11-05-2009, 05:37 PM
This is Entry #2 for me. Enjoy.
What is that behind you...?
Username: Moxie
Word count: wordcounttool.com = 397, Microsoft Word = 385
Entry:
The clock read three.
The lights flashed on the clock, taunting. Three a.m. is the real witching hour- the time when the most people are born and the most people die.
Time had stopped at 3am. Time and breath and sound and hope had all died at the witching hour. The wind didn't even bother to howl outside. Even the beating of my own heart was dulled. I wish it would pound in my ears, but it denied me.
The world itself was dead- murdered by the witching hour.
I stayed in my bed as if it was somehow a sanctuary and the blankets a shield- keeping me safe from the things that watched me. Each one stood silently, biding its time in the shadows. The small pin prick dots that were their eyes stabbed me. I closed my eyes in hopes that if I couldn't see them, they couldn't see me.
But I knew they could.
And they knew I had seen.
My eyes would not stay shut against them.
They were closer now.
Not much closer, maybe a step or two. Moving silently. The air was too heavy for sound. I blinked, inhaling a flat breath.
They were again closer. The dark creatures moved when I could not see. Each flutter of my eyes brought them nearer. I struggled to keep my eyes open- but they stung and I blinked again.
Almost imperceptibly- the hurtful, needful things came closer.
My bed was not a sanctuary. My blankets were not a shield.
'Don't blink. Don't blink. Don't close your eyes.' I told myself, unable to speak. Words dissolved in my mouth like cotton candy so sweet it has no choice but to melt upon your tongue. I could feel sleep wrapping its claws around me. Adrenaline gone now, used up and fetid in my veins. My eyes closed. I forced them open.
Closer. Closer. Closer still.
'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…' I didn't know the rest. It didn't matter. They were immune. Prayer means nothing in the witching hour.
The clock taunted me- still reading exactly three. Each flash of the clock an act of torture- each blink of the light enticing me to blink myself.
'Don't close your eyes.'
But, some things are inevitable.
The clock still reads three.
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