finally be accepted."

"You poor thing.  All you want is to be is normal.  You want friends that don't kill massive amounts of people."

"You are far from being my friend!" I yell.

"Whatever you say.  I hate to inform you that every single one of my protégés are exactly like you, and none of them have changed.  I have withstood time itself and not one of them have changed.  Do you now understand how silly and inane it is to become normal when you are involved with me.  It is an effort in futility, but if you must continue trying to be 'normal' go ahead.  I will most certainly enjoy your attempts."

His words cut through me with their honesty and truth.  He is right.  I'll never be able to beat him, nor become normal.  Still, I will never accept defeat, and to make that clear I push him with all my might, and before I know it, we are tumbling out of my bedroom window and onto the ground.  I prepare to face him, but see his body pass through the earth and into the bowels of Hell.

I finally realize what I have to do.  The act is so heinous that I don't think about it anymore.  I just focus on getting it done.

I wake up on the living room couch, staring blankly at a television screen.  The news is on, and the reporters explain the story of a child dying in a local apartment building.  Following that is a story about a triple murder suicide that occurred just three doors down from my house.  I shiver at this and feel a lone tear escape from my eye, cascade down my cheek, and hit the floor below.

I feel a hand caressing my left shoulder, and find it to be my mother's.  She is staring at me, her face completely covered in what I just produced.  "Why do these things keep happening?" she asks in a shaky voice.  "We have done nothing to deserve this, yet we still receive it, as if an omen has fallen upon this planet, cursing it."  My mother speaks with clarity that I have never heard, and wonder if I'm really awake.  I push the thought aside, knowing that he doesn't make me sleep for more than one day.

I continue to say nothing, wanting to take this all in before committing my act.  Then I ask my mother the question that will complete my preparation.  "Is Dad home?" I ask.

"Of course honey, he's upstairs sleeping." she says.  When most people commit heinous acts, they state that they see everything as a blur once they are completed, but I remember every single detail. 

After my mother answered the question, I quickly punched her square in the temple.  She's still conscious, but dizzy.  Before she can come to her senses, I receive a butcher knife in the kitchen.  I come back into the living room and before she can say anything I slit her throat, killing her instantly. 

I then went upstairs and quickly did away with my dad as well.  Now after that, everything is a blur. 

It turns out that Fear was telling the truth.  He has withstood time.  He is Fear.  He is what keeps you up at night, what makes your heart pump at an alarming speed when you see an approaching tornado, or is what makes your eyes widen when you see a car explosion, and everything in between. 

He wasn't right about everything though.  Those "students" he spoke of were potential disciples, and they had all failed him, except for me.  I found out the only way to defeat him.  It was to become him, but that would have to require a hefty sacrifice.  My mother and father seemed to be enough, but nothing happened, so I took it one more step.  The knife seemed so sharp when it first entered my stomach.  And then I started to enjoy the pain.  It consumed me, and then I found happiness.  Happiness at the blood shed, the pain, and the misery that shrouds us all in situations such as these.  Before I knew it, he had disappeared, and I now live in a world of darkness, only accompanied by a large television screen displaying the Earth.  I now know how he did it all.  Just press a button and you arrive anywhere in the world, enabling you to do your job. 

At one time I despised the destruction.  Now it is what keeps me alive, what provides me with joy and glee.  I have found that he made yet another mistake:  disciples.  They only threaten your power, so whenever a potential student comes along, I lay waste to them in the most delicious way. 

I will never lose this kind of power.  I have come to love it.

When I am in the real world, posed as a real person, some ask me if I have found my purpose in life, and if I have one, what is it.  Before they are met with a terrible fate, I answer their questions.  Once they recover from the shock of my answers, they ask "Are you happy with it."  And I have nothing to say but one simple word.  "YES."