There is nothing, nothing but sheer blackness, so dense it feels like I could hold it if I wanted. It encased me, it cradled me, and it felt like the game my older brother used to play with me, when he would pick me up and pretend like he was going to drop me. It was darkness, and I was afraid of it.

I can remember being little, and being afraid of the dark. I remember gathering up all of my blankets and falling asleep by my nightlight, plugged into my wall, and pretending the monsters under my bed either didn’t exist or couldn’t get me in the glow of the small light. Shaking in my sheets, I will always remember watching the closet at night, terrified, and hoping the ghost living inside wouldn’t creep out and capture me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been afraid of the dark, among many many other things. But unlike most children who conquer their fear of the dark by at least age ten, mine grew into something more powerful than myself.

I can’t really say why I was so afraid of the dark, I just knew something was wrong with it. I suppose you could call it an irrational fear, a piece of the neurosis I blame all my fears on, but truthfully, it’s just sheer fear of the unknown.

When the power goes out in my house, it’s normally during the day. My computer shuts itself off and I find myself annoyed at having to recover documents, wishing I had saved more often. There is no cause for alarm and I am not afraid. Everything is fine. But there was one night I remember, when a squirrel had managed to somehow climb into the transformer giving power to my house. While being electrocuted and slowly dying, it had managed to claw up the insides of the machine, shredding most of the circuitry to pieces, thus shutting off power for my entire neighborhood.

I am an insomniac, meaning I have a lot of trouble sleeping if I’m not sedated, and as such there are some nights when I don’t sleep at all. I’m awake in a fully lit room, reading a book or something of the like. I pretend that the creaks and groans of my house and the animals I own don’t sound like intruders, while the metal baseball bat I nicknamed Denmark sits within arm’s reach. All of these noises force me into a state of paranoia, making it harder than ever to sleep.

Last year, when the squirrel had managed to climb into that transformer, I was doing exactly that. Paranoid and very frightened, I read a book. When the power went out, and I was left with no light but a street lamp outside my window and a city block away.

And I screamed. I felt sure I was drowning in the dense blackness, I couldn’t breathe and my throat was closing up. There were shapes of unknown origin flying at my from every direction, things that couldn’t have possibly have been there. There were skulls dancing behind my eyes and I felt sure I was either dreaming or going insane, more probably the latter. I fell off my bed, clutching Denmark and panting. The door opened.

There was a breathless, strangled cry followed by a sigh working their way out of my throat, through my mouth and across my lips, the bat falling to the floor with a most satisfying clunk as I realized exactly why the door had opened. It was my mother, holding a lit candle. Never have I felt so much comfort from that image, the dim sillouette of my mother in my bedroom doorway, holding a lit tealight and rushing to my side.

"Hush, sweetie," she told me, helping me off the floor. We sat on the bed, the still-glowing candle abandoned on my end table as she wrapped her arms around me in a maternal embrace of pure comfort. "I promise it’s alright. It was just a squirrel in the transformer. No one's here but us."

And I believed her.