Why I fear the night

I feel the tug of exaggerated gravity, gravity of thought, my inner world weighing so much more than the outer. I reach out trying to grip anything, looking around for something or someone to hold on to. It would be better if I could see nothing and could feel no substance around me. That would be better than looking around at all the humanity and feeling the smoothness of your skin knowing that you will not notice me slide downward, and no matter how hard I try my hands will slip.
I can do it this time, I think, but then I feel the delicate touch of razor blades, slightly curved at the tip. They surround my ankle and I feel the sting of inner flesh meeting the cool metallic surface of the blades. Gasping, I look down into thousands of eyes, reflecting my light like prisms, reflecting it in every direction but back at me.
A woman’s voice wafts up from the darkness below the eyes,

Give it up

But maybe I won’t have to go, this time --too hopeful

You say that every time. Come now and the blades won’t cut too deep and we’ll be able to mend you back to normal

I notice the blades are some kind of deformed digits attached to a spindly, scaly leg that reaches outward then is jerked back toward the eyes by a knobby joint at an impossible angle.

How can you say that when you know you are just going to rend me to pieces when I sink beneath

Hmm, that is true, but we’ll stitch you up real nice. No one will ever know

That’s the problem

A deep chuckle and the blades reach higher shearing skin cells apart from each other as if my legs were really just made of hundreds of miniscule zippers. As the eyes get closer, my eyes focus on two that seem to match, the laugh deeps and turns masculine and the eyes sink back into a face. Ice eyes and pale white skin that does not shine in the dim light, but instead seems to absorb it. A face I know well; a face that has haunted my dreams and subconscious for years.

Come

I cannot speak. I cannot move. I can only gaze desperately into those almost white irises and sink further. His hands reach up gripping the hair behind my ears in firm fists.

Now!

He yanks me forward toward his death-pale face and blood-red lips.
Pulling me down. Pulling me in.

Pulling me inward.