I walked in the dark. The shadows clung to me like a lover. I knew nothing but the mood around me, a sullen small death dancing in the back of my mind. I could feel that breath on my neck, that breath of my unknown, unseen stalker. There was no-one in the room with me,I knew that, I was alone. Yet still I felt the presence, it walked through my dreams at night, it followed the ghosts of my waking mind and whispered in their ears telling them my secrets.

I was never alone now, for some weeks, the presence had watched. At first it was a breeze, a childs laugh. It hid behind a thousand voices each separate and distinct yet it was there. The more I heard it, the clearer it became. I did not hear the words more the intention, the animus of the concious creature. I name it 'Audience', for it watches me, yet does not connect, does not interact. It just sits and reacts.

Perhaps it is just paranoia has set in. Perhaps I have lost that paper-thin tenuous connection with reality. Have I tumbled into the deep hole of some underlying madness. Can I trust my senses? Am I really here, now, in the dark with my stalker I name 'Audience' or do I lie alone unattended and forgotten. In an asylum, a hospital for the criminally insane. Am I watching this world through a window in my fractured mind. How could I know, how could I tell.

I turn my head quickly once, twice. Perhaps I will see the real world buried there in the blur of my peripheral vision. There just on the very edge, is that a figure. Perhaps a Doctor stands over my bed looking down taking notes on my shattered personality laid clear before him.

Is that the truth or just another layer of the onion skin of my delusion. Is that figure really a doctor or is it my Audience visible in the folds of reality. I do not feel mad but yet again how could I judge. Who is the mad man to truly judge his own mental state. Shouldn't I cry, scream, tear out my hair, Is that not madness? I am calm my mind feels clear. Yet still it follows. It could not happen, some unknowable intelligence following me, watching me. It is just white noise, It is nothing, a waking nightmare.

And yet I know somewhere there is a breath and an eye. The same somewhere where the impossible things happen. That place where nightmares live. That place, that primordial darkness where fear comes from. All it takes or took to get from where we live to there. The space the pressure of a single breath or the fall of an eyelid.

And into somewhere the universe blinks.