The Gentleman Of The Dark
You want the truth? Fine. I stopped lighting the candles. I stopped checking the locks. I stopped pretending the sunlight had any power beyond the windowpane. It’s all theatre, isn’t it?
They started small, didn’t they? A simple, manageable fear.
I first met the Boogieman under the bed. He was the silhouette in the dark, the breath of the wind through a badly latched window. That Boogieman was contained. He was magic. He lived in nightmares and shadows, and the only thing he could touch was my innocence.
Oh, how quaint. How unbelievably, sickeningly naive. I never understood the gentle purity of that Boogieman. He maintained the natural order. It was the fear of him that kept me tucked safely in my sheets when I should have been sleeping. It was the fear of him that made me eat my vegetables. He was a whispered guardian, forbidding a child from wandering into the dangerous, unseen night.
But then the Boogieman grew up.
He traded the shadows for the sunlight. He became the strange neighbor on the corner, the one whose eyes followed me too long when I was riding my bike, whose fingers—always twitching—brushed my pants just a little too intimately when I rode past his hedge. I learned the true, different kind of power he wielded the morning his face was plastered across the newspaper, smiling above a headline about a cluster of children's bodies found in his carefully manicured backyard.
He evolved. He was the frat boy at the college party, whispering sweet, toxic nonsense in my ear, pushing me toward a locked door while the music pulsed and my senses spun from the cheap beer. He taught me the very first lesson a girl must learn, the one that carves itself into your bones: A woman’s body is never truly her own.
He adapted again. Now he’s the Boss. The one who makes the comments that cut just below the surface of professionalism, whose hand lingers on mine for a fraction of a second too long during a handshake, reminding me exactly what power means, and exactly what I owe. I spend my whole life running, building walls, changing routes, seeking shelter, and how is it possible, how is it fucking possible, that I still find his hand on the door of every single room I try to escape to?
They are everywhere. A relentless, expanding colony. The world isn't dark; the world is just full of Boogiemen now.
And here is my truth, my bitter, rotting core of acceptance: If I had to choose, if I could make one desperate bargain with this rotten existence, I would trade them all back.
Bring back the monster under the bed! Bring back the shadow in the closet! Bring back the terrifying nightmares that faded when the sun rose! That Boogieman was a gentleman. He was a guardian, not a hunter. At least he respected the boundaries. At least that Boogieman never felt entitled to my skin.
Take your polite, smiling, human monsters away, and give me back the simple, honest fear of the dark! I'll take the nightmares over the reality, every single time.
