I hate walking alone at dusk. There’s something about this kind of darkness that can turn a child’s laughter into a demon’s cry. When it’s dusk, there’s just light enough for you to be able to make out your surroundings and see what’s around you, but not enough light so that there’s a general haze around you, blurring the details and features and muting the colors of everything you see. Perhaps it might be the fact that I only have one properly functioning eye but I can’t seem to see anything clearly, and it’s like I’m walking through a deep fog, but the fog isn’t just visually there it finds a way to trickle slowly through my ears until it finally reaches my brain, blurring my thoughts and my perception of reality. I walk in a dream-like trance, mind wandering and each visual cue triggers memories once long forgotten. I had locked these memories away into a small wooden chest, throwing the key far off into the ocean but that wasn’t enough for me so I had to bury the chest into the sand by the shore as well. These memories had been buried for a reason but it’s as if the fog found its way to that very ocean and that very shore, unlocking the box and releasing the very thoughts I tried so hard to eliminate from my conscious. These memories escape my mind, so eager to finally be released, seeping steadily first to my neck, my shoulders, and then my arms, and it’s not before long when they’ve reached the tips of my toes and I’ve become imprisoned in my stance, unable to move and unable to breathe. Shivers run through my body and I stand there frozen and I can’t do anything to fight back. My eyes haven’t moved from the spot that induced this horror. I don’t know how or why but I manage to break my line of sight and the box is reburied, the key is thrown back, and it’s like nothing ever happened. My body starts to ease as the thoughts that once held it captive it is locked back away to where they belong. I move again, one foot after the other, my brain still held entranced by the fog but at least I don’t have those horrible memories on my mind. I make it maybe ten steps before I look up once more. That was a mistake. My eyes meet another sight, one that if it were daytime would have no effect on me but at this time of dusk my brain is made more susceptible by the fog so what was once a harmless tree or perhaps a window is enough to release the monsters held deep in my subconscious, repeating the cycle I had fought so hard to escape.