A light swings back and forth erratically, tracing the edges of this room.  It hangs by a copper wire, a filament, almost like a thread, and it always seems as if its about to fall.  Sometimes it is weak, and sometimes it is strong, and with its flickering I can feel the cold pit in my stomach that shies away at the encroaching darkness.  My fear is that it shall consume me, fill my nostrils with the horrid smell of nothingness, kill my ears with a deafening silence, and leave me not as a human, but a senseless beast, stumbling in the malevolent shade.

The dangling light keeps swaying, though I can feel no motion in this room.  The fear at this point has become a numbing normalcy, giving me the objectivity to observe this place rather than follow instinct and escape.  And now, perhaps I do wish for the scarce remaining minutes of light to vanish completely.  It’s this sound.  An insect-like buzz presents itself in the otherwise empty room, and the light’s swaying now makes this space heave and warp.  It disturbs me.  Out of my peripheral vision I notice shadows that should not be there, bending and weaving as if they were subject to the wind.

The wind!  I can notice no vents in the room, no openings at all, yet I can feel this wind on my face, on my hands!  But this is not a breeze to erode the fatigue in my body.  Although it is a calm blowing, the sound it brings combines with the buzz of the bulb to create a gentle, incessant scream.  It sounds distant, but I know it is overhead.  This room does something to my sense of time and space.  At one point my skin can tell the atmosphere of an infinite space, like a vast chasm engulfing the whole of the universe.  But my skin also betrays the sweat of my fear when I begin to notice that the impossible shadows are drawing nearer to my own.

I can taste the sweat, a mixture of salt and earth, and a familiarity in this place.  I cannot tell whether my body is hot or cold, decaying or fully living, this place rejects the traditions of the senses.  The only thing that feels concrete at the moment is the chair below me.  Hard wood, rotting it seems, and it smells of mildew.  Perhaps it has been absorbing me, my sweat, and my feelings of this place.  Perhaps it is the only anchor keeping me from descending into the gaping maw of immense nothingness.

The screaming has become louder now, and it aches.  It further distorts the lines between reality and this fantastic place.  The shadows shift more and more, figures I cannot discern, monsters that the light cannot hold back.  I feel as if the end will come when my shadow touches theirs, as if violence or madness shall erupt within me when they coalesce.  I try to scream, to match my woes with the torch above, but I can hear nothing.  I have no mouth, and I must scream.

And the light!  Its flickering gone, it glows brighter and brighter now.  An agonizing sun in such a small space.  Yet the shadows still exist.  This light is blinding, yet I can still see those shapes approaching, those shades of inhumanity coming to rend blood and thought away from me!  What is this place!  This place I cannot see, the duality of light and darkness destroying me, erasing me!  Both zealous, both imperative in their movements to take away one soul, all souls.  This light, an unholy rapture, the screaming overwhelming, the sweat, my veins, all my body crashing now!  

The flickering of an eyelid, the slow, constant glow of the light above me.  Here, in my room, the smell of old cotton and dust.  The smell of rain as well, as the first fibers of dawn show the storm outside, the tree branches shifting in the wind, waving shadows through my window.  I, covered by the warmth of a blanket, covered by a thin film of sweat and forgotten nightmares.  My head is caught in my pillow, and it is difficult to breathe, difficult to scream.  That room, my room.  That hell, my hell.