vocab_drabbles | [Challenge #9: Atavistic] Original Fiction: 'Nightmare Fairy Tales'

Title: 'Nightmare Fairy Tales'
Fandom: Original Fiction
Author:

but_can_i_be_trusted
Rating: PG
Word Count: 296
Characters/Pairings: Original
Warnings: Slightly creepy concepts
Notes: Crossposted to

whatif_au. Inspired by this artwork.
Summary: We evolved right alongside you.

You see something out of the corner of your eye. A faint shadow. A shifting, where you know that there is nothing.

It's just your imagination. An optical illusion. At least, that's what you tell yourself, as you dismiss what you thought you saw.

But we won't be so easily dismissed. We will not permit such blatant disregard.

We're here, all around you. In the shadows, when you're afraid to turn on the light. Lurking under flickering yellow lights in an empty parking lot. Hiding in the limbs of dying trees, watching your every move, between scraps of Spanish moss.

We are the nightmare fairy tales that you tell when you're in the safety that only numbers offer. The urban legends. Cryptids and ghosts and monsters in the closet. The myths that you tried to bury so long ago, when you thought that you'd finally evolved past needing us.

How silly--how naïve. Don't you understand? We evolved right alongside you. Ignore us all you like; it won't discourage us into going away.

We are the shivers up your spine. That little skip of your heartbeat, the catch in a shaky breath when you hear a sound that you shouldn't have. Everything that common sense insists cannot exist. Reality demands that you disbelieve in the things that go bump in the night.

What we are is a different brand of Reality; the eerie little something that triggers your more atavistic instincts. Fight or flight. Panic mode engaged. Feet, do your duty; your body's in danger.

In the end, it hardly matters whether you believe in us or not--whether or not you confess to such a belief. In the darkest corner of your soul, you know the truth.

We exist because you want us to exist.