Post by lostandtorn616 on Nov 22, 2006 13:11:21 GMT -5
Never before had the thought of self-destruction crossed my mind, but now it seemed as if it were my only option in order to claim my right to salvation. For as long as I could remember, my mother had always lectured me on how suicide was one of the most diabolic of Sins, other than murder or any other blasphemous Sin, but in my eyes it seemed I didn't have any other choice. After all, what better way to rid the darkness of its light than to destroy the very being that was responsible for empowering the darkness; myself.
Only human beings could commit Sins and defile the name of God, and I wasn’t a person, I wasn’t even a human being; I was the light of darkness.
He was right; he had always been right. Just as I nearly accomplished my feat, the moment where I truly believed that the decision I was making was the correct one and this devious Sin would make the entire world a much better place were I to cease breathing in Life, I was stopped. My mother ushered my ungrateful soul back from the brink of my Eternal Oblivion; my father's spirit holding me in comfort while my mother sobbed as she cried, looking on in shock and disbelief seeing my blank and dilative eyes staring back at her, the Crimson Filth staining my pale features.
“I... I... can’t do anything right... can I, Father? I... I couldn’t even protect you from him. I... I couldn’t even do this right. Mother, why... why do you cry for me? I cannot be saved; no one can cure the light of the curse the darkness has placed upon it. I am no longer the person you thought I was. Your daughter... she is... she is no more.”
He visited me sometime later in the evening, when I was recuperating in the hospital, that infamous sadistic grin of his that had etched into and distorted his tanned features seeing my frail body was indented with needles and hooked up to machinery that whirred and beeped in a monotone melody; in the temporary state of helplessness I found myself to reside in, I could only stare back at him; lifeless with emotion in my once full-of-life-and-joy eyes, mentally flinching seeing that the sadism in his lilac eyes still hadn't dissipated.
“You realize now, my child, that you can no longer trust your mother to comprehend your Pain and Suffering? Not unless you wish to be cast away just as society has done with people who are like yourself. Without hope. Filled with disillusions of Life and what consequences befall those who are dimwitted enough to stray from their predestined paths. Lifeless and filled with immeasurable despair and agony. Unloved and wanting to be loved, going about their daily lives wondering what could have been and what lies ahead for their future.”
He smirked, the devilish gleam in his eyes deepened to a point where you could only identify the light in his deceased seas of Sin as ruthless and sanguinary; the smirk plastered across his horrendously macabre and distorted expression slowly grew to a maniacal and crooked grin, his tongue flicking out with a quick motion and grazed his upper lip while his bloodthirsty eyes scoured the self-inflicted wounds scattered over my body.
“Perhaps I may have misjudged you far too quickly, my sweet. Perhaps you need to be taught another valuable lesson: never think you can escape me. I am your darkness and you are my light. When will you finally understand that it is you who has placed this upon yourself? When will you see that it is you who doesn't yet comprehend the fact that I was born out of your hate? Your Suffering and Pain are what created me, and while I am deeply thankful that you gave me Life, sweet child, I am not pleased to see that you would stoop so low as to commit this Sinful act upon yourself.”
He paused, his lilac eyes leaving my blank face for a moment to flicker down my battered self, stopping somewhere on the lower portion of my body before he finally returned his deranged gaze to me at a Painstakingly slow pace, his grin wider and more crazed now; seeing this terrified me and I whimpered in Fear, grasping the IVs and forcing them out, ignoring the fresh blood dribbling down my skin as a result while I tried to escape from him.
He laughed in an eerily amused manner, grasping a hold of my slashed and bleeding wrist and pushing me back down, feigning ignorance seeing my eyes were welling up with tears that soon trickled down my cheeks, shivering noticeably when I stared back at him and saw that his lips were pulled so far back on his teeth that he looked cannibalistic; his lilac eyes widened as his nostrils flared in disturbed anticipation, and I shivered more violently this time.
He had looked at me in this way once before, but I was a child at the time and I didn’t understand what his intentions had been, or what to expect of him; I was no longer a little girl, and I knew what he desired this time.
My innocence was violated for the second time in my life, but he didn’t seem to care that I had cried and pleaded with him to cease his doings beforehand; he ran his wet fingers through my hair, damp with sweat and other fluids, smirking into the skin on my clavicle and he gave a soft chuckle in response to my body instinctively tensing at his touch while his tongue lapped at the Mark of Darkness he placed on me against my will.
