Vertigo With Your Eyes Closed

You know that feeling when you were younger, when you were lying in bed with your eyes closed so all you could see was black, and suddenly the bed beneath your head would fall away, dropping you down so quickly that your stomach was left behind? The feeling would terrify you into snapping your eyes open, heart pounding against your ribs, only to find that you hadn’t moved at all. It was an illusion of the mind and a manifestation of the lost, lonely dark of the night.

Imagine the intense void that you almost fell into. There was absolutely nothing there behind your eyes except a drop of unknown depth. Your heart was still pumping harder and your mind was still spinning faster. It didn’t feel safe to “let go” and “drift to sleep” in case you should fall again.

When you opened your eyes to escape the fall, the whole world was empty. The silence settled like a layer of cellophane and the stillness suggested time was frozen. Your parents were unconscious and it would be best if you didn’t wake them. Unsealing reality would only be a temporary solution. They’d only tuck you back into your soft prison with hollow assurances.

They didn’t believe in monsters. They said it was a mere silhouette across your bedroom. Shrouded in dimness, it could be any number of benign objects masquerading as something else. As a figment, even the light switch would only vanish it to another room, waiting for you just beyond what you could see. As for the falling… opening your eyes would only hold the directionless asphyxiating space at bay a little longer. Eventually as your eyelids weighed down, you’d find yourself dropping again.