SCARY STUFF

I wanted to write something really scary for you for halloween night, but I ran out of time, and, to be honest, I also ran out of ideas. Well, any that hadn't already been done far better than I could have done them, anyway.

Fear, you see, despite being a healthy way of reminding us to get ourselves away from our predators, is also one of the most sickly, sweet and devious of the mind's tricks that it can play on us.

We might think that we're struggling to write a few original words, or trying to recollect where the idea that we thought we'd thought of was when we first read about it, but all the time the fear is whispering into our subconscious, suggesting that this is perhaps the first sign that we are losing our mind, that the slow drip-drip of decay is tearing at our memories and our abilities and peeling away at the very heart of us, slowly shredding our notions of what is, in fact, us.

Is it disease, sickness, or old age tapping at the door to claim us...?

You could, of course, argue that the world is currently scary enough without anyone choosing to add anything to what it is already up to. You could, after all, be just walking to your car, or putting out the milk, and find that there's a bag being put over your head to whisk you away to a fate worse than, but not necessarily excluding, death.

Slowly... Painfully... Wretchedly...

Those children that are rat-a-tat-tatting on the front door may not be children at all...

Are they, in fact, far more terrifying dark demons in human form bearing the most malicious of intentions...?

The sinister, faceless terrors that have no name but which we all know are really there if you're unlucky enough to run into one at a moment when you are at your most vulnerable...

Are the strange glowing lanterns, and the mild-mannered extortions just a ruse, a disguise worn along with the horror masks to lull us into a false sense of security before the claw hammer fells us...?

Still, if you're reading this alone, in a dark house, late at night, and you've just had the slight sensation of a draught which you think has just wafted across the back of your neck, causing you to suddenly shiver for no real reason that you can think of, or something has just made the surface of your drink ripple unexpectedly, just remember that the unknowable shocking hordes of the "them" are in the house with you right now, lurking in the darkest corners of the shifting shadows, and when you go to take a sip of that wine, or that coffee, or that hot chocolate, they are just below the surface and waiting to pounce, just as they'll crawl all over you the minute you shut your eyes and try to get off to sleep.

You can convince yourself that it's all just in your imagination, that there's nothing lurking just underneath the surface waiting to leap out at you... and you might even be right...

If you're lucky...

Otherwise... otherwise...

Those strange noises, those odd, unexpected creaks and groans, and that unsettling sense that there's somebody upstairs... they're all true, and they're all going to get you, and there's nothing that you can do about it other than hide under the blankets and hope that they're not really there and, if they are, that they'll not notice you shivering and trembling under there, hopelessly pleading silently that they'll just go away and leave you alone...

But when they rip back the covers and look you right in the eye... You'll know...

You'll just know...

You'll be looking right into the face of your very own demon, the one you made for yourself.

Goodnight, sleep tight, and remember that the bugs will bite.