In The Corner

I’ll always remember the first time I saw him. Our first meeting is forever etched into my memory. He just appeared in the darkest corner of my room. A void within the darkness. A man-shaped void. He stood there for God knows how long before I caught a glimpse of him. I saw him and froze. My body froze. Everything froze. Everything but my brain, my mind didn’t freeze. The rest of my body did.

Ossified.

Petrified.

I stared into the darkest corner of my room and saw him standing there. Something prevented me from tearing my eyes away from him. I just stared, helplessly. He seemed to grow bigger. He seemed to grow closer, but he did not move. The man remained static and unchanging. His presence was there.

Just there.

I tried saying something but I couldn’t. Some kind of dark force kept my lips shut. My lips weren’t listening to me. I tried averting my eyes, but I couldn’t. The same vile dark magic that afflicted my lips kept my sight locked in place.

I tried… but I couldn’t…

I was screaming, but nothing came. Not even a whisper. I was silent on the outside, screaming inside my head. I was screaming and begging and I was fighting against my rock-solid body, but it wouldn’t listen.

The void in the corner grew closer, it grew bigger. It was slowly consuming my room. It was slowly devouring reality, replacing it with nothingness.

I felt my skin crawl. I felt myself getting colder. My body was shaking violently, but it wouldn’t move, it wouldn’t utter a sound, it wouldn’t listen to me. The muscles tensed up. My muscles strained themselves, my joints popped and cracked, but I didn’t even move.

I was getting light-headed. Oxygen wasn’t reaching me anymore. Losing track of my breaths. I lost track of everything other than the ever-approaching, all-consuming darkness before me. I could feel rocks forming in my trachea, moving down my airways. They were slowly making their way towards my lungs, their sharp edges poking and cutting my bronchioles.

Breathing turned painful.

Breathing turned agonizing.

My entire body shook, rocking the bed underneath me.

The silence was screeching in my ears.

My voice was roaring inside my skull.

The blackness of the stranger in the room's corner penetrated my eyes. It robbed me of my vision.

It was everything. It was all over the room. The darkness was all over me. The void was inside of me. I could feel it crawling under my skin, like a thousand little needles stabbing me from within, desperately trying to escape my anatomy. The void crawled deeper and deeper inside of me until it reached my heart and wrapped itself around it like a string. It tightened itself around my heart until I felt like I was going to explode. My stomach twisted and turned as my guts knotted themselves up.

The void reached my brain, forcing every pain receptor in my body to fire off at once. I felt like I was being torn apart, piece by piece, cell by cell. A pounding sensation that drove itself deeper and deeper into my psyche. Further and further into my mental mazes, until I could no longer feel anything but the void's heinous assault on my mind and neurons. My back spasmed if a lightning bolt had struck my spinal column.  I wanted to die as my meninges were pelted with a rain of unforgiving violence.

The pain was so awful it cannot be described by mere human words.

I couldn’t breathe.

All there ever was is fear.

I was a prisoner in my cranium, tortured by a demented phobia of nothingness.

It felt like I had spent an eternity in this frozen state. Screaming and bashing inside my head, until I finally regained control of my body and I let out a scream. So loud was my scream that I lost my voice. After my scream, the darkness, the void, the cold, and the pounding in my skull - they were all gone.

I was back in existence again.

I was back in reality again.

I was back in my room again.

I was there, looking around me frantically, trying to make sense of what just happened.

Desperately twisting my head from side to side, darting my eyes all over. My thoughts were still hazy when I found myself  staring at the dark corner of the room once again.

He was there again, that man-shaped void. He was there again. Standing there. Glaring at me with his nothing-colored eyes. Smiling that bleak smile of his. I froze again, the claws of fear groping my form all over again. I was trying to scream again, but nothing but whispers came out.

My head started spinning again, breathing became labored, and my stomach expelled its contents on the floor between my feet.

The void in the darkest corner was still there.

He is always there and I am always terrorized by speculations of what he might do to me next time.