All Hallows' Eve
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Ding-dong
The doorbell sounded.
At the risk of sounding like a complete scrooge, Halloween is such a tedious, annoying night. It's holiday I begrudgingly observe due to rooting myself in suburbia and to a zealous girlfriend with a propensity for all things Hallmark. She’s a passionate woman; it might be her best quality. She has a fervor about life that makes up for my colorless self. Where she shines, big shadows are cast. Unfortunately, our differing personalities can create a bit of dissonance. I’m often dragged along for the ride – concerts, parties, holidays. You could say I'm not big on fun.
It’s a small price to pay for the devotion and security she gives me, but boy can it be irritating. As exemplified tonight.
I got up from my computer and crossed the basement floor. I was on Trick-or-Treat duty since my girlfriend had a test in an important night class. That left me to the responsibility of awkwardly doling m&m snack size candies and boxes of nerds. I'm not good with kids. I don’t quite know how to interface with them. All I usually muster is an unnatural smile and a “have a good night, be careful out there.”
I made my way through the basement threshold and up a small set of stairs, grabbing the candy bowl off a table by the front door. I dully rattled the bowl, just to break up the brief moment of pause I took before I clasped the door's handle, gave a slight sigh as if to signify a shift to a more inviting personality, and started to open the door.
What struck me all the sudden was an enveloping sense of dread, the likes of which I had never known. It blanketed every fiber of my being. The suddenness of its onset made just served to compound the terror more. I stopped with the door only slightly ajar. I was suffocating with fear.
It was like someone had flipped a switch and I had awakened unknown to a terrible, pervading undercurrent that had always been there, but was rarely perceived. It was the purest form of terror, the kind that did not induce revulsion, but rather robbed you of your resistance. Accompanying this newfound terror was an urge. An invitation. I knew I was to open this door. The dread left no question. It was absolute. It had to be realized. This was to be inevitability, my life to go out like a horror show.
Ding-dong
A dull tone split my ears. It compelled me. Open the door. My throat tightened and my stomach hallowed out. My hair stood in anticipation. I wheezed down what I knew was to be my last few breaths. I obeyed.
What had come to take me were the very personifications of terror. The embodiments thought up and cemented in our camp fire stories, our literature, our movies, and our games to give voice and alleviate our our fears. Not the fear of what goes bump in the night, but of the implacable. That abyss that awaits all of us. The one seeped into everything we endeavor, everything we commit to – relationships, careers, religion. That intangible motivator that colors our psyches and drives us to the trappings of society. Fear itself, alive:
The Dread God Cthulhu
Darth Nihilus, Lord of Hunger.
Pennywise the Dancing Clown
Saya
The Stay Puft Marshmellow Man
With alien unison, etched into the very night, a terrible sound formed:
Once more, I obeyed.