A Night to Forget

Heavy metal music throbbed in my ears with my heart pounding along,
hammering in time to the reckless noise.
Darkness had begun to invade the room.
Not the dark that I walked into when I arrived. A different dark.
A cold darkness that crept up my legs and back until finally
it was around my neck, my head—choking me, blinding me.
The pulsating lights were stabbing the darkness, trying to kill it,
but they were no help. They just made my head hurt, ache.
The guitars playing were screeching, they were screeching—
demons screeching in my ears. They wouldn’t stop to take a breath,
smoke pouring from their twisted, screeching mouths—
smoke that filled the room, smoke that choked me.
The dark room was spinning around me, spinning, spinning all around.
I clapped my hands over my ears and eyes, wrapped my arms
around my whole head and screamed for it to stop.
But my voice only sounded like an echo, an echo of the screaming guitars.
All at once, I felt the darkness begin to reach up over my eyes; felt
the cold of it as I sucked it in, gasping—drowning in it.
I knew I shouldn’t have come here.
I knew I could never drown out the memory of my mother,
or the way she hung there.
I shouldn’t have tried.
I silently slipped to the floor, and let the darkness take over.