I ran.

Ran faster than I've ever run before.

Just ran.
I wasn't sure what I was running from,
I just knew it was bad.

Worse than I had ever seen before,
worse than you could possibly ever imagine.

Through the woods I went,
weaving through tree after tree.
I needed to get out of this dark place,
I needed to get out now.

Yet the trees kept coming,
outlined by the light of the full moon.
But then,
the trees were no longer trees.

I realized they were people.
Running with me,
pushing me along.

All the people and things I had ever been scared of-
when I was a kid, when I was older, now.

That man that scared me so bad when I was eight.

The monsters I had invented, under my bed.

The girl who I had seen cut herself,
the blood still dripping from her arm.

They all kept looking at me,
their eyes haunted me.
Their eyes.
Full of nothing but emptiness.

I looked around, terrified,
but they kept coming.
Running past me,
pushing me along.

And then,
with a sudden shudder of horror,
I realized something.
Something which stopped me dead in my tracks.

I was running the wrong way.

I was running towards the thing
that frightens me the most.

Above everything else,
the most powerful thing in my life.
But it was more than that,
with this thing.

It was full of fury,
full of love,
full of hate,
full of everything,
ready to scream,
scream to the world.

I didn't want to face that thing,
not now, not in a million years.
I panicked,
tried to turn and run away from it all.
Run into the mist,
that fog behind me.
Away from this creepy forest,
from all my fears.

Yet I couldn't.
They kept pushing me along,
closer and closer to the thing I fear the most.
I looked into their haunted eyes,
all of them empty yet so full.

Then all of the sudden,
I was alone again.
These fleeting images were no more;
it was just me and the trees.

But then, I started to turn,
and I knew it was there.
I kept turning and saw the outline
of that thing that scares me most.
I looked through the mist as it cleared,
ready to scream.
I didn't want to see it,
see it as it really was.

See the wrath of it,
the terror of it.
Yet something kept me turning towards it.

And then I looked.

There it was,
looking at me with the pain in its eyes.
I saw it clearer than anything else.
I was so terrified as I tried turning to run.
I could feel my legs trying to move,
trying to run as fast as possible.
But they weren't actually moving.
I was frozen in place, staring into its eyes.



Staring at myself.