I could see the light of the sun slipping through my eyelids. The warmth reached around the corner of the wall through the window and blanketed the bed. I started to sweat and removed the blankets from over my body, tossing and turning trying to find comfort.
      Every day, it seemed, I would do relatively the same thing from awaking to the moment I lost consciousness. The dream world I housed in my head was a civilization of constant nightmares of murder, torture, truly gruesome things. It would consume me if not for the last second each night my heart jump started itself into reality when so sure that its final beat had been processed. 
      Light floods in my head when I open my eyes; I feel a headache coming on and shove three ibuprofens in my mouth and swallow. I remove the sheets from my bed as I stand up, my hands getting caught in the torn holes of the tattered sheets, and again with my shirt. The mirror reflected ugly truth; my hair was puffed up and tangles, clothes are ripped, stained, and falling off my body. 
      A shadow covered the room, even with the single window allowing the sunlight to pass through to each corner. Darkness lived in my light, and strived in this house. The house I never leave, except to visit the cemetery.
      The cemetery belonged to my family. We didn’t own it, exactly, more of no bodies in the ground belonged to my bloodline. Each face resembling the other in some way, every last name being the exact same, since no girls were ever born in my family. I could see it from that window; it taunts me in the morning.
      The bedroom was on the second floor, looking down I could see the front yard. I slowly lifted my gaze up to a trail that disappeared under the trees belonging to the forest that shrouded the area.
      I frown more than before, looking further in the distance at the opening in the canopy of the tress further down the path of the trail. The cemetery had a history. If you were buried in that cemetery, you had some sort of mental disorder or just a problem that couldn’t be tamed. Schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, homicidal tendencies, and too strong a belief in witchcraft were the most common. Each life ending with a glass paned window breaking, cutting, and becoming the bed of rest until the body was removed. Ironically, each coffin had a reinforced glass window placed above the face.
      My steps took me down the stairs, to the kitchen to be exact. Wooden bowls lined the shelves with a single metal spook on the table next to the also lonely fork and knife. I poured a bowl of cereal and began to watch ignorant television in the family room couch just around the corner. There was no noise but the sipping of milk from the spoon, other than the TV. 
      A documentary came on, talking about family cemeteries that belong to the royal family of empires and monarchies. They always try to learn of these people, disrespecting their privacy and covering the names of once thought great people in cold blood. Families with brothers assassinating brothers, wives killing husbands, children murdering their grandparents; then going to the next family to do the same.
      My days were spent watching programs like this, nothing else reaching my TVs antenna. Though sometimes things change; sometimes I walk outside once in a blue moon. I felt the need to step outside, I couldn’t tell you why for the life of me but I just felt like I was being called. The sun blinded me, vision slowly returning. The warmth of outside always seemed to burn my skin each time I would step outside of the freezer like this.
      The grass was tall, about the height of my chest. A tiny fish pond to my left was filled with algae, the gate was broken, and the mailbox was on the edge of falling off its stand. I shrugged my shoulders and went back to the bedroom, it was getting dark. The stairs creaked with each step, and the house decided to play the copycat game. The bedroom door, the bed, even the house itself began to creak with each step. I stared at the window, at the cemetery. Spirits were flying away, one per grave. They haunted the forest, and cemetery, anything they felt was important to them. The moans of the dead, trying to communicate with either me or each other, erupted from the yard. It was music to my ears as I fell asleep.
      Morning came, the light crept around the corner and again I rolled in bed, got up, stared at the window, got cereal, and sat on the couch. I was content, until I realized the TV wasn’t working. Pondering ways to fix it, I stepped outside. The spirits had fled by sunrise, I was alone again. I turned to the lawnmower buried in the grass. It was just a regular push mower, no engine, just blades. The lawn, actually became a lawn. I had forgotten the flamingo in the ground.
      I went to the fence, a hammer and nails were in the tool box. I had left it there years before, the day my mother had died. She was going to tell me how to fix it, but that isn’t a problem. Death is a tricky thing, no matter what’s happening it will creep up on you. The gate was re-hinged within an hour.
      I grabbed a bucket and went inside, the sink surprisingly still worked. The bucket filled with water, and then I grabbed another from under the sink. I used the empty bucket outside, shoveling the water from the fish pond to the ground. I found 6 dead with and two amphibians, frogs or toads I couldn’t tell. When the pond was refilled, I scrubbed all the grime away, it took hours. I even slipped in a few times, which made it harder to hold the scrubbing brush because the algae had made my hand slippery. 
      Standing from the gate, everything looked normal. Like it did as a kid, or even cleaner; it was spotless. I remember learning how to mow the lawn from my father, who dad two weeks later. My mom had fixed the mailbox multiple times, but it couldn’t be fixed now because she super glued it in the tilted position on accident about 24 years ago. The fish pond was my job as a kid, but I wanted them to die anyway. My parents made me clean it so that couldn’t happen.
      The sun was setting, and though it wasn’t dark I could hear the moans. I smirked and began the walk to my room. This time, there was no creaking; there was no copycatting house or bed. There was, though, that window. For a moment, I fell in love with that window. Maybe eve infatuated to it. I couldn’t look away, only embrace. I took a step, the step turned to walking, then jogging. I kicked off the ground at a full sprint, and embraced the window. I grabbed a piece and began to cry, hitting the freshly cut grass.
      My stress felt lifted away from me at the instant. I didn’t expect to see heaven, or hell, just my front yard. My eyes were closed but I could see through my eyelids. It was the same, if not a little blurry. I stood up and looked ahead, my mother and father were crying, but smiling. They embraced me, their heat that I had craved for over 40 years, wasn’t even there. I could feel the touch but nothing more. They were transparent as well. I felt as if my heart should have been pounding, but there was no heart to release a beat. Even my arms, legs, and body were nonexistent on a physical plane, nothing in remains but a figure of my body, transparent as well. I heard conversations instead of moans, the language of the dead could be understood. 
      I’d like to call my yard my own personal hell. It was a magnet for death, pulling in everyone in its pull to a ceased life. Animals and people died, until I was all that was left. The house remained empty from that day on; I traveled the woods and cemetery with my mother and father. During the day, we tried to sleep. We were unsuccessful every night, seeing through our eyelids made it impossible to rest. Never did people saying the dead were restless make so much sense, until I experienced it myself.
A History of Fear, 9-10, 1