They come to me, sometimes. In the dark. My mother tells me they don’t exist, but I know better. She can’t see what I see. When it’s late, and I get up for a drink of water, or to go to the bathroom, they’re behind me the entire time,hiding in the shadows. I know that they’re secretly grinning to themselves,
plotting to snatch me when I’m not looking. So I’m always looking, and sometimes I have to run the whole way there and back just so they can’t catch me. The worst part of it is the horrible, sick feeling I get in the pit of my stomach. Fear.
Paranoia. Despair.

They’ve always been there. Ever since I became conscious of the world around me, they were there. When I was younger, four and five, they didn’t do much. I didn’t notice them. They followed me, and they smiled at me, and I smiled back, but I would feel sick and I would have to turn away. But now, it’s been four
more years. They won’t let me just turn away from them. As I get older and braver, so do they.

They aren’t only there in the dark, either. In the corners of the playground, or when I’m alone in my room doing my homework, or when nobody else is looking, in an alley, they sit there and laugh at me, their faces twisted into evil grins. They have eyes, too. I always notice their eyes. They’re wide, and bright,
and big and horrible. They terrify me. When I see their eyes, I know that I have to run. My mother always gets angry when I run. She doesn’t understand.

They are silent, always. Even when I see them laughing, I can hear no sound coming from them. They move like snakes, slithering in the air, hardly touching the ground. They can crawl towards me until they are right behind me, and I don’t notice until I feel the hairs on the back of my neck slowly rising, and I
don’t even bother turning around because I know that if I do, they will grab me and hold on and never let go… I just run, and I run until I know for sure that they have gone.

Once, I decided to give them names. There are five of them. I don’t see them all at once. There is the smallest one, the one with the sharpest teeth. I called him Shrink. And the one with the brightest eyes, Flash. There is the biggest, the slowest, Budge, and then Grim, he is the one who is the skinniest. And
there is one more. He is always there, sometimes alone, sometimes with another… but I know that if I see them, he will be there. He hasn’t got a name; nothing suits him. He is just ‘the one who is always there’. He never laughs. Ever. He
never smiles. He only watches me with his eyes, and he follows me, never making a sound. He scares me the most.

They are the devils of the night, they are my nightmares and my deepest, darkest secret. I can never tell anybody that I see them, because nobody can do anything about it and it will only upset them to know that they follow me, when nobody is watching. I wonder if it is so true that nobody else can see them… nobody speaks about them, but neither do I. Yet somehow, I can tell that they can’t see them. I can see in their eyes, they have never felt the fear that They bring.

Lately, it has grown worse. They come closer, each time.The other day, Grim climbed so close to me that I could feel his breath. Whenever they draw near, I can’t hear anything at all. Everything stops making sounds, and I can see, past
them, people nearby looking at me, because I am screaming but I cannot hear myself. And just when I think that this time, they are going to finish me off, kill me, they laugh and they run away gleefully.

They are here now. I feel them. I can see their eyes. All five of them, this time, and they draw nearer, smiles upon their faces. Even the one who is always there is smiling, for once. His smile is the worst. He is evil, the most evil of all of them. They draw near. I can feel their breath, and they circle around
me, smiling forever. I scream, and their smiles fade, and they are angry. The one who is always there, he asks me, with his eyes, he wants to know why I am afraid of them. I tell him, I don’t know, but I feel in my heart that I should be afraid. He tells me not to be afraid, with his eyes, those eyes which see me,
always. I think to myself, perhaps they are unable to speak.

I touch one of them. No, it touches me. I am too afraid to move. They’re touch is cold, like death. I’ve touched death. I’m not scared, anymore. I laugh. I don’t laugh because anything is funny. I don’t know why I laugh, but I can’t stop. My chest hurts from laughing so hard, and tears come to my eyes. They laugh,
too, and scamper away, laughing. Laughter surrounds me. I choke on my own laughter. I drown in theirs.

I can feel myself crying and laughing, at the same time. My mother does not know what to do. She does not know what has happened to me. I know, though, that I laughed in the face of death. And you know what? Death laughed right back at
me.