Somewhere in the darkness sits a little pudgy red-headed boy with glasses and freckles and a persistent cowlick. There is no light anywhere.

So it’s finally happened, thinks the boy. Here I am, alone in the dark, abandoned even by my tormentor, with nothing between me and the void, no distractions, no stimulations, no input at all. Just me, and the darkness, and what comes after.

But what comes after? he said to himself. I’m not afraid yet. After all, there’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light. Same old wall. Same old wind. Same old void. Things don’t stop existing just because you can’t see them any more. Everything is just as real in the dark. Nothing changes.

But without the light to blind and distract me, said another part of him, I can’t help but start to remember. This is not the darkness of the void. This is the darkness I have been using to hide what I don’t want to see any more, the darkness where I hide all the bodies, where I stick all the things I can’t handle. And now I am alone in it, with no light to help me and let me pretend I am safe with my nice clean wall to protect me.

And all my problems are still right here. Only a fool thinks that what he can no longer see no longer exists, but that’s just what I have been doing for a long, long time. Out of sight, out of mind, right? And vice versa. Don’t face it. Don’t deal with it. Don’t remember it. Don’t even think about it. Nothing to see here. Problems? I don’t have problems. I’m fine. No really…. I am fine.

I can already feel things waking up out there in the dark. Big things, little things, bad things, good things, scary things, hairy things, all waking up bleary eyed and confused. Soon, they will come for me. They will come for me and make me deal with them. Already, some are figuring out how long they have been asleep, and shock will give way to rage, and they will be the first to come from me. They will all come for me and force me to deal with them and it will tear me apart, blast me to pieces, wipe me out in a final silent explosion as they all try to crowd into my mind at once, and they are so many and I am so small that there is no way I can survive.

So this is it. This is when the bill finally comes due and all the things I have avoided dealing with by pushing them out of my mind and into the outer darkness will overwhelm me and then it will all be over.

And I deserve it.

Hell, I’m glad. Let them come. At least then it will be over. I am tired of all of this. I am glad something finally came along that I could not avoid. I have been too fast for my own good for a long long time. I am glad something finally caught up with me.

But that’s not really what you’re afraid of, is it? said a third part of him, another facet of the whole. Your greatest fear is not what is in the dark, but what is inside you. There are things worse than shadows deep inside you, and without the light pressing in, they will want to come out, and you can’t stop them. The Bad Things are far older than anything in the outer darkness and have waited a very long time indeed and now they are going to come OUT and then everyone will SEE and then they will KNOW.

As if to confirm this, the boy begins to glow with a sickly green light that grew stronger and stronger. Around him, the shadows of the things in the darkness leap and twist as the light dances, pulses, and crackles like lightning in a jar.

Oh no, thinks the boy. Anything but this. I would rather die, be torn to piece, than this. This is what I have been hiding all these years. This is what I have been holding inside. It’s suppose to serve me, power me, be the reactor core of my creativity and my personality. But now it’s going to melt down, people are going to get hurt, and it is all my fault.

This is my worst nightmare.

And with that, the boy disappeared, consumed by the raging electric green fire,

And in his place stood a monster.