It’s Always Been Behind Me

I’ve always been in some state of fear.

For as long as I can remember – in childhood and yes, even now in adulthood – I’ve sensed something just around the corner, in the dark, watching. Waiting. I can never put my finger on it. That vague sense of not being alone, even when we are.

As a kid, it waited in every basement in every house. Didn’t matter whose. The something had melded with the ether or transcended physics – become metaphysical – to be below me in whatever abode I was in.

It waited just behind the trees beyond my view in the woods. In the backseat of the car. Watching from the dark sky. Taking the form of a deer, how they seem to look through the soul, somehow able to decipher our secrets. Tear someone apart, layer by layer.

We all have a fear, lifelong or perhaps temporary, locked within a certain chapter that’s now closed. I’ve been asked before where I get my story ideas from, the inspiration. I wouldn’t call it inspiration, rather a haunting reality that’s just beyond my reach.

In the dark.

Watching.

Waiting.