Episode Details

TenebrousWritten by EmpyrealInvectiveLionel Upton Xion grew up like most children; as a child he had a healthy fear of the dark. The peculiar thing about Lionel was that his fear of the dark didn’t evaporate, or at least get relegated to the dark corners of his mind as he aged. Instead, it intensified. His neurosis multiplied and insidiously entered itself into his life. He wasn’t able to sleep with the lights off and whenever he found himself in darkness, he was reduced to a shrieking, sobbing mess. His parents hoped that this irrational fear would pass with time, but it only seemed to dig in deeper and grow roots in the young boy’s mind.His parents became increasingly distraught over their son’s plight. They tried to cure him of his fears, but their attempts were met with resistance. They brought the boy to doctors who referred them to psychiatrists. Psychiatrists diagnosed the now teenage Lionel with nyctophobia. Pills were prescribed liberally to no effect and talk therapy uncovered no secret traumas. (One therapist was insistent that Lionel had been raped, but social services managed to dispel that theory.)After that incident and subsequent interview with child protective services, Lionel’s parents decided against pursuing the issue any further. Thus Lionel’s fear of the dark was left alone by his parents. He did his best to avoid making his fears known and his parents did their best to not force situations. With time this problem became something that was in the background and easily overlooked. It was a closely guarded family secret.Time passed and Lionel led a reasonably fulfilling life. He completed college when he was twenty-two years old and landed a well-paying job that he neither enjoyed nor hated. He found his mental state smothered in ennui which he combated with new things and new experiences. He blamed it on his growing up and becoming an adult, but he could never puzzle out the nervousness he felt. When he was twenty-five, his grandfather died and being an only child of an only child, he inherited his house. It was in that house, living by himself that he started to lose his mind.Lionel’s madness started small like all psychosis. He had the feeling that someone was watching him whenever he was in his house. He chalked it up to living in a small house in a relatively elderly neighborhood. His octogenarian neighbors treated him as if he would suddenly start throwing raves and doing that drug that killed a lot of revelers. (They watched a lot of news programs dealing with this almost non-existent issue.) Lionel did not make a lot of friends among his neighbors and instead chose solitude. When he wasn’t working, he was alone. He ate by himself, he slept by himself, and even when people tried to intrude on this solitude, Lionel felt like he was alone.A few weeks into living in his new residence, Lionel started to notice that he could never find anything in his house. He would buy and leave light bulbs on the counter after coming home and he would find them on top of the television. He brought home a pack of steaks to cook, only to find one rotting in a closet a week later. He began to research his family lineage for Alzheimer’s, but found no real influence of it in his immediate family. Lionel eventually decided the stress of his job was toying with his mind. He continued on with his life.When the lights were next to become mischievous, Lionel began to feel tinges of panic rising up from the pit of his stomach. He brushed it away as childish fancies that he hadn’t been able to bury, but had been able to ignore. He would go to sleep in his bedroom with the lights on and would wake up in the morning with them turned off. He figured that there was some sort of timer function used as an energy saver, but