As a person, I do not get afraid. I do not feel fear. I had to begun to think it trite. Cliche' perhaps, because while I still believed it, I hadn't run into any situation I would describe as provoking of a fear response, except for maybe my birthday when I hung off of that cliff, but even then, I felt no fear.

I clutched my blanket and turned on the light. Absolute stark terror coursed through every vein. Low levels of adrenaline. Increased respiration.

I shook like a leaf. So this is terror.

This is what people feel like when they are afraid. Now I undoubtedly know.

I turned on some more lights, and sat on one of my couches, trying to calm down. I was a raw nerve of fear.

In the distance, a dog barked, awoken by my scream of pure undiluted terror.

All around me I felt evil. Malevolence. Immediately, perhaps irrationally, I thought of T*, perhaps haunting me to the nth degree for laying my hands on his remarried wife.

Oppressive evil. Pulsating evil. Watching me, it felt like.

I tried to remember what it was that caused this in me, but mercifully, most of the memory faded when I awoke. I remember everything taken from me family, friends, everything. And running. From someone or something. I may have been tortured at some point. I think something crashed into a skyscraper I was running towards, and it split falling in a half on top of me.

Did I just witness my own death?

Horrible, horrible, horrible.

I left a light on and tried to go back to sleep, figuring a light, as if I were a child, would assuage my fear.

No dice. I still felt this overwhelming sense of evil. Like some-thing was watching me, but for the life of me I could not explain what or who. If a demon had clambored in through the door, I would not have been the least bit surprised. In fact, I would have been sort of relieved, having something tangible to focus on, like a burglar, to hit and turn this fear into rage, to win and triumph over, so this horrible gnawing fear would go away. So that there was some rational explanation.

I just saw my own death.

It kept ringing through my head. Not the first time I've seen my own death, but the first time I've ever had a reaction quite like this. What is so different about this time? I do not know.

I just saw my own death.

I decided to have a ciggarrette to calm my nerves. I got up, and sat on the porch and smoked, feeling tired, but also feeling like I'd never go to sleep again.

I still felt the malevolence, but to a lesser degree. I still felt watched. This made me angry, as I looked for something tangible to blame this on, to hold accountable.

Nothing. No one.

I smoked my smoke, drank a glass of water and went downstairs to my room. The malevolence was still there, like an echo of violence it seemed, aware and evil.

I sat on my couch and watched some bad, bad, bad late night T.V. Some PBS telethon trying to sell me a Feng Shui book for 75 or 125 dollars, I wasn't sure. Part of All in the Family, where Edith's cousin tries to tell her she's a lesbian with another lesbian in the family. (That didn't come in so well) And Dr. Laura Schlesinger, and her no nonsense talks show format where people come to her for advice and she tells them exactly what to think.

I used to have the hots for Dr. Laura when I was driving around the inner city, doing family work, dispensing therapy "in the feild", driving of course, a company car with no tape or cd player. Drive for ten hours plus in a day, and you will listen to anything. And that pushy way she has brought several scenarios to mind. But no matter now. She's...not my type.

After two segments of Dr. Laura, my nerves had calmed to the point where I could try sleeping. Besides, what was the option? Start calling people I know, and find out if someone died?

I still felt the evil, the malevolence. But I'm not a preist, and I have little idea what to do about that. So I prayed.

First a canned prayer I learned as a child when demons would torture me in my dreams, rending the flesh from my skin, clawing at me in my dreams, me uttering it out with a tongue like lead, waking up as I struggled, uttering the words, "I call upon the power of Christ's ressurection, and the protection of His blood which He shed for me for the remission of my sins..."

Nothing. I really have questions about Christ, and have been clearly questioning His divinity, which tends to invalidate any faith I could put in something like that.

Then I prayed to God. This is not as odd as it may seem, given my penchant for so-called blashphemy, as I pray to God a lot. Posing my questions, hoping for an answer in some way shape or form, seeking to know and understand.

I prayed to God like I did as a very small child, asking him to put up a wall around me to keep the bad things out. To fill up my room with angels, so none of the bad things could get in, to send an arch-angel to watch over me as I slept, and for God himself to come and sit on my bed, thinking His prescence would be the ultimate security. I prayed for His courage, strenght and peace, and to watch over me as I slept.

Did the trick, as embarrassed as I am to admit it. I was relaxed to the point where I could sleep.

I awoke, and still felt the malevolence. And really, I still do. The world seems a mix of a Kubrik/Stone film. Everything has sharp edges, and I feel mocked in the calls of the mockingbirds.

I feel followed and watched. And this bothers me.

But in the end, I have no worries, because what is the worse that can happen?

What, watch myself die?

Again?