The Horror of Imagination

Have you ever thought of how far the imagination may go? Our imagination can control our choices. Our dreams. Our very deepest thoughts. Some say we lose touch with it as adults, but what if it doesn't want to go? What if it wants to stay. To become something more then our subconscious? Our imagination isn't always sunshine and daisies. It also is what makes those tree branches look like claws. What makes that light a ghost. What makes that shadow your demise. So what if the darkest part of your imagination was let to grow? Let to take control?

It started a few years ago. I was looking up late reading horror stories on the internet, because I had a long day. The girl I loved had disappeared, not really in a horrific way, just the kind of way where she was gone so fast that it didn't even hurt till later. It was hurting then. I don't know why but when I read stories late at night I tend to lean towards religion based stories. I don't know why, something about the way you can see the hell that roots itself deepest in a man appeals to me. A man who fears truly fears is God will do anything for that God. Blow up a building with a bomb strapped to him, slaughter half the world just to spread the love of that God. Tear out a mans heart then raise it to the sun. Perhaps that's why this one story interested me even more. It wasn't about a God. It wasn't about pillaging and conquering. It was about something called a Tulpa.

I didn't read on it to much, but I do know the gist. In Buddhism, monks would train a piece of their subconscious to become existent. They could see it, feel it, smell it, but they couldn't always control it. It could take over. It could change itself. It could truly make itself real, and what idiot teenager wouldn't want to try this? So I studied more. I read the risks. I decided to try it. The first few weeks seemed so pointless. Nothing ever happened and I gave up. Why risk going crazy if it took this much effort?

Time went on. Day by day, I lived my life until about the 9th day since I had lost my interest. Then the first event happened. I walked home from school everyday, and that day had been especially rainy. Of course this had put me in a bad mood already. I lived about two miles from my home and after walking that far in pouring rain I was dripping wet, extremely pissed off, and my mood only seemed to worsen.

Later that night my Mom came home. I can still remember her yelling at me. She was so pissed off, I had gone in the house soaking wet and most of the house was covered in my muddy footprints, and what wasn't, was covered in muddy paw prints from the dog. Did I mention I left the back door open and the dog got out? My mom was livid as she stomped straight up the stairs with her special cedar spoon. I don't particularly remember what happened after but soon the shouting escalated. As my mom tried to pull me out of my room to make me clean up the mud I lost my temper. I turned. And then came the scream. Then the thuds. One. Two...Three. Four..Five.........silence.Then more silence. There was no moan of pain. There was no curse in anger.

The one time I lost my anger. She was gone. The blood stained the tiles. The clumps of her hair stuck on the carpet as it was forcefully ripped from her head as she fell down the stairs. I had pushed her. And then I saw it. Back then it didn't bother me, it was one of those things you never really pay attention to. The shadow in the corner of your eye. There it was. With it's glistening smile it's pure black skin. That was all I saw, but when I looked again it was gone. What do you do when you see that? An ominous shadow that you couldn't really focus on? Would you forget? Would you even be able to remember what you saw?

My moms funeral was not light on me. There hadn't been much talk about her death. To everyone it seemed simple. The little crease in the carpet upstairs showed it all. The woman had tripped on a bit of loose carpet and fallen down the stairs, her son then heard her screams and called emergency responders. My father was hurt but not crippled. He was known to cheat on my mother. He was already a heavy drinker, and sometimes he would just stare away to space. Of course now with my mother gone he no longer had to hide his taste for women. Prostitutes. Colleagues. Random hookups would come and go as the days went by and he soon forgot.

I however, couldn't. I had murdered my mother. Like any kid this gave me nightmares. Night by night the nightmare would repeat itself. She would fall. I'd hear the scream, the thuds, the crack. Then i would be stuck staring at her body. I never noticed at the time, or maybe i always forgot but he was always there. Looking back it should've been so clear. Every time I woke up in a sweat he seemed to be more defined the next night. He'd be more obvious, his smile seemed bigger, he grew arms, his naked body soon became covered in a ridgid cloak of raven feathers and putrid bits of rotten meat. Soon his eyes became the one reason I would take note of him, I'd see the light green shining in the dark as it would mingle with the gold flecks. Then I realized I stopped waking up in a sweat. I still had the nightmares, but they slowly became dreams.

