DisruptiveUnlimited

Up.

Up thru the darkness...

seemigly endless

save a pulsating redness

in the distance...

It rises.

Until it reaches that surface...

only a thick skin remaining.

Can you stop it?

Or will you allow it to continue on

until at last

the veil of my heart

and my concience

is broken?

Never.

No, never

quick to anger,

but once having arrived

I will show you it's face.

I will show you it's teeth.

I will show you.

When darkest shines the dysmal day

and winds go carrying past

the direst shreik of hateful  scorn

from lips not meant to last.



Then shall come the bloody beasts

from hell's every last corner

with gnashing teeth and tearing claws

and none are left to mourn her.



They come from sky and some from sea

and some from hence knows where

the demons fly and crawl and squirm

vampires and wolves of were.



And devils too, the witch aflight

the harpy and the dragon

and those who drink the blood of babes

shall raise their grisly flagon.



And they shall join Old Scratch himself

that high and haughty devil

to kill and steal and maim and burn

in bloody joyous revel.



And when their horrid deed is done

when vengance is abated.

when those that I have set them on

have found their life is sated.



This bitter warning I declare:

a similar sensation

will befall all those who dare

correct my punctuation.

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

Ever since I was a child of about 8 years of age I have been able to see them.  Sometimes more than others.  The official diagnoses was a sleep disorder.  The doctor called it "Night Terrors"... and on another occation, "Sleep paralysis hallucinatory disorder"... but I know the truth.  I know that for whatever reason, there is a part of my brain that when activated, lets me see things that are always there, but usually go unseen by normal human eyes...  They would always come in the small hours of the night.  And they knew... they knew I could see them, and they never failed to torture me.  Over the years, I have simply gotten used to the fact that when I wake up in the night and I have that certain "wrong" feeling, that something may indeed be about to scare the bejeesus out of me.  I believe that they have grown a bit bored... I do not react like I used to as a child... no screaming and crying, no running thru the house to the safety of my parents arms.  Now, if I cannot figure out why there is a half rhino half man standing at the foot of my bed, I simply calm myself and turn on the light.  At that point, they are usually gone.
     
     It was a chilly night in autumn that I realized that I had passed this ability on to my son.  Even at the tender age of 2, my son was very intellegent and spoke very eloquently.  I was always a bit more sympathetic than most other parents when my son crawled out of his little bed and crept to the edge of mine and whispered to me that he was scared.  This night was no exception... My wife and I had only just retired and were not yet asleep.  I scooched over to make room for the little fella beside me, but he insisted on laying between us...  Safer there, I guess.  I did my best to comfort him, tickling his tummy and wrestling around a bit and he seemed to settle.  I was about to drift off to sleep when I felt him sit straight up in the bed.  I opened my eyes and noticed that he was staring wide-eyed at the far corner of the room.  I felt him begin to tremble.  I knew something was wrong.
     
     Up to this point, it had already been a very strange day...  I awakened in the morning with a strange sudden fever.  I had felt fine the night before, but now it seemed that the change of the season had finally caught up with me.  My throat was scratchy and my head felt like a helium balloon.  My wife had already left for the day, taking our son with her to grandma's house.  I shuffled down the hall to look for some kind of medication to soothe my aching head.  Finding nothing, I called my job and told them I would not be in today and then called my mother.   I was hoping that she would have some kind of medication I could borrow until I could get to the store.  My wonderful mother, kind lady she is, offered to send home some nyquil when my wife returned to pick up our son.  Now you have to know... my mother is a superstitious woman.   She advised me to go to a doctor and I refused.  I have always despised doctors.  She then reminded me that I recently had, not one, but two uncles that have passed away... She reminded me that in our family and many others members always die in threes.   She said that if I did not want to end up being number 3 then I had darn well better take care of myself.  I promised, and we said our I love you's and ended our call.  The rest of the day was spent drowsing and sniffling and watching daytime tv sprawled out on the couch.  Now in my younger days, a strange precurser to having one of my night terror episodes was the presence of "ghost mice" the day before.  Ghost mice, as I so fondly call them, are just dark blobs that stay just inside periforal vision... but when you turn to see what is moving out of the corner of your eye, they dissapear... this particular day was filled with such occurances.  I felt the same dread of the coming night that I had in the past.  I tried to push it away and chalk it all up to eye boogers, but the feeling stayed with me the remainder of the day.
     
     Now, my son sat staring into a patch of  darkness in the corner of my room, illuminated only by the streetlight outside the window.  Nights later, I would stare at the same spot and find it just as bright as the rest of the room, but this night, not only was the corner in question dark, but it was a profound darkness... hard to explain.  I placed my hand on my little boy's back and asked him what was wrong in hushed tones... He lay down quickly and buried his face in my side... He whispered to me... "Batman is here..."  Now to my young son's mind, there were a lot of characters that he would call batman.  Of course, there was batman himself, me being a nerd, he was firmiliar with the comic book hero.  He would also refer to any cloaked or hooded character in black as batman... he had called darth vader and an image of the grim reaper this in the past.   I wondered what exactly I was up against.  From my bed, I stared hard into the darkness in the corner of the room, and saw only just that... I comforted my son and told him that there was nothing there, but my gut told me that was a lie.   My son squeezed me tightly and I squeezed him right back.  We lay there silently for a long while and his trembling stopped.  I was about to drift into a nyquil induced sleep when he whispered again... "Daddy... Batman said you are number three..."  My eyes flew open and the muscles in my back and neck stiffened involentarily...  My two year old son then reached is tubby little hand up and touched my forehead and spoke again... "Daddy, there is a number three on your forehead..."  This was too much... I was in sheer terror.  I needed that lightswitch.  I tried to rise, and my son refused to let go of me... it seemed he held on with everything he had... He screamed... "DON'T GO DADDY!!  BATMAN SAID HE WOULD TAKE YOU AWAY!! DON'T GO DADDY!!!  I stood up from the bed, taking my hysterical son with me... My wife rose as well... she had been listening the whole time... She added to the panic..."What is he talking about?"   She mercifully flicked the switch that was on her side of the bed... the room was immideatly filled with the harsh glow of the overhead light... And as usual, the room was normal.  No demons or ghouls waited in the corner to drag me away.  After we all calmed down, I explained to my wife about my mothers warning... It was all she could do not to panic.  I wanted to believe that my son had imagined it... I wanted there to be a logical explanation.  I phoned my mother immideatly and asked her if it was a possibility that my little boy had heard her warning to me and was just perhaps repeating it... no such luck.  She said that he had been in another room of the house sound asleep when we had our conversation.  I told her what had happened and she apoligized for even speaking such things and through her sobs, she said over and over that she just wanted me to go to the doctor.  I did my best to comfort my mother, but my own head was swimming.  I had an enescapable feeling of dread.   None of us would sleep that night.
    
      Of course, I am not dead... I was not number three.   My ordeal lasted another week... I could not shake the ominous feeling and my fever would not seem to break. I went to the doctor and took my medication.  My illness was not serious.   I did, in fact, lose yet another uncle later in the month.

Some men aren't looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.