My Anxiety | A Short Story

"To survive, you must tell stories," -Umberto Eco

The pounding of my heart jolts me out of sleep. Breathing in and out, the sheets stick to my clammy body, my pajamas cooking me in the heat of the summer night.

The popcorn ceiling looks black and white. Sleep still tugs at my vision, at my consciousness.

Silence. The air conditioner hums deep within the house. The faint whine of crickets in the bushes outside my window.

Something rustles in the corner. Left. Clawing at the sheets, billowing them in and out to get the stale air circulating, I sit up.

Nothing.

I lay back down, my entire body heaving and pulsing. A flutter burns in my gut.

A crash bursts out of the same corner, like a shelf fell right off of it's post. Jolted with panic, I sit up, gnarling the sheets around my legs.

Nothing. Just black shadows, stagnant, diffused, created only by the light of the moon from behind my curtains.

I lay back down.

I close my eyes, try to sleep. Air conditioning, crickets, everything natural, everything normal.

The flutter burns, grows until it scales up and down my back. Arching, I itch my spine. There's nothing there, I tell myself, my back is pressed up against the mattress, there's nothing there.

I roll over, facing away from the site of the crash. Rustling, unnatural movements come from the endless labyrinths of shadows.

It's a rat. It's a spider. It's a rabid dog.

In a solid moment of panic, I sit up again, only to find the bitter relief of nothing.

Nothing.

Crawling, hissing, jittering around like a solid ball of energy, waiting to explode in the darkness.

It's a ghost. It's a demon. It's everything I fear.

Tearing the sheets off, I claw at my light switch. Light explodes out of the fixture on my ceiling, chasing away every shadow with ravenous delight.

I peer into the corner, trying to push past the piles of clothes and clutter and dust, to find something, something of what I was seeing, hearing, feeling.

But there's nothing. Not a speck out of place.

Padding along the floor, I near the corner. Seemingly normal, seemingly okay.

My heartbeat screams in my ears, my blood races under my fingernails, my breathing ragged like grasping at threads.

I kick at the pile of dirty clothes, and they rocket forward, slamming against the wall with a slap. I push over my art table, pens breaking, bottles of paint splattering, paper crumpling. I throw books over my shoulder, banging, crashing against my own safe haven.

Heaving, trembling, staring at the mass destruction I raged on nothing, I walk back over, turn off the light, and crawl back into bed.

But I know, tomorrow night, it will be back. The thing, the tightness in my jaw, the single candle of nervousness under my diaphragm.

My anxiety.

~The WordShaker