Suddenly I began smiling with him as I watched my mother fall. I'd wake up more refreshed. I gained a horrible thirst for the depraved, but I never told anyone. This went on and soon I met a girl. I started dating her and my lust for the depraved began to subside. I had just turned 17 and I was doing what most kids my age did then. Fuck with my lady, smoke a few blunts, and do all the regular stuff. Until one day it happened. I was balls deep in my lady friend when my dad came home. We didn't hear him until he was standing outside my room. My dad wasn't a saint, but he did have some hope for me, and when he opened my door and saw the blunts burning on my desk, his alcohol next to my bed, and me finish myself inside of my girl, he lost it. He began shouting at her to get out, yelling at me in the mean time.

After most of the initial commotion was over he made sure he gave me a hardy smack and sent me down stairs. All night I heard banging, rattling, dragging, and all sorts of weird noises from upstairs until around 8:00 my dad came down and told me I can go in my room again. Walking upstairs I wasn't expecting much to have changed until I was already in my room. It was empty. I had only a mattress on the floor, a bookbag, clothes in my closet, and my desk, with the legs partially sawed off to make up for the missing chair. How would this make you feel? Angry?

Broken? I was pissed. This was the first time I fully saw him. Looking back at my father, in the same place my mother last stood, he was next to him. I could even smell the meat in his cloak. There he was, but something was different about him then from when he was in my dreams. He frowned. My dad could see the confusion in my face but I assume he just felt satisfied at my lack of....everything. But seeing it's frown stopped me. Suddenly I wasn't angry. I felt defeated and instead walked back into my room. Sitting at my desk.

From then on it seemed like every night I would wake up in the middle of the night and there he would be. He began making noises, and the weird part was these noises were familiar. He would tap his toe and I'd hear a thud. He would turn his head and his neck would snap. He would smile through his big grin and I could hear nothing but screams. But this calmed me.

Eventually it almost was like a lullaby. About two months after I met with the girl I was with before. It wasn't much of a friendly reunion. I had just turned 18 and she had spoken with my father about her recently discovered pregnancy... My father obviously was more then angry with me, but he had almost seen it coming. Her parents had disowned her, and she had hoped that she may live with us. I, being the father of her baby. I was fond of children, but not very. And my father pressured me into the idea of marriage. As time went on he began appearing less and less. Instead of him coaxing me to sleep when I woke up, my wife would.

I still lived with my father but this hadn't been a problem at the time. That peacefulness then broke when he lost his job. Even though my wife and I both work semi decent jobs, he took to blaming her for ruining our lives. He blamed my wife for me having so many hardships, for the child who was now 2, for us having to pay more for living, and then one night he broke. At the time I was working at the Pizza Hut across the street. My nights weren't to late, and working 40 hours a week at $10.50 seemed to at least help pay the bills especially since the house and car had been paid off by my mothers life insurance.

I got home around 11:45 and immediately hurt shouthing from my living room. The situation was extremely hostile. My father had been screaming at my wife to the point where she was on the floor crying, trying to protect our two year old son. I defused the situation, leaving my father in a crying pile of vomit in the living room I got my family to sleep and I went to sleep to.

Then it happened. I remember looking at the alarm clock, the red numbers flashing in the dark read 2:51. And soon I heard it. The cracking. The thumping. The screaming. It was standing over my wife with a distinct anger. It had brandished a small knife and was staring at me. For some reason I got up and walked towards it. But as I got near it began to leave the room. It was leading me. As we got to the stairs it began to slowly creep down. Making thumping noises as if it were doing a friendly dance as it went down the stairs. I to made a little dance as I went down, overcome with a sudden joy. And soon we were in my living room.

The moonlight was shining through our living room as the figure stood over my father with the knife at his neck. It began making a new sound. A wet tearing noise. I realized it was commanding me to slit my fathers neck in his sleep. And I did. The noise he made was no surprise. A wet tear, accompanied with a sickening gurgle and the splat of blood across the carpeted floor. What a noise he made, I thought. Looking over at the clock I saw it was 3:15. Then when I looked back at the figure he was gone. Realizing what I did I quickly made it look like my father had simply commited suicide. Going as far as writing his suicide note, placing the knife in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. I then made my way back up to bed and was asleep again by four.

Her scream amused me. I knew she hated my father so I believe it was the shock of her seeing my father splayed across the couch dead that scared her. Of course time went on, and we lived happily ever after. But that's not why I'm scared. I saw him again. It's been 4 years now but there he stood over my 6 year olds bed. Except he was smiling. Like he was satisfied with the life him and I had created. But what if he gets bored?