Torn between that, tool, and some weird trance metal band I just found. *shrug*

Sometimes, my brain goes to extremely dark places. Maybe it's my imagination in overdrive. Maybe it's the macabre artist in me peeking out and screwing with me. Maybe it's just me.

It used to be worse when I overused caffeine. I lived in a constant state of terror, hallucinating and completely unsure of what was real and what was pretend. The things I saw, the things I expected to see, and the things that played out behind my eyes were horrific and explicit. It was like dreaming for years, never quite coming out of the nightmare.

The last time it was particularly bad was a couple of years ago, when on a midnight trip out of town we punted a wild boar across the road via Sir's brand new mustang's fender. In an effort to make the drive, which totaled five hours in two legs, and also get through classes, work, and homework before it, I'd had quite a bit of coffee and ritalin. I thought they'd worn off as I drifted to sleep in the passenger seat until impact, when all of a sudden everything in my bloodstream surged into action and I started to hyperventilate. I was terrified to look out the window into the pitch black countryside, terrified to open the door, terrified to move at all while tears streamed down my face and I struggled to breathe through my clenching throat.

The impact took out the lights on one side of the car, killed the engine, and shorted the electrical. The radio tried to turn itself on and off again, playing static intermittently and cycling CDs at random. The hazards flashed, soaking the last of our power, but there wasn't enough power in the switch to turn them off and conserve it. Sir grabbed a large knife and stepped out to look for the pig and make sure it had died. If you're not familiar with wild boars, they don't die easily and not much stands successfully between a pissed off pig and its target.

He found the thing dead in the ditch. We had sent it flying in front of a passing car, narrowly missing their windshield, and he seemed to have taken the entire impact on his massive face and shoulders – DOA.

It took me an hour to come down from the surge of terror. Police came and went, both state and local. A friend came and picked us up while the mustang was towed. For the next several weeks I was unable to look out the right side of the car when driving at night. I wouldn't go outside in the dark, either. My throat would clench and I would start to cry.

Since that incident, and since I stopped using so much caffeine and quit relying on the ritalin that shouldn't have been given to me in such high doses in the first place, I have almost never hallucinated. That accompanying sense of terror, feeling of wrong, that came with it has also vanished for the most part. Anxiety still exists. Fear still exists. But they are nothing like the overwhelming horror that nothing is real but it can kill you that came with my old horrors.

Well, that's wrong. There was a dog we found lying on the side of the road mostly dead that kept me from walking in the dark, but beyond the typical hauntings of such an event that never get easier to handle, there hasn't been anything like that.

Until tonight, of course. I finally get to my real story.

Tonight I was lying in Sir's parent's bedroom. They have gone out of state for the holidays, and their bed is much, much better than the couch I've been sleeping on (plus, climbing stairs after firefighter training is much more painful than one might guess). I'm not entirely comfortable in that room. There are windows with no lights outside of them, so one can see in but not out. There is a long dark hallway leading to it, from which one can't see out from very easily. I feel vulnerable, but the bed is worth it.

Another flaw in the room is the door. The latch doesn't quite close all the way, creating that false sense of security that when broken does horrible things to one's mind. Sir let their german shorthaired pointer inside the house from the petsitter and left. She cleverly got the door open, much to my horror, and settled herself on the dog bed beyond the foot of the bed I was occupying.

I look down and, like some kind of dream, I see her face over the foot of the bed. It is distorted, warped, twisted, and clearly dead. I realize it couldn't possibly be that high in the air, so I sit up and peer over. Her dead eyes follow me, and I see that she's sitting up on her hind legs. Her gruesome face twists into a snarl and she dashes around the side of the bed and lunges at me.

She is, of course, still sleeping peacefully at the foot of the bed.

I lay back down, afraid to take my eyes off her and afraid to look at her all at the same time. My mind has become that dark substance again. I'm on no stimulants, only non-drowsy cold medicine. It wasn't solid enough to be a hallucination, and there was no tell-tale throat closing. It wasn't a regular, macabre thought process, either – it ruled my brain for the rest of the night. Even now I keep seeing her face, twisted up and exposed. I can't stop seeing it. Not a dream, because I wasn't asleep. Not a hallucination. Just…just me.

I thought I was getting better, but I feel more like I'm slipping back into that world where reality is a gigantic question mark, only this time I'm not doing it to myself.