“You now belong to me, child. This Mark proves you are mine, and we are bound to one another until the day you die.”
Sometime later my mother found me huddled in the darkest corner of the hospital room, staring lifelessly at someone only I could see without a shred of clothing on me, coated heavily in fluids her mind didn't want to register lest she lost her sanity, but I acted as if she wasn't there; mumbling insanely under my breath; ignoring the faint cracking noise my neck made as my head tilted side to side.
“Sleep darkness, lie in peace. Sleep darkness, lie in peace...”
“Why do you deny your heritage, sweet child?”
“If the darkness wakes from its slumber...”
“Release the rage and hatred lying dormant within you...”
“Dispose of the light... tarnish it with discordant lust and envy...”
“Eliminate those who have betrayed you with ease. Claim your right to vengeance and give your soul passage to the darkness. Bathe in the blood of everyone who has dared to scorn you because they were weak-minded; despicable; filthy sadists who took great pleasure in seeing you cry and beg them for mercy.”
“Malevolent Master of mine... why do you torment me so? What have I done to deserve your macabre delight, to submit to your sadistic desires, your sick and warped ways to bring me Pain of Pleasure?”
“You are my light and I am your darkness. Regardless of your feelings in the matter, nothing will change this harsh Reality; no matter how long you try and force the Painful memories away, they will return to your weary mind, slowly crushing your sanity.”
Since that incident, my mother firmly believed that I could be cured of the disease that supposedly was responsible for plaguing my mind, for making me see a Dark Being only I could see, a malevolent alter-ego who was the sole cause for my sanity to dissipate into Darkness; he who took great Pleasure in witnessing first-hand at what his mindless torture was doing to me. Mother always told me that I could be saved, that it was possible for the mental defections to leave me, but she didn't understand; I was the light of the darkness.
I had no mental defects, the problems I faced alone could never be removed after the vindictive damage he placed upon me; once the Mark was etched into my skin, wounding and scarring my soul, I belonged to the darkness and the darkness alone. He always told me this cold and unbearable truth, that I belonged to him now; I was his property; I was his slave.
Mother took me to a highly respected and well-known psychiatrist, saying that by spilling out my heart and soul to some ‘highly respected and well-known’ mental doctor my torn mind and battered spirit would be healed. I had no heart; I had never bore a soul. He always reminded me of these so-called “slivers of truth”.
When I informed the doctor of him, she merely looked at me, her eyes glimmering with a faint light of questioning my sanity and astonishment; as if I had suddenly sprouted three heads. After three weeks of going back and forth to the psychiatrist, she conveyed to my mother in secret that I was mentally unstable; she told mother that I was Bipolar, and I suffered from Manic Depression; that my mind had created him, causing me to see and hear things that only I claimed to see. I expressed my feelings on the matter, after he told me what he overheard during their conversation, and told her that the idea of me being regarded as a psychotic being who conjured up false stories was absurd, but I was ignored.
After all, in the doctor’s eyes, I was just another case of the mentally insane; someone who made false accusations of the Dark Being, the Dark One who was solely responsible for my broken spirit and sanity, or rather me lacking sanity. And so, because they secretly, and knowingly, feared the Dark One who lay dormant within my broken mind, because they could not stand the thought of having the darkness awaken from its long slumber, they hid the light away; trying to suffocate the darkness lying in wait within the light.
They locked the darkness light away in a room filled with similar, more brilliant, light; to crush the darkness that imprisoned the light, to eradicate its unwanted presence and disease-ridden Sin from the bowels of purity, was to surround the light with an even stronger and strong-willed light. I sat quietly and soundly in my cell-like room, barred from with any hopes of contact from any other human being except the few doctors and nurses who perform their daily-and-routine examinations and, of course, him; staring at the walls gleaming with sheer and unsurpassed purity; untouched by the darkness.
He visited me just before the hour of darkness; midnight. He glared down at me sternly, disdainfully, unappreciative of this place and how I came to reside here.
“Take a look around you, sweet child. Look where your false optimism and naivety has gotten you: nowhere. Here you will remain for many endless years, pondering while your body withers away to nothing, hoping for the salvation you claim to crave, to ache with a wanting, lustful need.”
I idly raised my head, staring blankly at him for a moment before my lips curled into a smile.
“Yes, what you say is true. I don't wish to be here; I want to escape from this earthly Hell. I crave my freedom; I desire the salvation you robbed me of so many years ago; I long with a burning passion to leave this place.”
