I often feel the need to write about the topic of the unpredictable imagination. My brain often surprises and even alarms me with the things it pulls out of itself, and it can be helpful to process my reaction through blogging about it. Today’s Throwback Thursday post, written about a year ago, is an example.
I have gone through a number of different ideas for today’s post before alighting on the one I finally chose. While I love writing flash fiction, I’ve had a topic on my mind for the past few days and wanted to develop it further. So I’m going to do that here.
Middle-of-the-night scaries. I don’t know what else to call the feeling. You know the one. You wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, possibly from a bad dream, possibly from a noise outside. In any case, you’re awake, and you’re drenched in sweat. There, in the dark, while everyone else is asleep, you’re afraid. You don’t know why. Everything, every little thought, seems ten times larger than normal. You can hardly move, but you have to change your shirt. So you creep out of bed, get a fresh shirt, and crawl back in, curling up against all the terrible things that are about to get you.
Is this scenario familiar? It is to me. It happened just the other night. I can’t clearly describe what it felt like, but it did feel like everything was out to get me. Even the prospect of giant slugs swarming around the toilet (which I had just dreamed about) seemed imminent. For all I knew (although “knew” isn’t right, because it didn’t have anything to do with knowing) a monster was in the verge of opening the bedroom door.
I successfully returned to sleeping, but I’m afraid of waking up with the scaries again. It’s like coming to consciousness in a place unknown and lonely, surrounded by dark archways through which any kind of monstrosity might emerge. There’s an opening ahead. You can see light, peace, and most importantly escape. But you must pass all the dark archways first. And of course, you’re totally alone.
How do you defend yourself against the monsters that might leak out of your imagination at night and materialize at any moment?
Thanks for reading!
~H
EluminoraCreations 