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.

Just below the Surface

She stared through the glass into the deep, dark eyes of the sun-colored fish. The fish stared back, watching her with an intensity that penetrated the membrane of her irises and left her feeling naked and vulnerable. A chill rushed through the woman's body as she tried to pry her eyes away from this strange creature. She shifted her gaze slightly and was captivated by the myriad of moving colors circling the tank. They danced around the sun-colored fish with a grace and humility worthy of a queen. The woman stood motionless, mesmerized by the fluidity of movement before her eyes. She knew that not many other people in the room were paying attention to the antics of the aquatic life. Their attention was focused on the bustling activity in the crowded lobby. The food. The wine. The static. There was a time when she reveled in this kind of activity. A time when the noise and fake smiles fueled her with excitement and energy. A time when she would have been too busy to notice anything outside of herself. But that was before she almost lost everything that mattered to her. Now, as she stood in the middle of chaos, all she knew was that she longed for the promise of freedom and serenity offered to her by the hypnotic eyes of the creature behind the glass.