He smirked for the first time tonight, no doubt bathing in self-satisfaction that he made me say such uncanny words of truth in his presence; telling him what he had been telling me for all this time.
“So, you finally understand and admit the truth, sweet child? You finally admit to what your naive and foolish disposition has blinded you from since you were a child, a lost child who could feel no Pain but her own agony, who could care less when it came to believing the truth the darkness revealed to the light? I am your darkness and you are my light. The darkness can aid the light in escaping from this earthly prison; I can help you leave this cell, but only if you wish to truly flee from the madness, to run away and leap straight into the darkness that welcomes you.”
He crouched down and stretched his hand down nearer to my own hand, his demonic, deceased, sadistic eyes gleaming a dark light of Sin within the darkness pouring in from the window criss-crossed with steel bars so I wouldn't attempt to escape. I smiled at him, but it wasn’t a true smile, it wasn't a forced smile or a smile brimming with melancholy; who could except anything to be true or wholly innocent and pure from the light of darkness?
“I want to flee from this cell of mine, to run away and not look back, to forget everything that's happened in my life. But-”
His lilac eyes narrowed dangerously; he withdrew his hand from near mine as if he had just been struck across the face for without good reason, his seas of color bearing the light of one being utterly dumbfounded, shell-shocked, once hearing the reply I had given him.
Without another word, and giving me no fair warning, his hand sharply lifted up and a split moment later my left cheek stung like white-hot fire; wordlessly, I idly raised my gaze to meet his glare of mute loathing and fury, and he stared back into my blank gaze and emotionless eyes, three rivers of Crimson trickled down from my bruised and bleeding lip.
“But you know that if you step out of line, I'll be forced to do far worse to you than a mere insignificant injury across your face, don’t you? Is that why you disregarded my offer, why you dared to deny the heritage you have unknowingly claimed since the hour of your birth? Or is it because you Fear the darkness, because you Fear what it is truly capable of doing to you?”
“Yes, I Fear the darkness, and what its true purposes are. The innocent cannot be the guilty, good cannot be evil, the light cannot be the darkness.”
“Foolish child, you shouldn't Fear a force that other human beings Fear above all else. When mortals are cast into the Light, they know instinctively that nothing regarding the darkness or macabre can touch them, for the Light will guide and protect them from their hidden Fears. However, once the Darkness covers the Light like foreboding mist, what they expect of the Darkness instantly shifts to dark and ungodly imaginations; with the slightest noise, they tense in uncertainty. Their minds run wild as every crazed outcome enters what once was calm and peaceful thoughts; they don’t understand what the Darkness is capable of doing to them, nor do they realize what to expect from the Darkness.”
I bowed my head low, staring at the white floor of my small cell, finding a tiny piece of serenity in seeing the innocent and clean shade of color.
“But you do. You yourself know and expect the reactions of humans once the darkness plagues their hearts, don't you? You are darkness. You are everything the world has come to hate and Fear. You are hate, you are Fear, you are sadism, you are murder, you are rape. You are evil; you are darkness.”
He smirked, narrowing his eyes slightly as the smirk etched into his tanned features widened to a diabolic sneer.
“And you, dear child of mine, are everything I have come to appreciate; you are whom I take Pleasure in seeing writhing in Suffering and Fear. You can never truly comprehend the sheer Pleasure I feel whenever you experience Fear, Pain, anger or hatred. You are my light; you are the light of darkness. You are hate concealed in a false barrier of love. Your soul is the embodiment of everything I have come to adore. You are the Seven Deadly Sins concealed in an aura of purity and innocence; you are the Sinful of Sinners, my child.”
“I am aware of this... this truth that I have been denying all these years.”
“If you are aware of this, then why do you not retaliate? Why do you not unleash all your anger and Suffering upon those who have harmed you? You are capable of being reborn into darkness, you will achieve true happiness should you choose to relinquish the shackles that bind your darkness, my child.”
“That is why... why I Fear the Darkness.”
Silence. Serene, blissful silence.
“... You Fear Yourself, child?”
“No, I Fear what I may do. I Fear what I am truly capable of doing.”
He chuckled darkly, causing chills to dance up and down my spine the louder and more crazed his laughter became, and my brain temporarily shut down due to the cold-as-Death iciness behind his demented chortle. I barely contained the disturbed shivers that mentally wrecked my body.
