They said the Boogeymen don’t exist, said that they were only figments of our imagination. For me, I thought they only existed as long as I thought about them, as long as I was a child because those Boogeymen, they grew up with me. They were the ghouls that moaned their racial slurs because beneath their words I knew lied hatred and the will for violence. They would tear me apart and gnaw through the tender exterior of my colored flesh, past the very veins that rendered the spit from their mouths as nothing but vain themselves.

As I entered middle school, however, I assumed the haunts of my daylight nightmares would have aged out of their old ways. I was happy, for the moment, as I dispelled my disbelief of their existence but only to find they found new ways, lurking behind the guise of friendly faces with their biting stereotypes. Their shadows crossed the faces of dark strangers who Cerberusly barked at me to keep away lest I find a quicker way into Hades.

They said the Boogeymen don’t exist, said that they were only figments of our imagination. No, they exist. They found that they couldn’t catch me under my covers in sleep so they ambushed me in the light, the only other sanctuary I thought was safe. I tell you, the Boogeymen exist.