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Weariness overcame me. Darkness spiraled up from the pit of my stomach, engulfing me, pulling me under, surrounding me. I struggled against it, trying to breath in the suffocating murk, but, like a hypnotic spell, I could not resist the tugging blackness encroaching on my thoughts. Sleep leapt upon me, like a tigress with claws bared, sinking them into my flesh, penetrating deeply, inescapable.

Quiet. Blackness. Sinking. Strange sensations scathed over me. Heaviness. Lightness. Breaking through. Crashing in. Calm tranquility mixed with ethereal panic that left me searching the dimness frantically, but for what I did not know. Light? Breath? Heartbeat?

All was silent. All was Dim.

Fear crashed in on me; a thousand boulders tumbling on my body from out of the dingy night sticking to me, pounding over me without mercy and without ceasing, yet I did not fall. There was no pain, only fear devouring me in the darkness. Echoes of thought whispered from the ebon vastness around me; voices once so bright, filled with life, now empty, hollow, soundless.

What happened to the life that was inside me? Where did my vibrancy go? Try as I might, I could not draw a single breath and the sensation of existing without it was terrifying. Brackish water sloshed around my feet, pouring in from the edges of the darkness, splashing upwards in a slow, inescapable progression; yet my feet felt nailed to the place where I stood. Unable to run, I searched the emptiness around me, horrified to watch the slogging water sucking upward around me, encasing me in icy coldness.

Where was the Light? Wasn’t there a Tunnel of Light? What happened to all the preaching and teaching and reaching from Heaven? Shadows began to move in the deep darkness, slinking towards me in a haze that filled me with dread. Sounds like ravenous animals gnawing bones began to filter through to me. Screeches and cackles more horrendous in sound than any tale from the crypt I had ever heard. Insidious laughter mocked my struggles as I fought to escape the unrelenting icy embalmment closing around me.

Then all went silent as a single voice spoke from the darkness staining itself crimson over my head. I listened, aghast at the familiarity of the tone and inflection. It was my own voice. It was me, speaking out of the past to haunt my own soul and as I listened, bitter tears slipped down my pallid cheeks, falling into the freezing water encircling my chest, my neck, sloshing upward over my chin, my nose, consuming me.

“I have everything I could ever want or need. I’ve got more money than I know what to do with, more influence than I know how to use, and more friends than I can count. ……………
What do I need God for?”

~Morgan~

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Stirring Image by: ariagne-stock at deviantart.com