Slamming Down The Gate

The darkness made a rasping sound,
a deep inhalation before striking me.
I turned, running and scrambling through the branches,
fear igniting an inferno that burned at my back.
I'd tasted it before, almost taunted it to return.
And this time, it did.
With vengeance.
All the old memories returned, muscles tense, sweat cold.
My heart hammering,
all my demons charging forth from the night.
And a few of them from somewhere else, someone else.
All the bodies of my past, exhumed and ressucitated,
flocking, circling, pushing through the soil,
surrounding me.
And I hit the gate.
Padlocked to the naked eye, chained and ten feet tall.
I slammed my body into the wall, forced a foot onto the chains,
heaved my body up and snagged on the top.
But the gate wobbled and the snag torn through and I fell.
Safe on the pavement, not a half a foot from the other side.
The streets were still, amber orbs spaced in orderly increments.
I saw thei eyes, wide and vicious and disbelieving.
I saw their knarled claws wrappiing around the fence post.
So I ran.
I flew, feet hardly touching the pavement.
The houses with their eyelids closed didn't hear my light tip-tip-tip of footsteps.
I slept by a wolf that night, up high in a fortress.
Safe, shaken, and newly aware that my denial hasn't conquered any of my demons.
In fact, they have to be slain, one at a time, and some must be tamed, and others will just be left holding the gate, watching.