All I can hear is the sound of my footsteps pounding on the ground as I run down the alley. They’re coming. I can’t see them, the shadows in the mist. I feel them consume the air that I breathe and I can see them creeping along the walls on either side of me. I can’t think, I can’t think, I can’t think…



I wake up, my heart pounding, the moonlight gleaming into my room through the window, creating an eerie sort of darkness. I can see the shadows on my wall. They transform into shapes, figures, silhouettes right before my eyes, but I know they’re not real. Nothing is real.



I pull my covers over my eyes and blink away the images of the shadows. My heart races. I take deep, deep breaths. Slowly, I calm myself enough to fall asleep again, to allow myself entrance to the world of nightmare. I fall back into the world of terror.



Morning comes, slowly but surely. I can’t stand the thought of being asleep any longer, so at 5:30 am, I get up and take a shower. I wash my dreams and antipathy out of my hair and cry as the warm water hits my face. These dreams happen every night now. I can’t tell anyone. People would say I’m crazy. Crazier now if they knew I see them while awake, too.



I close my eyes and try to forget, but they have been engraved on my brain, scratched into my soul. It’s like they are shadows of my past, my deepest fears in one ghostly being, and a dark mist of fright looking to absorb my very heart.



Outside of my shower curtain, one of them stands. I can see him through the pale and thinned shower curtain. Fear fills me, but then is suddenly accompanied by rage and hate. I pull back the shower curtain and nothing.



Nothing is there.



These figures haunt me, tainting my memories. They feed on the feeling of happiness, like coldness in winter steals away the sun.



At school, I can’t feel anything. My fingertips are ice-numb. People are blurs and the shadows fill the empty voids. My teachers talk and talk, not seeing. Behind them stands the ghost of their soul. It’s like everyone is assigned a shadow- a guardian angel or a tormentor? I guess it depends on how much worth or value you have. For me, I think I have thousands of shadows. They lurk in the corners and they hide under my bed. They eat at my toes and invade into my brain, my fantasies, and my dreams. I’ve forgotten how to live. I’m not allowed to dream.



I walk past people in the hallways, people I used to know. It’s like I’m swimming upstream a river, yet there are no obstructions. No one can see me. I’m invisible. My friends don’t even talk to me anymore. What would I say? Nothing. There is nothing anymore. Nothing but darkness.







Maybe I’m already dead. My skin is grey. My hair is lifeless and my eyes have lost all color.



I don’t think I’m already dead. I’d remember something like that, right?



Why can’t anyone else see them?




At my house, my parents pay me no mind. They just have their placid, blank faces. They’re like dolls: plastic, boring, and lifeless. Maybe it’s just me, but I think they’re sad.



I look into the mirror, and I’ve been sucked dry. There is nothing in my features but wear and erosion. It’s like I’m slowly deteriorating, fading away. I think the shadows are messing with my mind.



I look into the mirror, and behind me one stands. His head is tilted and I can feel his eyes on me. I don’t turn around, because I know he won’t be there.



The room starts to tremble, and my heart picks up pace. I stare down at the sink, holding onto the bathroom counter, as if it is a life preserver. I risk a glance up at the mirror and my reflection isn’t doing what my body is doing. It’s standing there; looking over an invisible girl gripping onto the counter like it’s her last hope. That girl is not me. I’m the invisible one, she is just my soul. I want to scream and she smiles wickedly at me. The room turns dark and her eyes turn black, then bright blue. She turns into a vision of the girl I used to be; pretty, elegant, unafraid. She starts laughing; a crystal laugh like diamonds and her mouth gets wider and wider until her jaw is detached from her skull. I look away.



My fearful sobs aren’t heard by anyone. The room collapses and I can’t see my body. I am gone. I drift away, my fears subtle and rational. I float through the walls and I forget what I was there for.



Silence wraps around the seams of my world, tearing at the golden ground, sinking its fangs into my porcelain skin and ripping me to shreds and pushing me down down down. I can’t breathe, but I am not real. My skin is gone-a mist left over like the smoke from a blown out flame. The air is stifling and horrid and all I can see is a darkness so powerful, it knocks the life out of me. I am limp and helpless and my body is not whole. Solid turned to vapor, an act of science or God?
Please, please. I realize now what is happening. Please. Don’t make me turn into one of them.