Horror and 3 A.M. Regrets

What is this sick fascination inside of me?

I cringe with horror, but I cannot look away.

I am both repelled and inexplicably drawn in.

Horror sucks me in like an ominous black hole.

I want to stop, look away, but I can't...

I cannot avert my eyes.

No. I draw closer.

I revel in the horror, the gore, 

and details that make me sick. 

They make me shutter.

My stomach lurches.

I eat up every gruesome detail, ever hungry for more.

On screen fear, horror, and other's pain makes me plot and theorize.

I am gleeful with every new twist and turn.

When the plot thickens with the loss of an appendage,

or a foreboding letter I am wrapt. 

But, when fiction and reality blur -

when suddenly Saw is manifested in a real life killer -

reality becomes even more real - darker. 

When the sun goes down and the clock strikes three,

it all comes back to haunt me. 

I see it in the shadows,

on the undersides of my eye lids when I go to sleep.

It whispers and plays on repeat in the darkness. 

But, despite, the fear, the adrenaline and my own curiosity,

I cannot escape the single question that haunts me when the sun comes up and the shadows retreat to their distant corners.  

If I can take pleasure in other's pain,

in the gore of chainsaws and scalpels,

than what really separates me from the real monsters

who do not hide in the shadows?