Creatures Of The Night

          Creatures Of The Night

A shirt draped across the chair would morph into a headless torso, lurking in the corner waiting for the unsuspecting boy to step foot out of bed. But in the morning the demon had gone, and a chair with a shirt draped across it’s back restored in its place. The dark place that rarely got slid shut at night was where the creatures mostly resided. Torso’s dangling from hooks, their legs detached and hanging beside them. Piles of their disheveled morphing heads appeared in the corner of the room. All these were merely shadows with subdued hues of midnight blue, browns and reds. Mostly silhouettes that the darkness beaming through the window shone in through the midnight sky outside. The bodies mostly indiscernible in the intense night’s darkness. A terrified little boys demented imagination transforming inanimate objects into creatures of the night. Terrifying him enough to beg for death.



And when he had the balls to stare at one long enough, they morphed into other beings, into hideous abnormal terrors that lurked in the forefront of his mind.

A pack of cats. His attempt at comfort. He wonders how many of the six family cats he can imprison under his sheet. One, two, three, four. Four cats he successfully brings into his cave and holds hostage under the sheets as he cowers there with them. All five of them are terrified, but not of the same thing. The boy fears the penetrating darkness outside his sanctuary filled with the furry beasts. The furry beasts afraid of the boy within. But they managed to escape his clutches, they always did. Every time. Every single time.



So he knows his only true comfort came as light hid the darkness. Flipping the wall switch would subdue the beasts. But his older brother would always awake with the light, and yell at the boy. So the boy would retreat into the hallway, where he could keep the light on as the rest of his family slumbered in their nearby caves. How long does it take? How many minutes does he have to wait in the hall, sitting at the top of the stairs, petrified in horror of the memories he had when the lights were turned off, for his brother to finally fall back asleep so he could lie back down in bed in hopes of being drifted away in unconsciousness while the light hides the shadows and the creatures that lurk within. Ahh, one more night with the light on. But what about tomorrow, he wonders as he falls asleep for the first time in many nights with his head out from under the covers.



Now that young boy, that innocent young boy sits as an aging man. He sits and wonders what terrors are waiting for his two offspring. What creatures of the night will lurk in their shadowy caves. Already the eldest has been abruptly awakened from his sleep, shrieking out for comfort from the demons within. At such a gentle age, what lurks in his dreams as he sleeps? Being unable to fully comprehend the world around him, being unable to decipher the dialect of his parents, how can he even imagine such horrors? What do two years olds fear in their sleep? So far he sometimes is afraid of darkly images on the tv, and heavy ear piercing music. He does not yet know the things a boy twice his age does. And yet he still has nightmares. He still fears the dark. Is that in innate trait, to fear the dark? To be afraid of the unknown? Because already he has awaken at night without a cause. The weathered man holds him in his arms. With a scowl and furrowed brow the old man knows what really happened. He knows the creatures of the night have visited the boy in his sleep, have invaded the sanctity of their home and frightened the boy. He wonders how bad it will be with the boy. How often they will terrorize him at night, as they did to the man for so many long years when he was but a young boy.

I was born sensitive. When I walk into a room I feel the mood of the people therein. I often take on the moods of people I am around. If a friend is depressed, I become depressed. If my wife is mad, I become mad. If my son is happy, I become happy too. As a child I feared the night like no one ever should. I would run home from friends houses just down the street, constantly checking around me to see what was following, nearly stumbling over my feet in wicked anticipation of what trailed behind me. I would never walk outside the front door alone after dark unless I absolutely had to. And when I did my heart raced. As a boy and all the way through my teenage years I would constantly look behind me as I walked alone, to see what was lurking behind me. As a small kid, I was afraid to sit on a toilet and afraid of lifting the lid because of a horror movie my older brothers had shown me. When someone is made fun of, or physically hurt, or disabled, or feeling down, I always felt sympathetic to their discomfort, though I don’t show it, in fact I often openly express the opposite.

It is a curse and a blessing to be overly sensitive. I know how to communicate with people well, (whether I decide to or not is another story). I know very well how people think, how they relate to one another, how and why they react to each other. But I get my feelings hurt easily. Everything is turned inwards. I second guess my friendships, my relationships, my actions and my words.

As a young man, on occasion when thinking about a future as a grown man with a family. I would think about how I feared having kids. I didn’t want to bring kids into such a horrible world. I didn’t want them to have to suffer the way I have suffered in this life. The physical pain, the mental anguish, the grief, all the things to be afraid of, depression, anger, betrayal. There are so many frightening things we experience as humans. Why would I want to bring a kid into a world of hurt? Of course, our world is not solely for hurting. There are more wonderful and beautiful things in this world than there are bad. But the bad, the bad seems to linger. It festers and boils. The bad always seems to be there, waiting on the edge of happiness to come in and take precedent. Often the good feels like a façade, masking the hurt lurking behind it. And sometimes, the bad can be just so dam bad, that life does not feel worth much. So why the hell would I bring a kid into that world just to have him deal with all the awful things I have dealt with?

If there was ever a time in my life that was worth living, well this would be the time. Why? Why is this the time? Precisely because I have kids. Because of my kids. And because of my wife. One question always on my mind is, what will my kids be like? Will they be a sensitive soul as I am? Will they have terrors that plague their nights for years? Because I can’t bear it if they do. I just could not bear it.