Waiting

I used to know a guy who would sit in dark rooms. Would do it often... just find a corner and sit there. Alone, in the dark. Waiting. He told me he did it just to see if all this was worth it. Said he had to know if there was anything else. I'd always ask if he'd seen things. He'd just smirk and tell me things are clearer in the dark. Fucking crazy kid if you ask me, because I've tried it, I've been trying it, and it's always the same - there's nothing. Nothing clear. Nothing nothing. You feel stupid actually. At least I do. Just sitting there, in the dark, waiting for something that you've told yourself, all your life, doesn't exist. Waiting for something to show from nothing. Not even really sure of what you're waiting for. It's fucking stupid actually - a waste of time. Just thinking of how often I do it sickens me.

The part I can't get over, though, isn't the waiting. It's not the hour or two of constantly grazing the room for light because, if you fix your eyes in a spot for even a second, the darkness saturates the room like blood to a cotton ball. It's not that time that gets me. Nor is it the numb feeling that hits you near the base of your brain when you realize that your most valuable sense is completely useless to you now; you're temporarily blind. You try to listen, too. But there's nothing. And that's not the part that gets me either. Its a much more peculiar moment, a more memorable feeling. Even more peculiar than when you've sat there for so long, without movement or sound, that you begin to feel like you are the darkness. Like if you were to step outside your body and flash a bright light in the room, you would see nothing. Not even that stupid fucking kid in the corner...waiting. And it's more memorable than the feeling you get beforehand, when you first close the door to the room and, just before you flick the light switch off, you realize you might see something you don't want to see.

It's not either of these that get me. It's the walk out that gets me, the one time there's movement in the room. I know it doesn't sound like anything phenomenal; it's far from it actually. But its during this time that I can't help but feel fear; the goosebumps tell it all. I'm not sure if its the feeling that something might suddenly leap out from the darkness and pull me back into the corner and hold me there forever, but I know its during this time that I get the eeriest thought: what if the whole time I had been sitting there, the thing I was waiting for was inside me all along. What if I was waiting for me.

I tell you, it's a fucking waste of time. And it makes me sick.