The shambling darkness

I could not hold on to either friend or job as my demeanor would cost me both. A palpable aura of dread followed me wherever I went, as if death itself had already laid it's hand on my shoulder. People avoided me, I felt out of touch with the rest of the world and so, I also avoided them.

Even my family was uncomfortable around me. They too, quickly understood that there was something unnatural about me. Richard; the boy who is afraid at night, who could not go through a single night without crying out. Of course, they were sympathetic at first; all children are afraid at night, all of them wake up screaming from a bad dream now and then. But children grow out of it, I did not. They imagined that they're was creatures in the dark,

I saw them...

Soon, my parents became distant, they always assumed that my nightmares would go away but they never did. My parents could have brought me to see a psychologist; perhaps if my condition had been discovered earlier on, it could have been cured; but what kind of parent wants to admit that their child might be insane? And so it was that they delayed such a decision over and over again, growing colder every day. Soon enough, it became clear that it was pointless. They would tolerate the "thing" that lived in the basement, the "creature" that would sometimes creep upstairs for food and then slither back to its lair. Each night, they would try vainly to ignore the screams and the whimpers that escaped my room with a mix of dread and disgust. It was not long before a lock was installed on my door, a length of cold steel links, trapping me for the night only to regurgitate me at dawn.

"It's only for your own protection." My parents would say, but fear was plain in their eyes.

I dropped out of school when I was only sixteen, it was obvious that I would never graduate anyway. I was not really stupid but the stress caused by my nocturnal visitations and life in a deficient family had left me with little motivation for performance. I decided instead to leave my family and try to make it on my own. I received the traditional slap on the back and the "keep in touch" by my parents but it was clear that my departure brought only relief.

I jumped from one source of employment to another as I could never keep a job for more than a few weeks. My mood darkened even more over the first months so that I could no longer even get past the initial interviews.

"We'll keep your resume in file." They would say and sometimes would not even have the decency of waiting until I was gone before rushing off to a co-employee to whisper about "the weird guy". I left many an establishment under the suppressed laugther of people who did not understand what I was going through.

I stopped seeking employment and fell back to the monetary support of the government. I became a creature even further despised; not only was I creepy but I also lived off the back of everyone else. I was a social parasite, with no reasons to exist. I started leaving my apartment only when strictly necessary and I instead poured over the study of the morbid and the macabre.