Him

I call mine the Anxiety Demon. He’s a dark shadow of a man, and he lurks in the corners of my mind where no one can see. He haunts my dreams, sending me through labyrinths and tossing me into dark oceans.

Sometimes I think I’ve cast him out, but he returns, throws open the door like my mind is his house to trash. He sees what I see, hears what I hear, thinks what I think. And he takes it all, twists it. And then he delivers it to me, a snake hissing in my ear that he is right, and I’m fooling myself.

If he had a face, I could shout at him. But he’s faceless.

The light dies in his wake. He is a void, a black hole, a shadow like the dark of space with no stars. And he’s patient. He waits. Someday the sun will be gone too, vanished within the black vortex that is him.