That Which Lurks in the Night

She opens her eyes and is startled by the darkness. Even in the middle of the night she can usually still see the faint stream of light seeping in through the cracks in the blinds. Tonight, there is no light. She strains her ears to search for the familiar sounds that remind her of the life force of the busy street outside her apartment. There is no sound. The panic rises from the depths of her belly as she struggles to piece together the necessary muscles to produce a scream. For a brief second, she has hope that her scream will cut through the stillness and jolt her back to reality. She opens her mouth and engages her stomach muscles, pushing with such force that she can feel the veins in her temples begin to pulsate. Heeeeeeeeelllllllllpppppp Meeeeeeeee! Her hands are balled up into fists and the muscles in her neck are stretched to their limits. "Please, someone hear me," she thinks to herself. She waits to be engulfed by the vibrations of her scream. Waiting. Waiting. Nothing. There is only silence...stillness...silence and stillness. "What is happening to me? Where am I?" These words circle through her mind like a film projector stuck on repeat. Around and around they go, with no outlet to the outside world. She tries to flail her arms and kick her feet but all she feels is heaviness...or maybe nothingness? She has become a prisoner in her own body. She is laying there in the pitch black, incapable of movement, in a vacuum of silence, her mind racing. If she could, she would probably laugh, at what she doesn't know. Maybe the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. Maybe to acknowledge that this must be some kind of psychosomatic joke played on her by the jesters of dreamland. Whatever the reason, laughter seems to cure many things. Just as she is about to close her eyes and relax into the helplessness, she is blinded by the brightest light she has ever seen. Beyond that, she can see nothing.