Between Mind and Madness

Between Mind and Madness
A Ten-Sentence Horror Story
By Joseph Cillo, Jr.

I had become used to them coming in the night, in the half-sleep of waking. A voice, but more than a voice--a presence, unsettling, and thus far more memorable than the whispered words that leave indecipherable trails covered so quickly by conscious thoughts. They tempt, or bring to mind long forgotten sins not adequately confessed, and thus, unabsolved, tickling my illicit desires or vexing my conscience, according to their particular disposition. Brutish they are, or seductive, if lust is their temptation, and always sly, or attempting to be so, as their preference is to hide and pretend to be my own mind, my own desire, my own regret. But I see them and know them for what they are, and they have no power over me. Easy they are to resist, and once discovered, they flee.

But then, he comes. Powerful, elegant, sophisticated, supremely confident, almost beautiful, or something about him betraying an ancient beauty lost and now--terrifying. Knowing him for what he is, I cry out in the silence of my mind, "Mother of God, help me! Crush his head!"

And now, fully awake, the ancient malevolence of the lost garden fades and I tremble in fear, knowing that tonight, once more, the pall of sleep will beckon and the thing from hell that awaits me in the half-waked world between mind and madness has honed his diabolic schemes in which to trap my everlasting soul and drag it to that place of torment from whence it came, and from which not the dimmest hope escapes.