Nyctophobic.

The lights start to flicker, as my friend starts to laugh at me. I'm screaming for him to stop, but he keeps doing it. I'm really starting to get scared. And then the lights stop flickering, staying on. See, I'm nyctophobic. Or I have a phobia of the dark. The flickering of lights even freaks me out. And my friend loved to make fun of me for it. But when I looked over to look at the light switch, he wasn't standing there snickering anymore. Now, it was just the wall. I hear some screams, the lights flicker a little more, and the screams get louder. And then the lights stay on, and there are no more screams. I'm really terrified at this point. I start to cry. I'm having a panic attack, so I try to calm myself down, the way my therapist taught me.

But it doesn't work. But I regain myself quickly, as I am calm after that. I go to the light switch and I am able to be brave enough to shut it off. I hear screaming. "GET ME OUT OF HERE! GET ME OUT OF HERE!" The screams cry. I ask how. "I DON'T KNOW!" the response screams. I try to smash the wall down, but it's just drywall. I think it's just a prank. I leave the room. I go to bed, making sure that my night light is shining bright. In my dreams, I see my friend screaming his head off as this alien nears him. And that was the moment I knew it wasn't a prank. I wake up and start planning. I am a scientist who deals with intergalactic travel, so I'm an expert at this. I go back to the room. I now find that there is blood on the floor. I am collecting the blood sample when I hear a low growl from behind me.

I try to escape it, by slowly turning around, but I see the monster I saw in my dream. My worst nightmare come true. I try running out, but the beast is way faster than me. It is too big to fit through the crack between my couch and my wall though. I stay there, listening for the growl to go. And then I feel this slimy wet thing behind me. My friend. Thank god he wasn't dead. I give him a hug. He tells me that its weakness is small spaces. If we hide away in every corner or small space to the exit, we will be able to escape. But there was a long way to that. We started constructing a plan.

It was going to be a bumpy ride, but we could make it out alive. We first had to stay low to the ground and hide behind the table in my living room. There was only space for one of us. So he goes on and checks the hall. He then motions for me to come. Then we crawl into the dining room. We reconvene under that table. We see the creature pacing the door. We have to try for the back door. I suppose it can smell our fear because it marches over to our spot. We try hiding, but it lifts the table and growls. I'm terrified, but my friend has my hand. He leads me to the door. He tries to open the door, but we still cannot outrun it. I grab a knife from the kitchen and try to stab it.

But the skin regrows. And now it's cornering me. I duck down. And then we hear the police outside. I didn't know they were alerted. They smash the front door down and start firing at the beast. The beast just takes it, taking many officers out with one hard blow. I'm a bit afraid, but my friend is tugging at my arm, trying to bring me to the back door. But there is this huge black hole in the backyard. It's really deep. We wobble as we were about to fall into it. But then we stabilize, and we know we have to go around that beast. We take opposite sides and run around. We tell the officers to follow us. They do, and we run to the front door. The officers get out. But the monster was on their tails. He looks at me. To close the door, to end this mess, we had to shut the door. But it was going to break the door if there was no distraction.

I tell him I'm sorry. I then run inside and lock the door. I start to fight the beast. It's dark outside, and there are no lights I can see. We could only see the hole as the sun had just set. The monster comes straight toward me. I feel fate and death consuming me. An undesirable pain. The lights flicker. And then I know I'm dead. My last word was sorry. I didn't know why I apologized. I just knew I had to do it. The monster in the dark had consumed me. Something that I had always had a phobia of, that I conquered, was my ultimate mistake. Maybe I knew that. But it didn't matter now. I was dead anyways. And there is nothing that could change that now. I lay dead like the people who entered my house thirty minutes ago. Because of that thing. Because of the dark.

(Time skip. From the friend's POV.)

"Hi," I cry. "It's been a year now. I miss you so much. I hope you're doing ok. I brought you some flowers by the way. I hope you like them." I place the flowers down on her grave. This woman, who gave her life for mine, died a year ago. She'd always been afraid of the dark, being nyctophobic. She never knew why. But maybe it was her subconscious knowing her ending. No one believed it, as there were only a couple of survivors. They died soon after anyway. So I said it was suicide eventually. No one would believe me if I said what actually happened. Her family was so sad. I remember their tears. It should have been me. I didn't have a family. But she gave it up. For me. A hero.