“You must not Fear the darkness, child; you are Unique. You have been given a very remarkable and uncanny, incomprehensible gift; you are unlike all the other mortals. Embrace the darkness; allow yourself to merge and become one with who You truly are; embrace your true Self. You are the light of the darkness, you are innocence wrapped in a sheltering pit of distorted illusions, of corrupt insanity. You are the incarnation of everything humanity loathes and Fears more deeply than I. Once you accept this, and only then, will your heart and soul finally be set free.”
“I cannot just simply permit my inner darkness to assume complete dominance on my soul. If I want to get better, if I want my heart and soul to mend their hidden wounds, I must stay here.”
“Why stay here? This place bears no hope of you leaving here alive or intact with the shreds of sanity you still possess; you have no chance of being redeemed enough to walk back into the world again; this earthly prison of a bottomless Hell will not permit your lost soul to be guided into the light.”
“I must stay here, even if that means my life expires in this room of mine.”
“You have finally lost all hope of escaping here. You can leave this place... or you would have had you accepted my offer, and then I wouldn't have had to resort to violence, dear child.”
“I have not lost hope. I just-”
I felt his slightly-calloused and rough hand grip my chin firmly, his stern glare held fast as I looked back at him, staring back into his deceased, lilac eyes while his free hand rested on the back of my head so I wouldn't be able to look away from him.
“Have I abandoned you child, left you to rot in your self-guilt and self-loathing, while your heart and soul were drowning in the sweet bliss of your melancholy? Did I once leave your side to attend to other matters?”
“No, but-”
“Do you feel any better or sane now than when you were first sent here?”
“No.”
“Are you able to reach the light you crave, child?”
I stared at the white walls of my cell, my tiny prison, my death room, a faint glimmer of light, of longing, shined briefly in my eyes. Silently, I cursed the jacket I currently wore; if it weren't for the jacket, I would finally be able to reach the light, finally become the light. “... No.”
“Even you can say that I have never abandoned you, sweet child. I wasn't like all the others, was I? I never brought you shame or discontent, I never threw you aside and left you to fend for yourself in a cruel world, I never teased you or lowered your self-confidence.”
He paused, and for a few fleeting moments in time the only sounds that were made was his calm, steady breathing and my heart pulsating wildly in my chest, pounding against my ribcage so hard I silently wondered if it would explode; then he smirked, brushing a couple of strands of my rebellious hair away from my eyes.
“That may be true... that is the truth, but I cannot be allowed to leave here. The light would never permit it to happen. And... though you may be... though you are my darkness, I want to leave this ungodly sanctuary.”
I wasn’t looking directly at his face anymore, but I knew that he was smirking at me. Perhaps he thought, or actually believed, that he had won; that he truly had persuaded me to embrace my Inner Self, to embrace my Darkness. Maybe a small part of me was. But so long as my body still breathed in Life, so long as I continued to resist, so long as I continued to rebel and fight on even with my dying breath, I wouldn’t submit.
I knew, deep down inside, that if I gave in to the darkness, my darkness, I wouldn't be able to return to my old Self. Believing that I still retained a hold on my destiny and future, there was even the slightest possibility I would stray from the path leading to darkness.
The more my weary mind reflected on the matter, the more I realized how impossible it was.
Any, and every, path I took eventually lead to darkness.
I remember asking him, that if I was the light of the darkness, then what did that make him? He just stared down at me, his lips tugging as his characteristic smirk threatened to appear on his face, intentionally ignoring my question. Whether or not he only did this to anger me or because he felt I wasn't prepared to know the answer, I didn't know.
I sighed to myself, my gaze leaving the white walls to stare at the white floor. My eyes took on a far-off, glazed sheen to them as I continued to stare, momentarily shutting my brain off a bit longer than last time. I had done enough pondering and reflecting for today. For now, I just wanted, and needed, to rest my fatigued mind and spirit. Maybe things will turn out well in the morning.
Indeed, even the light needs rest. That's what the darkness of night is for.
Consciously, I felt my eyelids flutter ever so lightly, but noticeably, my eyes feeling twice as heavy than normal. My breathing was now slow and my eyes slid shut completely. I knew that if he still had something relevant that needed to be said he would just simply probe into my dreams and turn them all into that all-too-familiar nightmare; still, despite this little harsh dosage of Reality, it wasn’t enough to force me to stay awake.
Just as I nearly entered into the blissful realm of sleep, to finally probe deep into my dreams and not care about anything until he came, I heard his voice; it was hazy, possibly more distorted and maniacal than usual, but I still heard every word.
