“What is fear?” She’ll ask you in a surly tone and you’d choose to sit back, against a gray couch in a dull and dreary room, and shrug. “I don’t know.” You’ll answer, with some bored tone or a mask of indifference that made you look mad to the world. But you’re only mad in a confinement of your mind. She’ll bare her teeth and snarl. “Liar.” Truth be told, you were a liar. You knew what fear was but you’ve never been able to answer the question to what it was to you.
“It was a game.” You think quietly. As you return to the prison, built in the recesses of your mind, shoes tapping against the white tiled floor, you’ll always consider escaping, leaving, never to come back to a realm of nightmares and sleep. Honestly, you wish you felt the need to have that certain choice. Escaping this cage was simply an unattainable goal, for as long as you lived, she’d come back.
She’s always there, anyway.
A looming figure, a haunting presence, a shadow that never leaves your side. She sits on the armrest of the couch, crouching as if she’s a lion and you’re the bloody meat, stinking of decay and ready to eat. It nearly makes you gag, as you keep that lone thought to yourself when you walk into the room.
“There’s no real need to shut the door as you walk in.” You mumble to yourself. You know it closes on its own, because your mind never seems to provide an escape. No matter how strong your desire is, your mentality always keeps the cage dark and closed. You swallow some trepidation, hands shaking slightly as you sit on the sofa. You watch in distaste as the thing pulls out a cigarette, lighting it and sticks it in her mouth, relishing in the smoke as it pours out her mouth slowly. She waves it around in the air, tapping the ash from it quietly and points it to you.      “Want a hit?” She says, tilting her head in a mischievous way. You glare, turning away and scrunching your nose up from the putrid smell. “No, thanks. I’d rather not die from lung cancer and tobacco.” She huffs, throwing it out into the trash bin beside the door, muttering out, “Whatever.”
  You two sit in silence, feeling yourself begin to tense and fidget around quietly, hearing the continuous ticking of the clock upon the wall.  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tick.
The clock creaks, then stops. You blink confusedly, and pull your legs to your chest. “Odd,” you muse. “The clock has never stopped before.” The thing shrugs, moving silver hair back. “It’s the mind, can’t really control it, dear.” You wince. “Don’t call me that.” The thing laughs, making a show of stretching its arms and turns towards you.
“What’s fear?” She asks you, biting her lip and staring at you with whitened eyes again.
You sigh. “Here we go again.” You think to yourself as you rest your chin upon your knees. You wet your lip with your tongue, worrying it with your teeth and stare at the transparent floor. She reaches out to touch you, to force an answer out of you, but you flinch and retract even more from her, burying yourself into the corner of the sofa where the armrest meets the couch cushion and pant heavily, trying to disregard your tremors and shaking as something normal.
She may be you, and you may be a part of her, but both of you are so different. She, this thing, just a bleak and dreary mess of white and gray, with no color, but you are something that absorbs the colors and turns it into black fabric with some multicolored personality. For once, you actually found something in you that you want to get rid of, but it just had to be something you can never get rid of. Swallowing the bile of nervousness and hate with anger, you hug yourself with shaky hands.
Some strange thing to do, to console yourself from yourself.
You let out a hollow laugh at that and raise a finger, moving it to the left and right in a shaky manner. “No touching.” You say quietly, voice cracking a bit and chapped lips pressed into a thin line.
She sighs. “Want to play the game again?” You hesitate, lifting your head slightly to stare into lifeless pools. “Can I pass if I want?” She crosses her legs and rests her elbows on her knees, pointing them up to rest her chin on her folded hands. “That’s up to you, but of course, I am you in technical terms.” You grimace. “Don’t remind me.”
   She hums approvingly, and tilts her head. “What’s fear?” You feel some bittersweet anger slide up your throat and clench your jaw. “Pass.” You grit out from gnashed teeth.
She makes a small huff. “Alright then. What are you afraid of?” You bite the inside of your cheek. “Shouldn’t you know that as well, since you’re part of me? You know what I’m afraid of.” The girl clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and giggles, creeping towards you. “Mm, perhaps I do, perhaps I don’t. Either way, I need your affirmation of your fear because I am not what you fear~.” She draws out the word, like something to savor and cherish, then caresses your foot.
You regret feeling your breath hitch in your throat and you jump out your seat, stumbling backwards and then proceeding to sit on the fragile floor. “Stop that.” You mutter out, and curl into a ball once again. She sticks her tongue out, mocking you in a lazy fashion, and sits in front of you once again, keeping a small distance between you two.
“Next question. Why don’t you ask for help?”
You whisper out, almost inaudibly. “Pass.” She crosses her arms. “This is barely self-questioning, why can’t you actually answer?” “Pass.”
“Are you terrified of communicating with anyone but yourself because you see that as an acceptable answer?”
“Pass.”
“Are you hoping that you can deal with this until you go mad, from some false sense and lie of ‘I’ll get better.’?” “I pass.”
The girl sighs, glancing at painted nails. “Already five passes.” You scoff, biting back a rude retort and replace it with a mild one. “Like I care, I just want to leave.” She mumbles out, “You’ll never leave, really.” and you wince, biting your tongue.
