Mind Games

In the silence of the night,

Where shadows weave their tales of terror,

A man lies frozen, his breath a shallow whisper,

Trapped in the grip of an approaching darkness.

His room swallows him with its stillness

And from the abyssal corners, shadows crawl…Creeping, seething with a life of their own.

They are born of his fears, nurtured by his silent tears,

Beasts not merely seen, but felt, heard, as they slither closer.

Their steps silent except the floor creaking beneath.

The air thickens, a palpable dread that chokes the heart and collapses the lungs.

As from the hallway, the creak of death’s own step.

A chuckle, low and hungry, stirs the stagnant air,

Eyes like coals from Hell itself glint in the moon’s betraying light.

A smirk, not human, but deceiving, flashes across the void,

A cruel reminder of the night's hold over him.

He watches, paralyzed, as his room transforms, no longer a place of peace and comfort.

Where horrors born of the past, mold into phantoms for the present.

Each shadow pulses with the dark blood of his nightmares,

A grotesque parade of every loss, every despair he has ever known.

They whisper his name, a vile caress against his ears,

The breathy exhale of the last letter escaping their lips slides across his cheek as he tries to pull away,

Drawing him unwillingly closer into their house of horror.

The shadows lengthen, fingers of the night reaching for him,

Promising the touch of oblivion, the cold embrace of the grave.

Laughter builds around him, a cacophony of madness,

Echoing through his unraveling mind.

The eyes, those hellish unforgiving eyes, fix upon him with predatory glee,

Glistening with the cruelty of unspoken threats and unspeakable intentions.

Trapped in the ghostly theater of his own fears,

The man is a prisoner to the phantoms of his creation.

Each shadow a reflection of the abyss within his soul,

Each whisper a chain that binds him to his internal torment.

With no one to hear his stifled cries, he confronts them alone,

A battle against the legion of his own conjured demons.

As the night deepens, so too does his despair,

The room a crucible where his sanity begins to warp and wilt.

For the shadows are not merely visitors in the night;

They are the keepers of his sins, the heralds of his doom.

They know him, intimately, terribly, and with each heartbeat,

They draw tighter the noose of his impending death.

Tight around his neck, he feels the threads of the rope scraping against his skin.

The blood leaking from the abrassions as it soaks through.

With every tick of the clock, the shadows inch closer,

A relentless advance, as inevitable as death itself.

No plea for mercy to be granted, no hope for reprieve,

Only the approach of a fate too horrifying to contemplate.

So he lies there, a man besieged by his own thoughts,

Awaiting the final embrace, the devouring of his soul.

In the darkest hours, where despair dwells and fear reigns,

He faces the ultimate truth: the night and its horrors are his alone to endure.

Each shadow a tormentor, each laugh a nail in his coffin,

In this endless terror, where sleep dares not tread,

He waits, breath held, heart pounding, for the shadows to claim their own.

In the morning, grieve not, for there will be no way for me to hear your tears.

Hold fast to this truth;

The fight is over and I have lost.

Yet, in that, I can start anew.