fear

close your eyes. hold them closed. tightly, until the black behind your eyelids turns into colorful shapes and lines. imagine you are elsewhere than your bed, your room, your house, your town, your country, your planet, your universe. you float through nothingness. your fingertips go numb, then your arms, then your chest, then the rest of your body until you don't feel like a human being anymore. just energy.

and imagine that the energy runs out. spills out of you. think of how you felt when you were young and scared of the dark and what it hid, how you felt when you were called on in class but you hadn't done even half of the assignment, how you'd feel if one day you were walking home from the store and you were held at gunpoint in an empty parking lot. what would you feel beside cold metal on your forehead and sweat running down your temple? what is there left beside that energy?

what is left when the masked person standing in front of you shouts at you but you can't even hear because you're paralyzed? when he pulls the trigger with his shaky fingers? when the bullet pierces through your skin and skull and brain? what is left beside blood and bits of what once was your brain and a pair of cold, dead eyes?

what's the only feeling left?