I am horror, I am madness, I’m the shadow in your heart; I’m the wicked things that whisper in the wind. I’m the dark hand that reaches in and steals your soul, that weeds out every gentle bud of calm. I am the seed of dread in reason’s stable soil. Silently I sprout, spread, blossom into blackest fear. I am your panic, the nectar sucked from evil’s bloom. I brush your vocal cords and hear you scream; I touch your sanity and watch it fail. I am the cold sweat on your forehead and the shaking in your knees. I am your nightmare, all you fear unbound. I am terror—and I am alive.

Does that answer your question? You, hiding over there, cowering in the corner? Sickly in the violet light, trembling and weak? You sit there and stammer, asking over and over, like the answer’s going to change. “W-what are you? What are you?”

Oh, darling. You know exactly what I am.

I’m the monster in your closet; I’m the werewolf hunting you. I’m a witch’s dance by moonlight in the woods. I’m the fangs that drink your ruby life, a rising, rotting corpse. I’m the silver specter moaning through your dreams. I grow, I grasp, and when I take you, I rule. I sweep through you now with the force of a storm, haunting, howling, fierce. Wrapping you up, smothering you, drowning you in bleak dismay—you are hopeless, gone. I am all you feel, all you know. And at the end of the day, at the end of your life, I am all you are—because all you are is what you fear.

Darling, don’t you see? You don’t exist without me. I shape you, define you. Your life was nothing, your emotions unworked clay, until I found you. I am your purpose. I am your meaning. And I am the answer to the question you’re still asking.

I am fear. And now I have arrived.