Prelude

I have seen things that haunt me. I have felt things touch me that weren't there. I am often told that it is my imagination, that there is nothing to fear. Nothing is going to happen. Yet, somehow, I am given a brief vision of what is coming. As if to prepare for what is to be. I become cold and frigid. I no longer can show emotion. I stand as a witness.

I have gone through my life repeating the words of others to dismiss my accounts. Trying to rationalize what I have experienced. In truth it only makes me feel less in control as if I were awaiting transport to an institution where a straight jacket would be administered.

Shadows that move, eyes watching from the corners, the sensation that evil itself is chasing you, following relentlessly like a hound from hell waiting for the moment to clutch you in its teeth and rip you apart. Is it real or is it my imagination? Am I possessed by demons? Or do I suffer from some unexplained metal condition?

I have spent my life dismissing these accounts working through the panic attacks. I have done this for so long that I sometimes find it hard to account for what is real when it is in the now. What I experience is real to me. It brings me grief and pain. I shed tears over visions of loss. Then it happens and the emotion is gone, taken from me as if I possessed none at all.

I dream of death and slaughter. I dream of other people's grief and loss. I see their pain. I see their agony. I feel a black cloud close in around me. Separating me from light and glory, the happiness I so earnestly strive to find. I want to escape. I need to find a way out.

Still, I am rising