Madness of Night

By Richard I. Gargus

            You were late getting out to the lake for Memorial weekend. Your support group insisted on one last meeting before you all headed up to Lake Murry near Ardmore, Oklahoma. Since you were late, and since it was memorial weekend, you and your group found yourselves camping on the north east side of the lake. Only rugged dirt pathways meander there, and some of the vehicles had to be left near the road, and the camping gear moved over to the hardier Jeeps and other ATV's. It was early Saturday morning, and you were all forced to set up tent in the dark, using only headlights, flashlights, and lanterns. Everyone was tired and as soon as the tents were ready, everyone retired to their own cots.

            As you lay down, the flashes begin. Each time you close your eyes, you see a brief flash, like a flash of lightning penetrating your closed eyelids. A flash that is quickly gone, and you open your eyes again anyway, but to total darkness. Nothing really here anyway, and even that is gone by the time you can react. You wonder if it ever occurred at all, or maybe it was just a twitch of a nerve deep inside your brain. But like as acid flash back from the 70's, you later begin to see its content. It comes back at you, fragmented, senseless. And as the pieces come back together, you cant decide if you actually saw this or imagined it, but deep down, you know. No matter how hard you try to deny it, deep down in the pit of your soul, you know it is true.

            The night drags on. Everyone else is asleep and though you want to talk to someone, feeling that somehow, another person to talk to can make it go away. Somehow, they can prove the entire thing is an untruth. You feel silly even considering waking someone with your fears. They are still so unfounded, so nebulous. What would you say in defense of waking someone anyway. "I saw flashes, and I'm afraid now. I am seeing disturbing things. What kind of things? Parts... body parts falling to the ground. Things like contorted faces, wrenched up in pain and in horror."

            "Nightmares!" they would spit at you. "Roll over and go back to sleep." That would be their answer, expelled at you in disgust for having awakened them with such a childish thing. Only it is not childish and you know it. You know that real terror lurks in those images.. stark terror thinly disguised by the slide show like revelations being presented to you. You try to shut out each new image, flickered, then absorbed into your mind.

            The night grows longer as time spirals down to a slow crawl. The seconds tick by at an unendurable pace. Dragging by painfully slowly, as if each one is measuring it's share of your life before carrying it irretrievably into that unknowable place that time heads in after passing us by. What time is it now? Only 3am. And you were expecting the horizon to begin to pinken soon. No, there is only inky blackness, and you try to forcibly see a deep purple coloration. But it is black... black as coal.. black like carbon. Morning is hours away.

            Using a flashlight, you begin to write your thoughts. The sound from your pen on the paper rides high over the night creatures, the crickets, the frogs, the owls. The scratching is like a small animal attempting to claw itself free from the inside of a wooden box. Indeed it is the sounds of your own thoughts and fears, scratching at the inside of your skull, desperately clawing to the surface, and seeking freedom. And even though you would will them away, they will not, can not leave your brain, without first passing in review before your minds eye, only to be reabsorbed deeply, indelibly back into your own memory.

            You are left shuddering, shriveling away from their horror, for you know - you know. The fever in your brain wont cool. It continues to grow hotter driving you back into a territory you know so well, but hate so passionately. "Wake someone! Anyone!" the last remnants of your sanity pleads. By now, though, the images have gained control and like an old tortured friend, you welcome them back, for even in terror, there can be comfort in familiarity. You loosen your grip on your sanity, and float on the high of excess adrenalin. That burst of pure energy released by your terror. You are high on it now, you welcome the burn, desiring more. There cannot be too much of it now, you need more! So you cling to those horrors, squeezing out of each all the stimulation you can get. You cling and squeeze until what once repelled you so strongly, now is just common place. Indeed, it is like a candle to a moth, drawing you closer. And now, your beautiful madness has returned fully to you, and you can once again see clearly. It opens your eyes again, and you begin to see the world as it truly is. That stinking world of hate and hurt. That lousy world that has turned its back on you and now seeks to destroy you... to kill you. You must defend yourself. All these people out here, mentally pressing against your mind. Pressing their own wills on you! Stealing your space.. stealing your very life forces!

            It is self defense, that's all. And They! Those thieves in the night, steeling your will, your soul. Those vampires of the mind, sucking your life forces away. So confident are they that you are in their grasp, that they lie sleeping mere feet away from you, housed only in fragile fabric tents. But, you take the axe in your hands, and once again you know that it is you that controls their destinies. And tonight, tonight you will deal each of them their ultimate fate. It is early, you have the axe, and you have all night....