He growled in clear annoyance, roughly releasing the firm hold his hands had on me.
“Fine. Continue to resist your darkness, continue to rebel against me, continue to be a foolish, naive mortal, but soon you will succumb to not only your darkness, but mine as well, dear child.”
He glared down at me, but I was slowly drifting into the realm of dreams, the only place where I was safe from him, if it was only for a little while.
I’d never had such pleasant dreams in all of my existence.
Only human beings could commit Sins and defile the name of God, and I wasn’t a person, I wasn’t even a human being; I was the light of darkness.
He was right; he had always been right. Just as I nearly accomplished my feat, the moment where I truly believed that the decision I was making was the correct one and this devious Sin would make the entire world a much better place were I to cease breathing in Life, I was stopped. My mother ushered my ungrateful soul back from the brink of my Eternal Oblivion; my father's spirit holding me in comfort while my mother sobbed as she cried, looking on in shock and disbelief seeing my blank and dilative eyes staring back at her, the Crimson Filth staining my pale features.
“I... I... can’t do anything right... can I, Father? I... I couldn’t even protect you from him. I... I couldn’t even do this right. Mother, why... why do you cry for me? I cannot be saved; no one can cure the light of the curse the darkness has placed upon it. I am no longer the person you thought I was. Your daughter... she is... she is no more.”
He visited me sometime later in the evening, when I was recuperating in the hospital, that infamous sadistic grin of his that had etched into and distorted his tanned features seeing my frail body was indented with needles and hooked up to machinery that whirred and beeped in a monotone melody; in the temporary state of helplessness I found myself to reside in, I could only stare back at him; lifeless with emotion in my once full-of-life-and-joy eyes, mentally flinching seeing that the sadism in his lilac eyes still hadn't dissipated.
“You realize now, my child, that you can no longer trust your mother to comprehend your Pain and Suffering? Not unless you wish to be cast away just as society has done with people who are like yourself. Without hope. Filled with disillusions of Life and what consequences befall those who are dimwitted enough to stray from their predestined paths. Lifeless and filled with immeasurable despair and agony. Unloved and wanting to be loved, going about their daily lives wondering what could have been and what lies ahead for their future.”
He smirked, the devilish gleam in his eyes deepened to a point where you could only identify the light in his deceased seas of Sin as ruthless and sanguinary; the smirk plastered across his horrendously macabre and distorted expression slowly grew to a maniacal and crooked grin, his tongue flicking out with a quick motion and grazed his upper lip while his bloodthirsty eyes scoured the self-inflicted wounds scattered over my body.
“Perhaps I may have misjudged you far too quickly, my sweet. Perhaps you need to be taught another valuable lesson: never think you can escape me. I am your darkness and you are my light. When will you finally understand that it is you who has placed this upon yourself? When will you see that it is you who doesn't yet comprehend the fact that I was born out of your hate? Your Suffering and Pain are what created me, and while I am deeply thankful that you gave me Life, sweet child, I am not pleased to see that you would stoop so low as to commit this Sinful act upon yourself.”
He paused, his lilac eyes leaving my blank face for a moment to flicker down my battered self, stopping somewhere on the lower portion of my body before he finally returned his deranged gaze to me at a Painstakingly slow pace, his grin wider and more crazed now; seeing this terrified me and I whimpered in Fear, grasping the IVs and forcing them out, ignoring the fresh blood dribbling down my skin as a result while I tried to escape from him.
He laughed in an eerily amused manner, grasping a hold of my slashed and bleeding wrist and pushing me back down, feigning ignorance seeing my eyes were welling up with tears that soon trickled down my cheeks, shivering noticeably when I stared back at him and saw that his lips were pulled so far back on his teeth that he looked cannibalistic; his lilac eyes widened as his nostrils flared in disturbed anticipation, and I shivered more violently this time.
He had looked at me in this way once before, but I was a child at the time and I didn’t understand what his intentions had been, or what to expect of him; I was no longer a little girl, and I knew what he desired this time.
My innocence was violated for the second time in my life, but he didn’t seem to care that I had cried and pleaded with him to cease his doings beforehand; he ran his wet fingers through my hair, damp with sweat and other fluids, smirking into the skin on my clavicle and he gave a soft chuckle in response to my body instinctively tensing at his touch while his tongue lapped at the Mark of Darkness he placed on me against my will.
“You now belong to me, child. This Mark proves you are mine, and we are bound to one another until the day you die.”
