List of Fears

Chapter 1: The Darkness

Darryl lay in his bed in the darkness, doing everything in his power not fall asleep. He clenched and unclenched his toes, hoping the movement would keep him awake. Then he did the same thing with his fists. He dug his fingernails deeply into his palms so that it hurt. It still wasn't working. He could feel the lids of his eyes growing heavier with each passing moment. He opened his eyes as wide as he could and stared up at the dark, empty ceiling. His eyes began to burn as invisible specs of dust landed on his eyeballs. He fought the urge to close his eyes but they began to water and he was soon forced to blink. A tear trickled down the side of his face.

None of physical tricks that Darryl had used in the past were working so he knew what he had to do. He hated it, but he knew he had to. Darryl began replaying baseball games that he'd played in park in his head. To ease himself into it, Darryl started by thinking about positive moments, moments when he got a hit or made a nice catch or throw. But remembering the good moments did nothing to keep him awake. In fact, they only seemed to speed up his drift into unconsciousness. So Darryl took the next step. He started picturing every mistake that he had ever made on the baseball field in his mind. He recalled the ridicule when he struck out, the cat calls when he booted a ground ball. Over and over again, he let himself relive the moment when he had dropped an easy fly ball, allowing the other team to score three runs and win the game. His stomach turned but on that night, even the bad memories weren't doing the job. No matter what Darryl did, his mind kept drifting towards emptiness.

Darryl wondered if he'd been awake long enough already. He sat up in his bed and listened. He turned the side of his head towards the open bedroom door and listened. Beneath the sounds of the television, Darryl could still faintly hear the sound of his mother shuffling around the living room. She was still awake. He needed her to be asleep. He didn't dare get out of bed until she was asleep. Desperate, Darryl decided to take drastic measures. He began to imagine bodies, dead bodies. He imagined them piling up atop a wheelbarrow being pushed slowly down a dirt road. The bodies were piled up so high that Darryl couldn't even make out the face of the man behind them, pushing the wheelbarrow. The image in his head was so vivid that he could smell the stench rising off the rotting corpses. He could hear the sound of the flies buzzing around them. His heart began to race. He could feel sweat rise on his palms. He endured. He didn't even try to wrench the image from his head. It was working. The image haunted him. He knew that, now that the image was in his head, he was stuck with it. He had no power over it any more. Darryl followed the image of the cart in his mind. Every so often someone would come out of house along the side of the dirt road and throw another body on to the heap. Darryl could see each of the bodies so clearly. Their skin was almost a translucent but still had a strange blue hue. The bodies were covered in boils and bruises. He saw their faces, void of expression, their eyes glassy and empty; their jaws hanging slack beneath their noses. Time passed. Real time passed. Darryl didn't know how much time but he knew that he was still awake. Sleep wasn't going to come to him for a long time now.

Darryl sat up in his bed again. He could still here the sound of the voices coming from the television but the sound of his mother's shuffling was gone. It worked. At least, it seemed to work. Even as young as Darryl was, however, he wasn't the type to take a thing like that for granted. Before he made his next move, he had to see for himself that his mother was truly asleep. He pulled his sheets aside and swung his legs over the side of his bed. Before he'd gotten into bed, Darryl had placed a pair of socks on his night stand. He grabbed them now and slipped them on to his feet. He used the socks to muffle the sound of his footsteps. He dropped his newly sock adorned feet onto the linoleum floor and stoop up.

It wasn't a long walk down the hallway from Darryl's bedroom to the living room. During the daytime Darryl didn't even notice the distance. During the night, however, in the darkness, trying to be silent, the hallway looked long and ominous. The darkness stretched it out like a hallway in a funhouse. At the far end of the hallway, Darryl could see the blue-gray shadows born from the flickering light of the television as the shadows danced along the walls. It made the walls appear to be alive. Darryl put one hand against the wall behind him and stepped slowly down the hallway towards the moving shadows. He placed each foot on the floor gently before putting any weight on it, making sure no footstep squeaked. All the while, he listened. He listened to see if he could hear any sound other than the laughter echoing from the audience of whatever late night talk show his mother watched as she fell asleep.

Slowly, Darryl found himself near the end of the hallway. He leaned his back against the wall so that the living room was behind him. He took a deep breath. Then, with only one eye at first, he leaned into the emptiness of the doorway and peeked into the living room. At first all he could see was moving light. The light from the television was so much brighter. It flashed around the room, changing colors and intensity with each new second. It took a moment for Darryl's eyes to adjust. When his eyes finished adjusting to the flickering light, he could see his mother lying with her eyes closed in the middle of the pull-out sofa. Ever since his father left them-so for almost as long as Darryl could remember-his mother had fallen asleep with the television on. At some point in the middle of the night she would wake up and turn it off. She used to sleep in Darryl's room. Darryl used to sleep on the sofa. Then, when Darryl turned ten years old, his mother gave him his own room and she began to sleep on the pull-out. It was his birthday present. His mother said that a growing boy needed to have some privacy. Even though his mother still wouldn't let him close his door after nine o'clock at night, it was by far the best present Darryl had ever gotten.

Darryl stared at his mother. Even sleeping, there was no peace in her face. Her eyes were closed tight and her mouth was turned down in an unpleasant scowl. Her jaw was clenched and Darryl could see her grinding her teeth together. Darryl traced his eyes down to her chest. He watched her chest rise and fall with each breath. He counted the number of seconds for each rise and fall. Three seconds-that's what he was comfortable with. He knew from experience that if each breath took three seconds, that meant his mother was sound asleep. He counted. Inhale. One, two. Exhale. Three. He was satisfied. Now he could get the work.