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Alone With Fear

A Short Story

By Cameron BauderPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 10 min read
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Alone With Fear
Photo by Kamil Feczko on Unsplash

I pulled hard on my fishing pole against whatever lay beneath the water. My boat rocked back and forth as I struggled with my soon to be prize. Just a little more. Just a little longer. I gave one last yank at my opponent, and he emerged from the water. I might be 97 years old, but I still had it in me. It wasn’t as big as I thought it was, but it was still a good enough size for dinner. I sat down in my boat to catch my breath. The air felt clean today. Fresh like the world had been reset. In these parts of the woods there was a slight gray look to everything. The lack of color you might think would make it look depressing, but it was one of those places on Earth where the opposite was true. It was beautiful. The lack of color was due to the gray clouds which hung in the sky. It was going to rain today; I could feel it. The folks in town had said tonight the comet could be seen but with the way things looked now I wasn’t so sure.

A felt a drop of water hit my nose and quickly grabbed the oars to begin my journey back. The silence of the woods soon became a noisy nature city as the rain grew louder. Still, it was peaceful. Something I had struggled my whole life to find.

I managed to drag the boat ashore and slowly walked up to my cabin. Once inside I hung up my coat, took a nice warm shower, and began processing the fish for dinner. It was dark out now and the rain was still hitting against my cabin windows. The rain combined with the sound of the fish sizzling on the stove was yet again another moment of peace in this world.

I eventually got lost in the sound and spaced out into the world most of us go when we take a break from reality. That moment where we just stare seemingly at nothing. I then caught myself from falling into that hole for hours, took a deep breath and look to my left at the window.

I often made this mistake.

I was alone in these woods, and I had always had a fear of the unknown since I was a child. When I was 9 years old, I went to a friend’s lake and discovered my fear of open water. We had been swimming when something brushed up against my leg. Most likely a fish but at the time my imagination got the better of me and images of scary creatures flashed in my head as my mind came up with a solution for the void.

It was a small moment, but the fear grew from there. Eventually even man-made pools terrified me. I was never a strong swimmer to begin with, but this fear of the water made it worse. At the age of 14, I began experimenting with this fear and eventually learned to enjoy it, as strange as that might sound. I would look up images of large bodies of water and receive that feeling of dread every time. This inspired my love for scary movies and books. The feeling was, at the time, refreshing but only because it was different from the protective space I had lived in my whole life as a child.

A burning smell began to fill my nose as I snapped back out of the void again. I must have fallen back in at some point. I quickly flipped the fish over in the pan to reveal a slightly darker and burnt side. I gave a deep sigh and once again looked out the window. That fear of the unknown hit me again.

When I was 6 or 7 years old, I had learned to be afraid of the dark after an encounter with something in my bedroom. I had awoken in the middle of the night after going to bed in the safety of the sunlight. It was dark except for a streetlamp which happened to shine through my window and cast a square of light upon the floor. I immediately knew something was wrong as I looked around my room. It was empty except for me, my blanket, and a pillow. The blank walls felt off and a deep fear began to settle inside my heart.

There were three points I remember which spawned an even greater fear for me at the time. The window, my closet, and the door to my bedroom. For what might have been an hour I stayed frozen in fear shifting between the three points. Waiting. For what I don’t know. All I know is that it came.

I was curled up in a ball. Afraid to make a sound. Afraid to move. Afraid to close my eyes when my closet door shifted and slowly began to open. It was at this moment my fear was overshadowed by a sudden wave of human instinct to survive. I got up and rushed to my door only to find that when I twisted the handle it was locked.

If you know anything about interior doors, the locks usually are from the inside so you can lock people out, not lock people in. What you should also know is that my door didn’t have locks on it.

I remember my blood becoming cold, tears beginning to well up in my eyes. The only option was to turn around and hope that I could keep whatever it was in my closet away using only the power of my sight.

