Burning the Bones
an excerpt

I can feel it in the room, whatever it is...just before I wake up...watching me...The cold chill creeps up my arms and spreads slowly toward my chest and sleep instantly vanishes, disappearing into a dark vast cavern of impenetrable space, leaving me coldly awake, but unable to open my eyes. I wait in the dark and the feeling that I am being watched grows more intensely, with each breath I take. Breath in.....breath out....stop breathing.....listen. Listen.
I can almost hear the shattered breathes of the dark thing watching me, breathing along with me...IN....OUT....STOP..... It waits for me to open my eyes,....IN.....OUT....STOP..... Waiting... Waiting..... and then I can imagine it will cover me...the darkness spreading over my face.....the coldness laying over my skin.....IN.....OUT....STOP.....drowning me, filling me, filling my lungs with its thin, cold evil.....IN....OUT....until I can not breath....STOP.
I listen now, in the darkness and I am aware, rationally that there is nothing there, there couldn't be. There can't be any monsters hiding. There are no such thing as monsters. Not in the corners of my room.
IN.....Yet, it is the sense of something dark, something ugly and evil waiting, I know it is waiting, just up ahead, ....
OUT.....Somewhere in the waking hours that makes me wish I could sleep forever.
STOP....Just sleep and dream, and never have to face the dull throbbing unloveliness of my life again. Maybe that is what it is I dread. The nothingness of my life. That is the only monster I face. The plodding away at each pointless day of my life until I finally, thankfully, fall down dead.