Shadow World

I had no idea a world like this existed. I lived in a world where one of the worst things that had ever happened to me was when Suzie, my best friend at the time, kissed Mike the boy I was convinced I was the love of my life. He was my date to the eighth-grade graduation dance. I was on cloud nine. I thought this was going to be the start of the rest of my life. That was until I found the two of them kissing in the hall. I remember thinking I would never love again and crying in my room for almost three weeks. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore, my puffy red, swollen eyes stung like I was running against a harsh cold wind. Now my eyes had been forced open, against my will. As if someone was holding my eyelids open, forcing me to view the world as it really was. A violent and scary place, where the word monster was no longer a figure of speech. Where it was not used just to describe horrible people but also actual beings, I realized I had no idea what heartache and pain were before now. The real world was spine-tingling, bone-crushingly terrifying.

Just yesterday, I went on with my normal everyday life. I went to my small, élite high school where I never felt like I fit in. When the grueling school day was done, I came home and hung out with some of my friends like I do every day. The group of us sitting at the local coffee shop where we could gossip and do our homework. After saying goodbye to my friends, I went home to have dinner with my family. My younger brother, stepfather, and I sat around the table as we tried to stop our selves from retching up my mother’s meatloaf. Her cooking was barely edible. It’s so bad that there have been a few occasions where we have all gotten food poison. After I managed to survive dinner, I went to bed. Where I laid safely curled up in my overpriced pink silk sheets, without a care in the world. I went to bed just like everyone else with no idea at all that everything was about to change.

I had no idea that the stories were real. I never believed in the fairy tales, legends, or any of that supernatural crap. It was all things made up to scare kids into doing what their parents wanted.

The bogeyman that lived under our bed was just a story to keep kids in bed at night. I can still remember the pure terror I felt every night for the few seconds it took me to run from my light switch to my bed. The way my heart would start beating so fast, I thought it would spill out of my lips like vomit. Or how my mouth would go dry with worry, and my hands would get all clammy as I balled them into fists in case, I needed to throw a punch. I remember the loud pitter-patter of my feet as I ran across the cold hardwood floor and the creek that the broken spring in my mattress would make. How that nose was the sound of relief for me because it meant I made the running leap and avoided the grasp of that black mass I swear was under there. How I pulled the covers over my head as it was some kind of shield that would keep me safe. I never dared to leave that bed until my parents woke me the next morning.

Then there were the witches like the one in Hansel and Gretel how it was a story to teach kids not to take candy from strangers. This story terrified me as a child. I would never venture into the woods as a child even when my friends pressured me to come and play in the fort they had made. I was convinced there was an old witch with long white hair watching me. I was so sure I saw her hiding in the shadows behind the trees watching me. Every time I was outside, she was there lurking in the shadows, behind the tree line. She never approached just watched, and it scared the crap out of me. Every time I was outside, I would feel a shiver run down my spine alerting me to her being near bye. When I would turn around, she would be there, every day for almost a year. Of course, when I told my parents, they played it off as I had an overactive imagination. Sadly, I believed them, why wouldn’t I? They where my parents at that age, I still thought they were perfect beings who would never lie or do any wrong.

We all learned from movies to never invite a vampire into your house. I always thought this was a life lesson as not to trust strangers. It never made any sense why those people would invite the incredibly weird stranger, who was obviously up to no good in their lives. Werewolves and their transforming bite taught kids to fear wild animals that might eat us. Which made sense to me, no one wants rabies. I mean isn’t that where the stories of werewolves must have come from, rabies? Someone who got bit by a wolf that had rabies and lost their mind. Well, that’s what I thought. Now I know better.

In the end, it made no difference what I did or did not believe in. Those things I thought were all bullshit, they believed in me.

The Fairytales, legends, the things that gave us nightmares when we’re children they came and found me. Some of them had come to hurt me. Others to save me. A few had been there all along. Hiding in the shadows, lying to me about who they were until they were able to pounce like the animals they were.

My world was turned upside down almost instantly as my view of the life itself was shattered and replaced with something new. Something that terrified me, a world I hope most will never witness. It’s better, safer, living in a world of make-believe.

I was forced to leave my home, my family with no notice, no chance to say goodbye. I did not even have time to leave a note to my mother, who I knew was going to lose her mind when she realized I was gone. I had to start a new life with a new group of people if you can even call them that. Let’s go with creatures. A new life with a group of, I did not know and wished I had never met. I wish I were still oblivious. It’s much more comfortable living being oblivious and carefree. I wish I still did not know they were real that they existed at all. None of that matters though because like I said before they believed in me. They want me for some reason that’s still not clear to me, so I had no choice. The rest of my life had already been decided for me, and I had no idea or say about it.