The Nightmare

Once upon a midnight dreary,

While I pondered, weak and weary,

An eerie presence filled the air,

A sense of dread, I couldn't bear.

Through the darkness, shadows danced,

Their silent whispers, half-chanced,

And in the corner, a figure stood,

A phantom cloaked in somber mood.

Its eyes, like coals of fiery red,

Bore into my soul with dread,

Its voice, a rasp, a chilling tone,

Sending shivers to my very bone.

"Come closer," it softly hissed,

Its words like venom, persist,

"Embrace the darkness, fear the light,

The terror of this haunting night."

Trepidation gripped my heart,

As I took a step, compelled to start,

Into the abyss, the void unknown,

Where sanity and reason are overthrown.

Through the corridors of my mind,

I wandered, lost, no solace to find,

Each door I opened revealed a fright,

A gruesome scene in the dead of night.

Tormented spirits wailed and moaned,

Their ghostly cries forever intoned,

Their faces twisted, contorted in pain,

Trapped in a purgatory they can't explain.

I fled from room to room, in despair,

But the nightmare clung, it wouldn't spare,

The walls closed in, the ceiling pressed,

A claustrophobic grip, I was oppressed.

In the depths of darkness, I suffocated,

Reality and fantasy intertwined and fated,

A maddening cacophony, a symphony of fear,

As I trembled, trembling with every tear.

And as the moonlight pierced the gloom,

I awoke, gasping, in my room,

Drenched in sweat, heart pounding fast,

Relieved to find the nightmare had passed.

But a lingering sense of horror remained,

A reminder that fear cannot be contained,

For in the depths of our deepest dread,

Lie the demons that haunt us, living or dead.

So beware the whispers in the night,

The lurking shadows, the chilling sight,

For once they've cast their haunting spell,

Escape may be a tale no one can tell.