This Is My Hell

"Deep into the darkness peering,
long I stood there wondering, fearing."
--"The Raven"
Edgar Alan Poe

    I stand in my bedroom, looking at the darkness outside the door which is so thick that not even the light from my ceiling will penetrate it. The darkness is silent. The only sound is the low hum of my ceiling fan that is slowly spinning clockwise, stirring up settled dust. I've been standing here for hours, watching the darkness and debating if I should step in.

   My light starts to flicker as I stand there. Suddenly it goes out. I'm there in the darkness. I stumble over the clutter on my floor and make it over to my nightstand. I open the drawer on it, fumbling through its contents before my hand finds what I'm looking for, a glow stick. I pick up the small tube and bend it. The capsule inside makes a faint pop as it cracks open. Soon the tube is aglow with a dim, neon green that cast an eerie glow over my room. As I hold it up and look around, I notice one of my walls isn't the same. There is what looks like black smudges on it. I approach the wall and  the light from the glow stick soon reveals that there are no smudges on the wall. Instead there are letters, written in what looks like charcoal. It says, "This Is Your Hell." The words only remain for a second. I blink once and the words vanish. I slowly back away, starting to tremble in fear.

   After standing motionless, except the trembling, I glance over at the doorway. I see the darkness still there, cutting off the light from my glow stick as if the darkness itself was a solid object. I examined it for a few moments before taking very light, cautious steps toward  the blackness.

   I reach the doorway and stand only inches from the blackness. My glow stick still did nothing to illuminate what was on the other side of the doorway. I hesitated for a moment, pondering what could be on the other side and if I had any other choice but to go inside the darkness. After what seemed like hours, but was actually just minutes, I took in a deep breath and stepped into the darkness. Once inside, all I could see was my glow stick. I started walking straight forward and being very careful not to turn in any other direction. After about a minute of slow and tedious walking I began to hear the sound of stone or cement under my feet. I continued walking until the inky blackness slowly faded and revealed that I was in a tunnel of some sort. It looked like a large sewage pipe or maybe a storm drain of some sort. Down the middle of it flowed a small trickle of water which disappeared beyond the illuminated reach of my green glow stick. I looked around to see if there was a way out, but when I turned around there was just a brick wall. My trembling turned to more of a shaking when I heard a few small stones fall from the ceiling behind me. I whirled around only to see a little rat scurrying along the ceiling of the tunnel, knocking a few small stones down as it went along.

   I sighed and decided to venture further into the tunnel, which was now eerily silent except for my foot steps. As I went deeper the walls became covered in patches of green, dripping moss that housed an assortment of various insects , one which caught my. It was a fairly large centipede that weaved through the moss, its antennas felt out it's path and its many legs moved in waves. Normally I would be terrified of this little creature, but for some reason it brought me comfort knowing that I wasn’t alone down there. I watched the centipede for a few minutes until it crawled into a crevice and disappeared from sight.

   I continued deeper into the tunnel until I came to junction of four other tunnels. I held the glow stick high above my head to try and see down each of the tunnels. I gazed down the one in front of me, but my heart skipped a beat when I saw two glimmers of light in the darkness, like the reflection of a dogs eyes at night. My heart began to race as the eyes  looked at me. Suddenly I heard the skittering of large claws on the stone floor as the creatures began to charge at me. I wasted no time waiting to see what it was and took off running down the left tunnel. The creature gave off a blood curdling shriek as I ran down the tunnel as fast I could. As I ran I could still hear the creatures claws scuttling along the floor of the tunnel, which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

   After what seemed like an eternity of running and turning corners, the sounds of the creature stopped, but I didn’t. I kept running for a few minutes until stopping and turning around to see if it was still following me. I peered into the darkness, expecting to see the eyes looking back at me, but there was nothing.

   I decided to catch my breath and just walk at a brisk pace along the tunnel. My walking lasted a good thirty minutes or so before I came upon something that made my heart sink. A brick wall stood before me and blocked my path. Right about this time my glow stick started to lose it light and slowly fade, allowing the darkness to slowly creep in. I shook it and pleaded for it to stay on, but after a few seconds it was out completely. I dropped it and backed against the brick wall, to scared to go back from where I came. Suddenly I heard it again…. It was coming down the tunnel towards me. The claws… And growling… The sounds filled the darkness around me and I covered my ears, sinking to the floor and pleading for someone to make it all go away.

   I guess somebody heard me, because my eyes flashed open and I was laying in my bed with the morning sunlight seeping through my curtains. I sat up, my heart still racing as I looked around my room. Everything was normal. My dog was asleep on the floor and the ceiling fan turned slowly, producing its usual low hum, but on the far wall of my room something was painted in golden words, "This Is Your Heaven."