Sometime later my mother found me huddled in the darkest corner of the hospital room, staring lifelessly at someone only I could see without a shred of clothing on me, coated heavily in fluids her mind didn't want to register lest she lost her sanity, but I acted as if she wasn't there; mumbling insanely under my breath; ignoring the faint cracking noise my neck made as my head tilted side to side.
“Sleep darkness, lie in peace. Sleep darkness, lie in peace...”
“Why do you deny your heritage, sweet child?”
“If the darkness wakes from its slumber...”
“Release the rage and hatred lying dormant within you...”
“Dispose of the light... tarnish it with discordant lust and envy...”
“Eliminate those who have betrayed you with ease. Claim your right to vengeance and give your soul passage to the darkness. Bathe in the blood of everyone who has dared to scorn you because they were weak-minded; despicable; filthy sadists who took great pleasure in seeing you cry and beg them for mercy.”
“Malevolent Master of mine... why do you torment me so? What have I done to deserve your macabre delight, to submit to your sadistic desires, your sick and warped ways to bring me Pain of Pleasure?”
“You are my light and I am your darkness. Regardless of your feelings in the matter, nothing will change this harsh Reality; no matter how long you try and force the Painful memories away, they will return to your weary mind, slowly crushing your sanity.”
Since that incident, my mother firmly believed that I could be cured of the disease that supposedly was responsible for plaguing my mind, for making me see a Dark Being only I could see, a malevolent alter-ego who was the sole cause for my sanity to dissipate into Darkness; he who took great Pleasure in witnessing first-hand at what his mindless torture was doing to me. Mother always told me that I could be saved, that it was possible for the mental defections to leave me, but she didn't understand; I was the light of the darkness.
I had no mental defects, the problems I faced alone could never be removed after the vindictive damage he placed upon me; once the Mark was etched into my skin, wounding and scarring my soul, I belonged to the darkness and the darkness alone. He always told me this cold and unbearable truth, that I belonged to him now; I was his property; I was his slave.
Mother took me to a highly respected and well-known psychiatrist, saying that by spilling out my heart and soul to some ‘highly respected and well-known’ mental doctor my torn mind and battered spirit would be healed. I had no heart; I had never bore a soul. He always reminded me of these so-called “slivers of truth”.
When I informed the doctor of him, she merely looked at me, her eyes glimmering with a faint light of questioning my sanity and astonishment; as if I had suddenly sprouted three heads. After three weeks of going back and forth to the psychiatrist, she conveyed to my mother in secret that I was mentally unstable; she told mother that I was Bipolar, and I suffered from Manic Depression; that my mind had created him, causing me to see and hear things that only I claimed to see. I expressed my feelings on the matter, after he told me what he overheard during their conversation, and told her that the idea of me being regarded as a psychotic being who conjured up false stories was absurd, but I was ignored.
After all, in the doctor’s eyes, I was just another case of the mentally insane; someone who made false accusations of the Dark Being, the Dark One who was solely responsible for my broken spirit and sanity, or rather me lacking sanity. And so, because they secretly, and knowingly, feared the Dark One who lay dormant within my broken mind, because they could not stand the thought of having the darkness awaken from its long slumber, they hid the light away; trying to suffocate the darkness lying in wait within the light.
They locked the darkness light away in a room filled with similar, more brilliant, light; to crush the darkness that imprisoned the light, to eradicate its unwanted presence and disease-ridden Sin from the bowels of purity, was to surround the light with an even stronger and strong-willed light. I sat quietly and soundly in my cell-like room, barred from with any hopes of contact from any other human being except the few doctors and nurses who perform their daily-and-routine examinations and, of course, him; staring at the walls gleaming with sheer and unsurpassed purity; untouched by the darkness.
He visited me just before the hour of darkness; midnight. He glared down at me sternly, disdainfully, unappreciative of this place and how I came to reside here.
“Take a look around you, sweet child. Look where your false optimism and naivety has gotten you: nowhere. Here you will remain for many endless years, pondering while your body withers away to nothing, hoping for the salvation you claim to crave, to ache with a wanting, lustful need.”
I idly raised my head, staring blankly at him for a moment before my lips curled into a smile.
“Yes, what you say is true. I don't wish to be here; I want to escape from this earthly Hell. I crave my freedom; I desire the salvation you robbed me of so many years ago; I long with a burning passion to leave this place.”
He smirked for the first time tonight, no doubt bathing in self-satisfaction that he made me say such uncanny words of truth in his presence; telling him what he had been telling me for all this time.
