The Darkness Consumed Me

Suzan’s POV

I gazed out of my bedroom window, counting the stars, when I suddenly heard a faint whisper and scratching sounds coming from my closet. My heart skipped a beat, and I jumped out of bed, rushing to the door to see my brother Luke stumbling to his room. Instantly, a sigh of relief washed over me.

“Luke!”

He looked at me, blinking sleepily. “Hey, what are you doing up so late?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I muttered. “I thought I heard whispers and scratching sounds coming from my closet, but I was too scared to go check.”

Luke raised an eyebrow, a slight smirk creeping onto his face. “You’re scared of your own closet?”

Before I could answer, he walked over to my closet, pulled the door open, and peered inside. “See? Nothing here but your clothes and a bunch of junk.”

I stood in the doorway, feeling a bit silly but still on edge. “I swear I heard something.”

Luke shrugged and turned back to me, still smirking. “You see? No monsters. And if there were any, I scared them away, because that’s what big brothers do.” He paused for a second, then added, “I know I didn’t go trick-or-treating with you tonight, but I’ll definitely make it up to you tomorrow. What do you say?”

I nodded my head, grateful for his attempt to reassure me. We both hugged it out, and he ruffled my hair before saying his goodnight. After that, he walked back to his room, leaving me to finish my thoughts.

I continued to gaze outside my bedroom window, the stars twinkling peacefully. But not a moment longer, I heard the same whispering and scratching sounds coming from my closet. My heart pounded in my chest, and to make matters even worse, I felt as if someone was staring at me from behind. Slowly, I turned around, but there was no one there. Yet, the air seemed thicker, colder. Something wasn’t right.

I turned my face to look out the window once more, trying to calm my racing heart. But as I did, the fear hit me almost immediately, a cold wave washing over me. It was as if something, or someone, had gotten closer without me realizing it.

I slowly turned my head, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. And there, in the dim light of my room, I saw them. A pair of eyes, wide and unblinking, intensely staring back at me from the darkness inside my closet.

My breath caught in my throat. My heart skipped a beat, and the world seemed to freeze around me. I couldn't look away from those eyes. They weren’t human—too dark, too empty. The figure behind them seemed to be hidden in the shadows, but those eyes, they were watching me, waiting.

I froze in terror. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t move—paralyzed by an overwhelming sense of dread. The only thing I could do was cry silently, my body refusing to respond. The eyes burned into me, unblinking, as I felt an icy chill creeping into the room, thick and suffocating.

Then, like a slow-motion nightmare, the figure began to move. It was almost floating—no footsteps, no sounds—just the cold weight of its presence. It made its way over to my bed, never breaking eye contact, its black eyes wide and unblinking.

I wanted to run. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. And then, just when it seemed like the nightmare couldn’t get worse, it reached me.

The cold fingers of the figure grabbed my hair, yanking me closer, the sharp pain surging through my scalp. The sudden agony snapped me out of my paralyzed state. The air left my lungs in a strangled gasp.

I screamed.

The figure’s mouth opened wide, impossibly wide. No human could stretch their jaw that far. The darkness inside it seemed endless, like a void. And then, in one horrific moment, it sucked the oxygen from my body. I gasped, struggling to breathe, but nothing came. It felt like I was drowning in the air, my lungs burning, fighting for air that wasn’t there.

Tears streamed down my face as the room blurred. My vision was going dark, and I could hear my mom's distant voice, shouting my name from downstairs, but it sounded muffled—like I was underwater.

Before she could reach me, the figure dragged me from my bed and threw me out of my bedroom window, my hair gripped tightly in its grasp. My feet kicked in the air as I was pulled out into the night, the world spinning around me. My cries for help were silenced by the suffocating grip on my scalp, and the last thing I saw before everything went black was the dark sky above me—too far from safety, too far from the warm, familiar world I once knew.

I was alone, and I was being taken.