Spooky Season

I used to live in a little house with big back yard in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Mum swears it was haunted. I swear it had faulty wiring. The only time I thought there might generally something evil about that house was when I was home alone one night in my late teens, reading a book in bed. My best explanation is that I had an unprovoked, completely random panic attack. Here's a crap little poem I wrote about it for the spooky season. (Excluding the part where I called my best friend in tears and told her if I tried to cross the living room I would die). The brain is a funny thing. So was that house. 

Panic

It was sometime in the Winter,

alone in urban hinterland

I felt my focus splinter

from the book upon my lap.

 

My lamp the only light stay,

fear crept through me where I lay

looking out towards my doorway

and stared into pitch dark black.

 

Though no sound I had heard creaking,

and no light I had seen peeking,

and no wind I had felt leaking

through a wall or window crack,

 

I had a sudden terror fill me.

Head to toe I felt it chill me

Had my novel merely thrilled me?

Or was there something looking back?

 

Edging out of safety’s bed,

I tried my best to clear my head

and reassure myself instead

that it was sanity I lacked.

 

Beyond my room was dark and dead,

the silence fueling inner dread.

So unnatural the quiet fed

my notion of some evil tack.

 

I reached out to flip the light switch

to illuminate a path which

to escape my fever fear pitch

but nothing flickered in the black.

 

In darkness there I stood

and in my mind I knew I would

perish if I stayed, but could

I make it out the back?

 

In tears, I could not breathe

as something un-perceived

wielding power not conceived

held me steadfast in my tracks.

 

It felt like hours there I stayed

and I shook but never strayed.

My back flat to wall I laid

as I screamed, and my voice cracked.

 

But no one heard me crying,

or perhaps they thought me lying

That some evil force was vying

for my soul in some attack

 

I could started there to drown,

dread had weighed my body down

but if I crossed the darkened ground

there would be no coming back.

 

Panic finally overtook me.

No longer paralyzed, it shook me

back to life, a second took me

and I sprinted through the black.

 

As I burst outside my mind surmised

I had escaped my own demise.

I stood watching ‘til the sunrise,

and the house did watch me back.