Screaming - falling - I hit the ground hard and tumble over in the darkness. I look around, which does nothing for me. It’s pitch black here. I could be blind and not even realize it. Suddenly, I hear a harsh chuckle behind me. I spiral around in the compressing darkness, then hear it again, this time to my right. I turn again as the insane laughing keeps moving around me, playing with me, taunting me, aggrandizing the complete essence of fear growing in my chest.

Suddenly I hear it straight above me. Before I can react, something lands on me and I tumble over. I turn around, and even in the pitch black darkness, I can see this…thing. It’s difficult to describe, I can only see it because it’s somehow even more dark than the pitch black around me - like darkness incarnate. I can see a crude head, on top of a body. No neck, it’s head is simply sitting on it’s shoulders. One arm is roughly half as long as the other one. Two massive limbs are protruding from it’s chest. They look slightly like the pincers on a crab, only much larger. This… thing has lumps all over it’s body, except these aren’t normal looking lumps. These are actually moving across his skin, like some kind of deformed parasites feeding on the evil of this creature.

I only have several seconds to notice these things, because this abnormal phenomenon suddenly moves with inhuman speed, crossing the ten or fifteen yards separating us in the blink of an eye. It grabs me with it’s pincers, scratching my arm in the process, and lifts me in the air like I would a doll. Dangling there, I scream as loud as I can, but I hear nothing. This darkness is suffocating - absorbing the sound. The beast slowly moves it’s head towards my neck, and I stiffen, expecting it to bite, but then it does something I didn’t expect it to be able to do. It speaks. It whispers in my ear, and tells me…everything. My darkest fears. The wrongs I’ve committed in my lifetime. It causes memories to surface, things that I had buried deep within the back of my brain. Things that I’ve hid from. I sit there and wallow in the darkness of my own life, wishing nothing more than to disappear - to die - to escape this pain.

A flash of light - blinding for a moment, then wonderful. Anything would be wonderful after the darkness. The beast holding me doesn’t seem to mind the light - quite possibly it doesn‘t have eyes to see with - but it still hisses angrily. I look up at the source of the light, and my heart skips a beat. I see a man, dressed completely in a white robe. He has fire for eyes, and a luminous glow around him. The most intimidating thing about this person (for he looks much more like a person than the beast holding me, even though I‘m sure he couldn‘t possibly be a mortal man) was the sword he wielded. It is completely made of crystal, which is impressive enough, but it’s also completely engulfed in blue-white flames, which was the source of the blinding light.

The person falls and lands on his feet, much more gracefully than when I fell, landing light as a feather. The beast drops me to the ground and charges at the person, roaring as he runs. The man doesn’t look troubled, as he sidesteps the beast, slicing off his two pincer-arms along the way. The beast howls in pain and frustration--mostly frustration--and jumps in the air, much higher than I thought possible. I lose sight of it in the darkness, but this person whom I assume is helping me has better vision than me. He suddenly thrusts hiss sword upwards, to where the demon jumped, and flame shoots out, forming a rope along the way. It grabs the beast by its ankle and flings it to the ground. Quicker than my eye can see, the person steps forward and cuts the beasts head off. The beast shudders, then lies in the unmistakable stillness of death.

I shudder as I stand up, shaking all over. The person walks over to me, and says in a soft, lifting voice that sounds almost musical, “Remember what you have seen today. This could either be your downfall, or your transformation -- it’s your choice. If you can transform yourself, you will find yourself in a better place. However, if you don’t, this beast was one of the weaker ones. Many more will follow you, stronger, and more ruthless. Now awaken, child.” Putting both his hands to my temples, a light flashes, and I blank out.

I wake up in my bed, more scared than I’ve been in my life. I cry out in pain and look down. I see the scratch on my arm where the beast picked me up with it’s pincers. The scratch from the beast in my dream. The beast that doesn’t exist. I make a vow from that day on to live a model life: a life that people would want to imitate. I lived in fear of stronger beasts, and the promise of a better place by the light-filled person.