After staring at a laminate telebisyon in the dark, I start to get sleepy. My eyes droop and the feeling of my body in unconsciousness starts to take its toll. Like a trance with my brain buzzing and my mouth hanging slightly open.

I remember that my brother, Claudio, lies on his side diagonally from the television. A marathon of True Blood is on and I had sworn to catch up on the story. Being that the clock strikes 2 in the morning, my body caves in. My eyes flutter closed. Calmly, my head lies against the couch. Soundly, my puso beats to the pendulum inside the father clock. Breathing, so steady, it just brings me deeper under.

Something keeps me from falling asleep. Unsettling paranoia creeps on me and trickles down my spine. I shudder to wake and the clock reads that it’s only been one oras since I dozed off. Times slips when you are unaware; reminiscing in the cozy rest. Something grips my attention, holding it firmly in its unknown grasp. Unsettling paranoia.

It starts to fiercely shake me and now my eyes rise wide. My skin starts to feel like it’s rising off of my bones. I scan the room very aware now. I rest my eyes on the sliding glass door in the corner of the living room. Outside it seems so normal. The darkness, so absent of light, gropes against the trees so the color goes away. Everything is so black. Curiosity gets the best of me and carries my exhausted body to the clear surface of the cold glass. There is no moon in the November night sky. It’s covered sa pamamagitan ng clouds, giving the night no chance of life. My eyes squint, with no helpful use, to see out into the night. It pulls me…with a rope wrapped around my waist. But I hesitate because I fear the unknown. Background noises like the telebisyon and my brother sleeping without a care-without this disturbance annoying the corners of his simple mind- start to fade away.

The leaves ilipat and the blackness stirs. Yellow eyes flash at me, staring at me with nothing but fierceness of the being. I want to go out and talk to this irritating fear. Usually one would want to run away from something that glares deep into your soul with insanity. But I must know what lies on the other side.

My brother awakens and asks what I’m doing. I slide open the door without acknowledging him and a cool breeze whispers in my ear and against my skin. There is a long dirt path that leads into the woods. Taking baby steps, my curiosity leads me on. madami yellow eyes sprinkle the dark trees and the bundles of bushes. They started rising out of nowhere. I’m not sure what’s causing me to keep walking pasulong but with every step I take, my puso grows in cowardice. My palms get sticky with sweat along with an unwelcome wave of warmth flowing through me. It is the dread that makes my stomach turn. That makes my knees wobble. That races my mind and turns my sanity upside down. The yellow eyes seem to burn their way into me. My breathing speeds and I walk faster. The darkness reaches out to me and touches me, trying to get its hold in me. madami yellow eyes come together and I see a sickly shape form around the small yellow orbs.

Large and deformed, the air is thick with the odor of iron.
Almost like blood.
The shapes all take place with the yellow eyes. Growing all around me at intense speeds. My legs get the signal to run so they obey. My long brown hair falls behind me and so does all the hope I had for turning back. They chase me now and I can’t stop. But I do stop because there is a cliff ahead after escaping all these looming trees. From the air, three of the beings land in a hunch in front of me. Growling fills the air and I freeze in a moment of panic. Whatever they were they had long appendages coming from their back and ribs. There is a ulap break in the sky and the moonlight gracefully pours over the land and everything that inhabits it.

I saw it.

They have decomposed skin and those strikingly terrifying yellow eyes. With blood staining their macabre flesh. Ripped apart and allowing the disconfigured Buto so show. The organs flowing naturally out of them but without them acknowledging it. Their faces are the worst part of this horror. Large teeth with a glasgow grin following all the way up the cheeks to their tiny ears. Their tongues hanging down and slobbering all over themselves. Blood and saliva. I clench my heart; it feels like it stopped.

This is like the worst beings to come out of my insane nightmares. Things that only come out of the dark and living proof that true terror does exist. Hissing and moaning and groaning they all surround me. Their stench is too horrid to bear. The earth spins around me and I just accept my fate. Taking in the last feelings of living I look around me and see a break. Everything closes in on me and I spot a large stick on the ground. I pick it up and charge for the trees, whacking a being in the head sending it backwards. With a small sigh of relief I know that it still isn’t over. The things were running after me. Emerging from the abundance of trees, beings with boiled skin and glowing even though they have dead skin. I am only going as fast as my weak legs will let me. Seeing the light from my tahanan ignites a warm reassurance in me, a hope that escaped from me. I stumble and slow tripping at the steps of the sliding glass door. I fumble to open the door and fall into the warm building letting the light embellish around me. I turn with my palms and face pressed against the glass. There was nothing but the haunting black left behind.