Scary Stories I Tell Myself in the Dark
(Attribution) I've lived a life that has provided me with a near-endless supply of anxiety-induced, paranoid, cinematic, catastrophic nightmares. The Dead Man's Hour is typically when this happens, waking up in a state of sleep paralysis -- or possession by a Dybbuk . Because of course . Scenes of madness, of improbable (if not impossible) tragedy. Unspeakable but, apparently, not unthinkable. Grotesque evil filling the folds of my grey matter like sewage water until I feel as if I'm drowning. I tell myself scary stories of loved ones dying, loved ones violated, sudden illnesses, protracted injustices, years of good people eating shit in sufferance while the avaricious spend long lives of cruel bigotry and blissful ignorance. They rotate and repeat, varying the cast of characters, but playing the same soundtrack of horror. I imagine myself fighting back, a desperate gesture of a futility, and then falling... falling... until the closing dark suffocates me and