“So, you finally understand and admit the truth, sweet child? You finally admit to what your naive and foolish disposition has blinded you from since you were a child, a lost child who could feel no Pain but her own agony, who could care less when it came to believing the truth the darkness revealed to the light? I am your darkness and you are my light. The darkness can aid the light in escaping from this earthly prison; I can help you leave this cell, but only if you wish to truly flee from the madness, to run away and leap straight into the darkness that welcomes you.”
He crouched down and stretched his hand down nearer to my own hand, his demonic, deceased, sadistic eyes gleaming a dark light of Sin within the darkness pouring in from the window criss-crossed with steel bars so I wouldn't attempt to escape. I smiled at him, but it wasn’t a true smile, it wasn't a forced smile or a smile brimming with melancholy; who could except anything to be true or wholly innocent and pure from the light of darkness?
“I want to flee from this cell of mine, to run away and not look back, to forget everything that's happened in my life. But-”
His lilac eyes narrowed dangerously; he withdrew his hand from near mine as if he had just been struck across the face for without good reason, his seas of color bearing the light of one being utterly dumbfounded, shell-shocked, once hearing the reply I had given him.
Without another word, and giving me no fair warning, his hand sharply lifted up and a split moment later my left cheek stung like white-hot fire; wordlessly, I idly raised my gaze to meet his glare of mute loathing and fury, and he stared back into my blank gaze and emotionless eyes, three rivers of Crimson trickled down from my bruised and bleeding lip.
“But you know that if you step out of line, I'll be forced to do far worse to you than a mere insignificant injury across your face, don’t you? Is that why you disregarded my offer, why you dared to deny the heritage you have unknowingly claimed since the hour of your birth? Or is it because you Fear the darkness, because you Fear what it is truly capable of doing to you?”
“Yes, I Fear the darkness, and what its true purposes are. The innocent cannot be the guilty, good cannot be evil, the light cannot be the darkness.”
“Foolish child, you shouldn't Fear a force that other human beings Fear above all else. When mortals are cast into the Light, they know instinctively that nothing regarding the darkness or macabre can touch them, for the Light will guide and protect them from their hidden Fears. However, once the Darkness covers the Light like foreboding mist, what they expect of the Darkness instantly shifts to dark and ungodly imaginations; with the slightest noise, they tense in uncertainty. Their minds run wild as every crazed outcome enters what once was calm and peaceful thoughts; they don’t understand what the Darkness is capable of doing to them, nor do they realize what to expect from the Darkness.”
I bowed my head low, staring at the white floor of my small cell, finding a tiny piece of serenity in seeing the innocent and clean shade of color.
“But you do. You yourself know and expect the reactions of humans once the darkness plagues their hearts, don't you? You are darkness. You are everything the world has come to hate and Fear. You are hate, you are Fear, you are sadism, you are murder, you are rape. You are evil; you are darkness.”
He smirked, narrowing his eyes slightly as the smirk etched into his tanned features widened to a diabolic sneer.
“And you, dear child of mine, are everything I have come to appreciate; you are whom I take Pleasure in seeing writhing in Suffering and Fear. You can never truly comprehend the sheer Pleasure I feel whenever you experience Fear, Pain, anger or hatred. You are my light; you are the light of darkness. You are hate concealed in a false barrier of love. Your soul is the embodiment of everything I have come to adore. You are the Seven Deadly Sins concealed in an aura of purity and innocence; you are the Sinful of Sinners, my child.”
“I am aware of this... this truth that I have been denying all these years.”
“If you are aware of this, then why do you not retaliate? Why do you not unleash all your anger and Suffering upon those who have harmed you? You are capable of being reborn into darkness, you will achieve true happiness should you choose to relinquish the shackles that bind your darkness, my child.”
“That is why... why I Fear the Darkness.”
Silence. Serene, blissful silence.
“... You Fear Yourself, child?”
“No, I Fear what I may do. I Fear what I am truly capable of doing.”
He chuckled darkly, causing chills to dance up and down my spine the louder and more crazed his laughter became, and my brain temporarily shut down due to the cold-as-Death iciness behind his demented chortle. I barely contained the disturbed shivers that mentally wrecked my body.
“You must not Fear the darkness, child; you are Unique. You have been given a very remarkable and uncanny, incomprehensible gift; you are unlike all the other mortals. Embrace the darkness; allow yourself to merge and become one with who You truly are; embrace your true Self. You are the light of the darkness, you are innocence wrapped in a sheltering pit of distorted illusions, of corrupt insanity. You are the incarnation of everything humanity loathes and Fears more deeply than I. Once you accept this, and only then, will your heart and soul finally be set free.”
