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I read a horror story online
about a killer with a face as white as bleach,
looking through the windows at night,
waiting for you to go to sleep,
with a smile painted in florid blood
by sweet brushes of chemical flame.

And I thought of my own country,
where a woman was killed by her own lover,
who opened the feverish blossom of her viscera to the chill air,
who left her corpse to rot in the blind shadows
of the unseeing trees.

I read a scary story on the Internet,
of a photograph attached to an email,
a photograph of a delirium-dark room,
a photograph of a bloodied hand outstretched
and of a dog with a very peculiar smile.

And I thought of my homeland,
where a boy, with a simple uploaded insult
to Christianity and the nation's father,
condemned himself to a damnation
of his own design and making,
all in one fell swoop.

I read a creepy story on the Web
of a government that shut its prisoners
in an airtight prison filled with gas,
that watched as the unfortunates lost their flesh, their souls and their sanity
to an odourless vapour pumped into a room
of glass and steel and hermetic seals.

And I thought of the country I call home,
where the young are forced to become the old,
where a number on paper is worth more than flesh and blood,
where the talented are the rulers of all that they see
and the rest are rulers of nothing at all.

I read horror stories online,
with their murderers and ghouls and smiles in the dark.
And I thought of my country,
my nation,
my once and forever home.

And I wondered which one of them was the nightmare.