It was silent. Nothing. Just nothing. An empty room, a half opened closet door, and a square of light on the ground. Eventually another variable was added. Eyes. If I squinted while looking in the closet, I could see a pair of eyes. Eyes which stared at me. Then a hand left the pitch-black darkness of the closet and into the somewhat lit space. I couldn’t see what it was, but I knew it wasn’t human. It began to crawl slowly in an unnatural and jittery motion toward me. It was at this moment I began banging on the door for my parents to let me out. Every time I turned back to look it was closer and closer. I screamed and screamed until I turned around one final time to see it enter the square of light, revealing it’s face.

Then the door opened.

My parents rushed in, and I hugged them tightly. Soon after calming down, I turned back to my room only to find it once again filled with my toys, bed, and pictures. Like the events from before happened inside some alternate, empty world.

The burning smell once again hit my nose. I slammed my fist on the counter to wake myself up and just decided the fish was done.

Sitting down to eat my dinner, I took a bite, and the fish wasn’t all that bad. Definitely burnt but not that bad. I decided to sit with my back toward the window in case it spawned any more memories for me to get lost in. I didn’t want to eat cold fish. After finishing my meal, I went to the fridge and pulled out a chocolate cake I had purchased from town. Chocolate cake wasn’t my all time favorite. I preferred marble because of the mix of flavors but the store was out. After taking one bite I closed my eyes. Here once again was another moment of peace on this planet. That moment of taking the first bite of a really good chocolate cake. I took a deep breath while chewing the delicious cake. Checking the time, I realized it was past midnight. Today was my birthday. I was now 98 years old now. I didn’t have any candles, but I pretended to blow some out and made my wish.

On my 7th birthday I wished for a red firetruck toy.

On my 10th birthday I wished for a puppy.

My 12th birthday a cool robot toy.

My 15th birthday a gaming system.

18th was money.

21st was money.

22nd nothing.

23rd world peace.

24th Happiness.

And it continued like that for years.

For some reason tonight I didn’t know what to wish for. Maybe it was another year of nothing. I pretty much had everything I wanted.

Suddenly a sound came from behind me as something smacked against my window. I quickly turned and there was nothing except the pitch-black outside and rain droplets falling down the glass. That space in the window seemed fake. Like it was a hole in the world. My imagination began trying to fill the void. It was murderer, a monster, a creature from some dimension unknown. I brushed off the sound as merely a bird hitting against the window. I had gotten good at controlling my imagination as I grew older. I put on my coat, my shoes, opened the door and once again was outside in the rain. It was around the time those folks from town said the comet would be making its appearance. The rain slowly began to die down to the point where I could make a fire. After several minutes of colleting the necessary wood from inside my cabin I had a small warm fire going. Living in the woods, I had learned to overcome my fear of the unknown but there were times when it got the better of me. Instead of running away from situation which could spawn fear I had learned to simply continue living and experience everything for what it was.

The fire was warm. Once again, a peaceful moment. I looked up to see the clouds beginning to glow. Something was behind them. Suddenly I had the idea of sitting out on the water in my boat. Once on the water I put the oars in the boat. The water was still. I then saw a light reflecting in the water and look up at the sky to see the clouds shifting away from something I had never seen in my 98 years of living. There in the sky was the comet. It really was quite beautiful. It hung there above like a paused moment.

Eventually the clouds had disappeared, and the lake water reflected the stars. It was like floating through space. I looked down at the water at the reflection of the comet. It was a perfect copy. The only thing getting in the way was my own reflection which stared at me. With it being dark I couldn’t see ally my features, but I could see my outline. I got a strange feeling in my gut and decided to pull myself back into the center of the boat. A horrifying scene of my reflection pulling me into the lake played out in my head and once again my imagination got the better of me.

I glanced over at my fire on shore to see the last of its flames dying out. This is when I saw the door to my cabin open. I had closed it before I left shore. A deep fear sprang into my heart. This wasn’t my imagination. I then caught sight of something on shore. It was a tall figure whose features I couldn’t make out. From there I saw more and more standing around shore. They were staring at me. After squinting for a while trying to make out features on their faces, I realized there were none. What I saw was all there was. Shadows. They slowly began walking toward me on the water.

For some reason I gave a smile to myself. What should be a horrifying moment felt peaceful. I looked down at the comet below. It was beautiful. I felt myself slipping again into the void as I stared at it.

I was already gone before they reached me.

Short Story
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