Hate Mail

by Steve Bolin

I’ve been waiting for you to die.

Your day of death is something I’ve looked forward to since the day you were born. I’m in no hurry though. I’m savoring every moment.

You know who I am. Don’t pretend you don’t. You’ve known me your whole life. Your conscious mind might try to deny my existence, but your unconscious mind knows the truth.

Think back to when you were young. Don’t you remember the thing you saw in the closet or the monster waiting for you beneath the bed? Your parents said there was nothing to be afraid of; it was all just your imagination.

Do you remember the look in their eyes as they told you these so-called words of comfort? You knew they were lying to you, but the comfort of their lies was less fearsome than the truth. Because the truth, you see, was that they knew about me.

Of course they knew about me! I haunted them as children too. I still haunt them – just as I haunt you.

Why not prove to yourself what I say? Go to some isolated and desolate place. I especially love lurking in the forest at night; go there. Or better yet, go to the nearest graveyard at midnight. Get out of your vehicle and walk to a tree near the center of the cemetery. Sit down, relax and close your eyes for as long as you dare. What do you hear?

Is that sound above you only the leaves being rustled by the wind? Or is that me descending like a mist and lurking in the shadows of darkness cast by limbs and branches? Are you still so sure that I’m not real, or is there now some black light of doubt leaking through the cracks of your certainty?

Does the overwhelming desire to crawl out of your skin and run screaming to your car fill you with a lunatic urgency? Is the chill you feel creeping down your spine just the coldness of the wind, or is it really my icy finger of death exploring your body like a psychopathic lover? I think you know.

Sit there under the tree in the graveyard with your eyes open, and consider all that you see. When you again close your eyes, my soft voice will whisper a picture of reality in your mind. In your thoughts, my voice imitates your own. Only in your imagination can I adequately show you that which is hidden from view in the real world.

Behold, the graveyard is a gateway to an unfathomable dimension of pain and suffering. The world beyond the grave is incomprehensible to your puny, insect mind, but I have been there. Hideous, festering corpses lurk in phantasmal, spirit-like bodies. You will pass through this gateway one day, and I will be the one who leads you there.

Look again at the zombie-like corpses. These images of decaying flesh are but one of many forms that any of my race can take. I’m not the only one feeding off your fear, death and misery, you know.

You can’t remain at the graveyard any longer – not without losing your sanity. But ask yourself, do you really feel any safer at home in bed? Can you answer that honestly, or will you comfort yourself with more lies of my non-existence?

The familiarity of your home offers no safe haven from me. Do you hear that floor joint squeaking in the next room? It isn’t the house settling, it’s me. Was that a shifting sound you heard in your closet? I’m there, moving slowly, with crimson stained fangs – the better to eat you with my dear. Is there a reason why you don’t sleep with your feet uncovered? It’s because a single touch from my slimy tentacle would send you into a cardiac arrest. I anxiously wait for you to forget.

Perhaps you wonder why I’m telling you this. Am I trying to warn you? Is there someway to save yourself and your family from the horrors I have planned for you? Of course there is. But naturally, I wouldn’t dream of telling you what it is. Besides, knowing the possibility of escape just adds to your fear when you never find it.

No, the reason I tell you is simply that I live off fear. It radiates from you like an ultra-violet light that only my kind can detect. I want nothing more than to have you fear me even more. That’s why I anticipate it. And after your death, we’ll have all of eternity together. Before then, however, I will destroy both you and all those you love. Age and gender are meaningless to me. I loathe all your kind equally. Your race’s every word, deed and action repulse me – just as you’re repulsed when you see a hideous spider. As you want to crush the arachnid, so I want to crush you.

You’ll never see it coming. Your death may be fast and painless, or it may be slow and agonizing like a cancer that eats away at your every cell. While I wait on that wondrous day, I will feed on your every fear.

Deep in your mind, you know that there has always been a dark, malevolent presence hovering around you. It has been me. But when you put this letter down, you’ll walk away telling yourself that none of it is real. A part of you will laugh at the prospect of facing death – it won’t happen to you anytime soon. This is nothing more than the product of some twisted author’s mind.

Yeah. You just keep telling yourself that.

In a few days, you’ll pick up the local paper and read in the obituary column that someone close to your age has died. You’ll first wonder if I was responsible. Then you’ll wonder if it could’ve been you.

To both questions I answer a hissing, ”Yes!”

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