So I’m there
As they always start
Staring blankly down my driveway
There’s a snow barricade piled in the middle of it
At least twenty or so feet in height
Behind I can hear a voice yelling, my father’s.

Tension risen,
Comfort ridden
And conscience rippled
Like ghastly arachnids scaling beneath my skin.

But why?

Then it's known,
Someone is trying to get through from the other side,
The police?
No… It’s something.

Suddenly,
Like a freight train combusting my conscience
I become warped in reigning terror of realization
That what lied on the other side,
Clawing closer with each second
With it intentions

Thoughts pacing with frantic hysteria
Looking for a scapegoat
I turn behind,
But instead of finding the uphill pavement leading to my home

To safety

I find myself at the edge of a cliff.

Peering down seemingly miles below,

I see treetops with faint fog spread across,

No way I’d survive the jump,

But I can feel its breaths heaving closer and closer

So I jump
Yet, instead of free falling
I watch as my body suspends gravity
And glides across the gloom below
Only momentary
I softly land upon another mountaintop
And though I don’t look behind
I know it has broken past the barricade
Still chasing me.

So going with the flow of the momentum
I take some running steps, leap
And
ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
Eons in speed
I watched down below
Passing the trees like fast forwarding a movie
I know the beast can’t reach me at this speed
And for the first time
I feel content

Yet, eventually I would begin to slowly descend back down
And with each landing
I could sense the thumping of its steps from behind so I reciprocate the action
Again
… And again… And again.
Each landing followed with the same relentless angst
That while I am moving at seemingly light speed
My escape is merely steering toward limbo
Stuck on the grind

In a vortex
my head rattling with…

When am I going to move out to your own place? Get away from the nine to five shifts? Work towards a real degree? Find a sustainable career? Sip some of that top shelf Tang? Acquire a real relationship? Sweat a congenial passion? Sustain an everlasting marriage? Start a true family? Raise functioning kids? Retire at the right age? Have my old age spent alongside the same wife? Leave the world content with my accomplishments… Not have to commit suicide? Can I decide any of this at this point?

With these infractions rambling constant,
I eventually become aware of the fact
And I lower my flight level with the trees themselves,
Just praying I’d crash into one,
So I could be unconscious as the monster consumes my presence

It never comes.

Then I land once more
And just stop
My eyes singed closed
I pry them open
Turn around to face my fate
And I’m devoured by the monster.

At first,
There is only total darkness,
Then I realized,
I’m still standing.
Now lucid
I burst out of the beast,
Harpooning into the sky as a flaming phoenix,
And with that,

I awoke.