And So It Begins

Fear is one thing you can never escape.

 

In several rather dramatic stories I’ve read, the beginning will be a description of someone running. Sometimes they are running through a forest, sometimes across a battleground. They will sometimes have tattered clothing and bare feet, and they will sometimes have blood on their faces. Sometimes someone runs with them. Sometimes they are alone. Sometimes, most times, it is raining.

But the one thing I have noticed about every single one of these stories is that the person is running from something. Whether they are fleeing a person or creature, or if they run to evade an impending doom that hangs over them like moisture in the air they breathe, they are always trying to escape. What many of them do not realize is that there are some things, at least one thing, they cannot escape.

Fear.

Fear is the constant pursuer, the dark shadow that follows us at every turn and counts how many steps we will take until it seizes us again. Fear never rests; it never sleeps. It cannot afford to take a break. It waits patiently until our steps take us to a dark alleyway or a deserted corridor. And then, at our weakest moment, Fear strikes and swallows us in the night. We are cast into the dark abyss of nothing that we didn’t realize we had forever been walking circles around, and we are surprised that it took no more than a simple push in the right direction to consume us.

That is the problem with a lot of us; we think we are strong. We boast that nothing and no one could make us fall into this pit of despair, when in fact we are restraining ourselves from jumping in and embracing the darkness as a welcome punishment. But the truth behind it is that the people who will fight are the people that Fear wants most. Fear exists to take the strong down to the lowest place and leave the weak behind, begging for release. It exists to make every one of us as miserable as it possibly can.

And each day, Fear gets just a little bigger, just a little stronger. The change is so slight that hardly anyone would notice. But that is how Fear works. It makes you think that it is small and harmless; that it is too insignificant to be a threat to you. By the time you finally see that it has been gradually eating away at your sanity, it is too late, and you have already started falling. And once you start your sharp descent into the pit of fear and of death, there is very little chance that you will ever get out. If someone can catch you at the surface, you are lucky.

And if someone catches you after that point… I will let you in on a little secret. If you are halfway to nowhere, lost in the darkest depths of oblivion because you fell through the cracks of this world, and you are brought back into daylight, it is only by me.

One might call me a hero because of the souls I have saved; however, one would be foolish to do so. Although I have brought countless people back from the very depths of insanity, I am no hero. I am not that beam of light you see just as you are about to abandon hope, and I am certainly not a fearless warrior that has pity on the tragic people of the Below. No, I have my fears; just one, actually.

I fear becoming like them; I fear insanity. And because I fear it so, I made a deal with Fear.

And that, readers, is why I have a story.

Author's Note

Sort of a prologue, I suppose. Hope it got you interested! Thank you for reading; please take the time to comment, if you would <3

Reviews

[WhatsHerFace]

I seriously love this. It's amazing.

[CC]

ooohhh... i am hooked... its so very dean koontz... i love it