“Hmm, alright. Are you hoping passing all of the questions will release you from the demons crawling in your mind?” She says in a bored tone. “Pass.” You say, staring at the glass floor cracking under your weight. “Time’s almost up, I just need to outlast a while longer.” You think to yourself in anticipation. “Do you realize that you’re trapped here?” “Pass.” “Do you know that you’re inside a confinement of your mind that won’t release you?” “Pass.”
        “Do you actually think you’ll be free?” That question makes you hesitate, the sane voice in your head screaming loudly. “YES YES, I WILL BE FREE!” It shouts boldly and you inwardly tell it to shut up, because there’s no real rule to actually stating a true answer. “Pass.” You say with an expressionless tone, and you sigh a bit, dismissing the being’s angry look. The thing chooses its words carefully, as you hear the slowness and hesitation in her voice fill the room. “Will passing this question make you realize how much self-denial you’re in?” She hisses the last words with such anger, such malice that it stuns you for a bit until you feel the angry fire blaze in your chest once again. You tentatively answer, trying not to snap so much.
“Passing the questions are the easiest things to do, because when questions are pointless, you shouldn’t have anything to say.” 
The girl laughs, laughs, and stands up, twirling and nears your face that it makes your heart stop for a second. “Pointless questions require answers to get to a point. Are you afraid of giving answers? Is that it?” She laughs maniacally and you stand abruptly, clenching your fist and opening it repeatedly, then raising your hand and slapping her across the face harshly with a loud SLAP. 
Time stands still for a while, the only thing you hear is your heavy breathing and the resonating slap echoing through the room. You grit your teeth, forgetting the numbness of your right hand as you run it through messy strands of black and brown. “You stupid, stupid, idiotic, thing! Ask yourself how can I be so afraid of someone like you?! How can I be afraid of something so stupid?! I cannot ever dare to show my fear to a thing like you, to some demon in my mind, to some godforsaken that preys on me! Tell me, you insignificant feeling, what do you want?!”
   You gasp, panting heavily and inhale the air, cackling madly as your emotions drown you in storm and the tethers to sanity unravel like old string. “I am tired! Understand?! Tired! Tired of this game we play, of who destroys who, of predator and prey with the roles switching every second! Don’t you realize that I cannot live like this?! That I cannot live with you standing beside me like a hawk because once I give in, once I break, you will swoop in and take whatever remains I have left! I am not afraid of you, nor will I ever be afraid of this madness that threatens to overwhelm me so just tell me. What do you want?!” You shout the last words at her face, letting your breathing die down to a light hyperventilation.

The thing stares.
Stares.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tock.
She stares with some sense of pity, remorse and so much glee. Too much glee. You’d say it terrified you, but it only fills you with some sense odd sense of pride, knowing that you sent her into silence, if only for a temporary time.
The glass ground starts trembling and breaking apart but both of you levitate, levitate to some sense of numbness in which the grey walls fade away and the room slowly turns white.
The ticking of the clock is replaced with mere static noise and you jump slightly, hearing a cackle in front of you. Turning your head slowly, you stare in morbid curiosity as the girl cackles louder and louder, till she dissolves into insane laughter and hysterics, clutching her stomach and wiping tears from her eyes. She stands back up, watching in amusement as the bottom half of her legs disappear as ashes and dust.
“I only wanted you to admit what you feared, for I am you and you are me. DO you not see we are one in the same and that this very fear is what keeps us confined in walls? These chains, this horrid prison of darkness and depression is inescapable. You do fear something, and I observe, sense, and feel the fear radiate when this room,” she motions to the fades walls and empty bottomless white floor, “comes into existence. So, last question is, what is your fear?”
Everything dissolves and you watch as she dissolves into the whiteness, until you’re left sitting in a bed with sweat dripping down your face and tear tracks drying on your cheeks. You watch as the moonlight shroud you in some consoling effort, as if it hears the cries of sanity, needing to be gained into the utmost presence of reality.
  One day.
One day, the tapping of feet will be heard upon white and black tiled floors. One day, she’ll ask in a slur. “What’s fear?” And she’ll say it with the utmost sincerity and curiosity that it can’t stop you from pausing before you answer.
For fear is her. Fear is her existence. Fear is the overpowering scent  of lilacs and bleach, drying upon bloodied roses in midwinter and dying down to a musky scent of daisies and pine, while your breath puffs into cold air, with a heady stinging sense of mint. For fear is lies, hisses and words whispered on dry tongues and cracked lips as you breathe in the pollution of hatred and plastic things burned by a red fire.
One day, you’ll be able to gather your courage and swallow down your despair and answer the question you’ve been avoiding for far too long. “Fear is this prison, fear are these walls and the fear I contain, is of love. Philophobia is my fear and that is all.” One day, she’ll smile and her blank eyes will turn to amber as she turns to you. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”
  One day, you’ll smile back for once and open your hand, seeing a black key and walk to a keyhole. One day, you can unlock an invisible door and leave. One day, you’ll be free.
“Maybe one day,” You whisper into the empty room as the sun rises with a stream of hope across cobalt, “One day, I’ll end this game we play.” But for now, you’ll be content in a game of questionnaire and white tiles and wait to play the music rattling in your head upon ivory keys and discordant strings.
Your soul will be watching. Waiting. Staying sane for at least one more day.
That’ll be okay, won’t it?