Fragments

The darkness swirled around her, endless and impenetrable. It felt as though she was a child again, alone in her bedroom, pulling her covers over her head to protect her from the monsters that were surely in the darkest corners of her room.

She couldn’t even remember her name anymore; it was lost amongst the folds of memories she couldn’t bring herself to sift through. All she knew was that she was missing something – something that ached inside her and yet somehow kept her smiling. But now she had no lips for smiling…

“Mum, it’s okay,” someone, a girl, said from far away. Her voice sounded as though it had to swim through murky depths before being heard. “She’ll be okay. There’s no need to cry.”

“I know,” a weary voice replied. It seemed closer, though it still had the murky feel.

She felt as though she were blundering around in darkness, like the times she wandered around her house without the lights on. Oh, her house – she could see her bedroom in her mind, with blurry corners she couldn’t quite penetrate. But there was a bad feel to it, an awful atmosphere. She glanced around and a hand found its way to her throat, and she choked on her own dissolving memories…