THE MONSTER INSIDE OF ME

"wake up" - Nightmare Mingi

It's a chilly night as you walk home from a friends house. You watched a movie together with some wine and snacks and just had a good time. But you didn't drink too much to not be able to walk home by yourself. You're lucky that she lives only a few blocks from you so it's no problem to just walk home. You cross the street and head for an alley which is a quick shortcut to your street. You enter the quiet alley which gives back an echo of every single step. Walking through this alley, you slowly get a strange feeling, like somebody's watching you when all of a sudden, you imagine to hear some weird quiet whisper in what sounds like a language you never heard before. Slowly you stop and turn around to look behind you but you can't see anything. Did you maybe drink more than you thought? But it sounds so real and it gets even a little louder. Chills run down your spine and your heart starts racing, but you can't move. Your body feels so heavy and you can't keep your eyes open. You try so hard to do something, to move or keep your eyelids open but suddenly, everything gets dark and all you see is some weird dense mist and something that looks like ashes and burnt pieces of paper flying around. What is happening?! Your heart must be racing like hell but you can't hear or feel it anymore. It's just you in this weird dark space and these whispers that suddenly stop. You look around, you breathe fast and the fear is already crawling through every nerve in your body. Are you dreaming? Did you fall asleep on your friends couch? You walk a few steps, turn around but there is nothing but darkness. Then suddenly your hear some noises. A high pitched beep which almost makes your brain feel numb. You cover your ears with your hands and bend over but it's already in your head. You squeeze your eyes and more and more noises come together and pictures start popping up like a slideshow. You see pictures of fire, a house burning down. You hear people screaming in fear, in agony. The pain you can almost feel through their screams is undescribable. Closing your eyes doesn't even help. You can't escape these scenarios. You see pictures of inkblot tests that look like infected surgery wounds. Maggots crawling in them, digging into the rotting flesh. You can hear the disgusting smacking sound and they just give you goosebumps. You just want to scream but you can't. The scenarios change so fast and sometimes it's like the slideshow got stuck and a single picture would repeat itself over and over again. You see people sitting on a bed, all wasted and drastically slimmed down. Sitting in a room with a high ceiling and it looks like an old asylum. Some of these people are banging their heads against the wall, leaving marks of blood, skin and flesh on the crumbling cement. The room is full of fieces and you can almost taste the rust of these old metal beds. The sound of crying, screaming and whimpering won't leave your head, it almost hurts and makes you wanting to throw up. You want to rip your own hair off, want to rip your skin from your flesh as you can feel the vibrations in your bones. You hear children laughing and singing and suddenly stand in room full of mannequins, surrounding you and staring at you. You turn a few times and everytime you blink, the mannquins seem to come closer when suddenly, the lights are flickering and the dolls are starting to cry blood, accompanied by loud screaming. Everything just pounds inside of your head, giving you the feeling of your skull almost bursting, exploding. You see yourelf getting strangled by a bunch of snakes with multiple heads and bloody red eyes, you winding on an operating table, trying to get these monsters off of you while you're screaming your heart and your soul out and nurses and doctors just standing around, watching you. You see things from your past you tried to forget about your whole life. The pain still feels the same. All you want to do is just run but you can't, no matter how fast, how far you run, all of this keeps haunting you. Tears are running down your face and you place your hand on your chest, grab your shirt and pull as if you're trying to get this heavy pain off your chest. More and more sounds come together, you can't even tell the source anymore and they get louder and louder, deafening when suddenly, everything stops and you're back in this dark space with that mist and those flying ashes. You hear your own heavy breathing and sobbing and inbetween, you hear footsteps coming up to you. Turning your head, you see a tall man walking in your direction. You break down on your knees and just cry, begging for your life. "Please, I don't want to-" "Sshhh..." You look up to this man that is now standing right infront of you and looking down to you. He is wearing all dark and his hands are in the pockets of his pants. His dark hair is slicked back and his eyes seem to cut you into pieces. You just look at each other and you already see yourself dying tonight. Suddenly, this man kneels down infront of you and tilts his head a little, looking at your face when he lifts one hand to wipe away your tears with his thumb. Your heart is a racing mess and you pant internally in total panic but you don't even dare to move away. He then licks his thumb, looking deeply into your eyes, tasting the saltiness of your fear and agony and gets up again. The left corner of his mouth lifts a little. "Wake up." he quietly says with a dark voice and it gives you the chills when he suddenly just disappears in a cloud of black smoke. Everything fades really quickly and as you come back to reality, you find yourself lying on the ground of the alley, paralyzed from the panic and the fear, crying like you never cried before. You can't move a single muscle and you still feel the fear crawling through your body, holding you in it's claws tightly. It will probably take a few minutes before your mind and your body come back together. But until then, your quiet whimpers just fade into the silence of this night...