As the clock chimes were swallowed by the night, I was terrified. Whispers of doom grated through my ears and into my brain, tempting me to leave the world behind. Shadows waltzed across my unseeing eyes; something evil was trying to summon me.
I firmly gripped my reality in clammy, clenched fists-- refraining from spinning away into endless oblivion. Sweet, bottomless oblivion... Precious hours of nothingness...
Isolated in my room, consumed in the inky stygian, the impulse only grew stronger. There was nobody to stop me from going except myself. Normally a friend or a family member, or even a therapist would creep cautiously to my bedside and implore me to just let go. I never could. Something always held me back-- my fears.
Every time I disappeared, the same forms of visions always swooped over me: plummeting down with a frayed rope in my hands, watching my friends freeze to death around me, seeing my own heart devoured in flames. No matter how many doctors I saw, or how much medication I took, the terrors would never go away. There was only one way to assure that I would never, under any circumstances, see them again.
Cool blades of temptation speared my eyes. My body pleaded for an end to such cruel retaliation. But I could not fall away again-- I could not give in to myself.
Minutes, hours, days passed, and I remained resistant against the forces that attempted to push me off the dizzying cliff of my consciousness. I tried anything to keep my eyes open; moving around, pinching my arms... but even those actions eventually lost their effectiveness. Eventually, I lost the strength to even budge in my bed.
My last days awake were always horrid, when the symptoms of exhaustion truly kicked in. Despite my tormented, fearful supplication echoing about in my mind, and the petrified screeching of my last self I was consumed in nullity.
I closed my eyes.