In The Darkness

Everywhere I looked, I wondered if I was truly looking. It was difficult to know whether or not I was conscious, or if my eyes were opened or closed. All of those conditions had the same result; nothing but darkness. Being punished to spend of all eternity in the darkness can certainly alter your sanity dramatically. With there being no sunlight, each day and night that passed was freezing, which didn’t help prevent breakdowns.

There was no way of knowing what my surroundings were, and I had to rely on my other senses to gain a basic idea of what I was dealing with. I appeared to be in a rather dusty place, as it had a strange, musty odour. Whenever I breathed in, I’d often cough after sucking in the dust particles floating through the air. I’d move around and sometimes I’d have a lot of seemingly open spaces, and other times it’d be enclosed and constricting. Upon a few occasions, I’d hear varied footsteps, sometimes they’d be small and frequent, like a rat’s, and sometimes they’d be large and random, like a beast’s.

Forgetting my own appearance was only the start of my identity loss. Over time, I found myself being unable to recall what I was wearing, my name, my age, where I was from, how long I had been there, what life was like before, my family, my friends. After I had forgotten everything about myself, from why I was there, to whom I was, the only thing that ran through my mind was fear. I got used to the idea that I was utterly isolated and alone, which in my mind meant I was safe, that whenever I heard anything move, I was like a deer standing in front of car headlights; alert and frightened.

The thing that scared me the most was the knowledge that there were creatures lurking in the darkness that were out to get me. More than once, I woke up feeling something sharp pointing through different parts of my body. I would hear a suckling noise, and it felt like my blood was passing out of my body and towards the source of the sound. It didn’t take me very long to realise that something was trying to drink the life out of me. My only defence was to kick and scream, which drove the creatures away long enough for me to enter what I assumed was a different part of the place.

I called the place Darkness, because that is all it seemed to be, constant darkness filling the area. There was no light source, no shadows, no security, nothing. The darkness seemed so thick; it was almost as though walking underwater, if water was ever blackness. Sometimes the darkness appeared to be a liquid, others times a solid, and almost always seemed like a poisonous gas that was threatening to suffocate me when I least expected it. The craziest thing was, the longest I spent in Darkness, the more I came to see it as my home, probably a result of not knowing where my real home was.

Things became difficult when the unseen inhabitants of Darkness searched me out. It became increasingly obvious that my invisible enemies were not friendly neighbours seeking to deliver complementary muffin baskets. The only thing they seemed to be interested in obtaining was my body, my mind, or my soul. Their intentions were hard to read, I had no idea who wanted to use me for unpleasant reasons or who wanted to end my life. I was filled with worry all the time that I wouldn’t survive and that I’d die in that freezing and depressing world.

One night, or day, it was nearly impossible to tell, I woke up and found it hard to breathe. Something was wrapping their hands around my neck and squeezing. Despite the fact I was nearly frozen with fear as the thought of my life, which I could remember being only blindness every day, I felt a lot more comfortable than I ever had before in Darkness. Something about the hands that were doing their best to kill me was not as scary as others that had attempted to. I felt an image forming in my completely insane mind. It was an image of a kind and gentle person, with long brown hair, light brown eyes, pale skin, wrapping their hands around whatever I looked like.

I figured whoever was strangling me was doing me a favour. He was trying to end my sad existence and save me from spending all of my time isolated in the dark. He spoke no words, and yet I could feel his actions were screaming.
“I want to help you!” they seemed to scream. “Please, let me help you!”
Even though I had forgotten how to speak, cry, scream, laugh, or feel any emotions, I soon found myself falling head over heels in love with what I imagined to be killing me. He might as well have only been a dream, because nothing in Darkness had ever been kind of enough to think of me before themselves. He wanted to bring me to the light, to save me from the darkness, and as I lay there, with that firm, yet gentle grip crushing my windpipe, I realised something.

I wanted to be brought to the light.