That primal feeling you get when you’re walking back to your bed from a nightly trip to the bathroom or the kitchen. Sure, you know that one. We all do.

You are a rational 21^st century person who does not believe in supernatural terrors, who doesn’t check for monsters under the bed, who ain’t afraid of no ghost. And yet, you cannot help but slightly look over your shoulder. You cannot help but walk at a slightly funny angle so you could jump around more quickly to fend off that small sliver of hell that lurks in the dark corners of your eyes. That beast, that terror, that formless torment that you somehow know is coming at you any second now. 

I mean, you know there is no one and nothing there. Never has been, never will be. And you know, beyond any reasonable doubt, beyond any instinct stirring your soul, beyond any synapses silently misfiring in your brain. You know all of this.

And you also know that even if that nothing that lurks there would one day be a something that lurks there, it would in all likelihood be something wholly unmenacing. Something listless and undangerous. 

A timid little mouse. A faint breeze from a window left open. A feeble wraith, risen from a tepid well of some mundane malice. Casper the friendly fucking ghost.

And yet. 

In your mind, you know something else as well. You know against your better knowledge; you hold a conviction you cannot let go. Your lizard brain is screaming: it’s saying there’s a threat to your life and soul behind that slightly ajar door that you pass, that unseen and dark corner of the room that you must walk by. 

It is the night, there might even be others living with you in the building… and still you cannot shake that primal fear.

You know.

You know what I speak of. Don’t you, my friend?

DON’T LIE to me. You know goddamn well what I speak of.