Moonlight drapes my room tonight like the ancient dust found in every old and abandoned house you enter, filling every crack, every crevice with gloom. I try and drift, for just a second but my heart drops and I'm sadly awakened again by my own delusions and perils of the night. For when I close my eyes, I see a manner of things that frighten me and my fleeting hopes of sleep are diminished. Thus the forlorn story of my insomnia repeats itself yet another night.
Amidst the eerie stillness of the evening, something mysterious jolted violently against my wall splitting the silence in two. It appeared with a thunderous thud at the end of the room that rattled my bones to the marrow. Startled, I awakened with a single heartbeat and gasping for air. In horror I perceived a lone and tall figure convulsing wildly in a strip of pale moonlight that carpeted the floor. A solitary shape of no defined earthly nature stood twitching at the very end of my bed, watching me as I stared back. Quaking, I contemplated my fate as it whispered indecipherably, putting its arm out as if to reach me.
So many nights I had heard its ramblings of insanity, so many times I had wished for death to greet me in its wake and once again, there it stood; a shadowy devil from the depths of hades staring down into my worthless soul. “Who’s there!?” I uttered, as my heart palpitated rapidly only to be replied by the silence of the night, “Hear me foul creature of the night, be gone or thou shall feel God’s wrath! Be gone dreaded beast back to the depths of hell with you!” As I spoke, it hovered nearer and nearer, its fiery glare pierced my soul as it tilted its gaze. The daemon stopped abruptly as I whispered “Amen.” An immense howl escaped the creature as it dissipated into a black cloud of evil laughter that echoed in the deepest chasms of my consciousness.
In a mixed sense of relief and revulsion I staggered out of the warm protection of my covers and beheld the mirror across my chamber. Just to check if I was still whole and among the living.
I was whole and so was my executioner.