“I cannot just simply permit my inner darkness to assume complete dominance on my soul. If I want to get better, if I want my heart and soul to mend their hidden wounds, I must stay here.”
“Why stay here? This place bears no hope of you leaving here alive or intact with the shreds of sanity you still possess; you have no chance of being redeemed enough to walk back into the world again; this earthly prison of a bottomless Hell will not permit your lost soul to be guided into the light.”
“I must stay here, even if that means my life expires in this room of mine.”
“You have finally lost all hope of escaping here. You can leave this place... or you would have had you accepted my offer, and then I wouldn't have had to resort to violence, dear child.”
“I have not lost hope. I just-”
I felt his slightly-calloused and rough hand grip my chin firmly, his stern glare held fast as I looked back at him, staring back into his deceased, lilac eyes while his free hand rested on the back of my head so I wouldn't be able to look away from him.
“Have I abandoned you child, left you to rot in your self-guilt and self-loathing, while your heart and soul were drowning in the sweet bliss of your melancholy? Did I once leave your side to attend to other matters?”
“No, but-”
“Do you feel any better or sane now than when you were first sent here?”
“No.”
“Are you able to reach the light you crave, child?”
I stared at the white walls of my cell, my tiny prison, my death room, a faint glimmer of light, of longing, shined briefly in my eyes. Silently, I cursed the jacket I currently wore; if it weren't for the jacket, I would finally be able to reach the light, finally become the light. “... No.”
“Even you can say that I have never abandoned you, sweet child. I wasn't like all the others, was I? I never brought you shame or discontent, I never threw you aside and left you to fend for yourself in a cruel world, I never teased you or lowered your self-confidence.”
He paused, and for a few fleeting moments in time the only sounds that were made was his calm, steady breathing and my heart pulsating wildly in my chest, pounding against my ribcage so hard I silently wondered if it would explode; then he smirked, brushing a couple of strands of my rebellious hair away from my eyes.
“That may be true... that is the truth, but I cannot be allowed to leave here. The light would never permit it to happen. And... though you may be... though you are my darkness, I want to leave this ungodly sanctuary.”
I wasn’t looking directly at his face anymore, but I knew that he was smirking at me. Perhaps he thought, or actually believed, that he had won; that he truly had persuaded me to embrace my Inner Self, to embrace my Darkness. Maybe a small part of me was. But so long as my body still breathed in Life, so long as I continued to resist, so long as I continued to rebel and fight on even with my dying breath, I wouldn’t submit.
I knew, deep down inside, that if I gave in to the darkness, my darkness, I wouldn't be able to return to my old Self. Believing that I still retained a hold on my destiny and future, there was even the slightest possibility I would stray from the path leading to darkness.
The more my weary mind reflected on the matter, the more I realized how impossible it was.
Any, and every, path I took eventually lead to darkness.
I remember asking him, that if I was the light of the darkness, then what did that make him? He just stared down at me, his lips tugging as his characteristic smirk threatened to appear on his face, intentionally ignoring my question. Whether or not he only did this to anger me or because he felt I wasn't prepared to know the answer, I didn't know.
I sighed to myself, my gaze leaving the white walls to stare at the white floor. My eyes took on a far-off, glazed sheen to them as I continued to stare, momentarily shutting my brain off a bit longer than last time. I had done enough pondering and reflecting for today. For now, I just wanted, and needed, to rest my fatigued mind and spirit. Maybe things will turn out well in the morning.
Indeed, even the light needs rest. That's what the darkness of night is for.
Consciously, I felt my eyelids flutter ever so lightly, but noticeably, my eyes feeling twice as heavy than normal. My breathing was now slow and my eyes slid shut completely. I knew that if he still had something relevant that needed to be said he would just simply probe into my dreams and turn them all into that all-too-familiar nightmare; still, despite this little harsh dosage of Reality, it wasn’t enough to force me to stay awake.
Just as I nearly entered into the blissful realm of sleep, to finally probe deep into my dreams and not care about anything until he came, I heard his voice; it was hazy, possibly more distorted and maniacal than usual, but I still heard every word.
He growled in clear annoyance, roughly releasing the firm hold his hands had on me.
“Fine. Continue to resist your darkness, continue to rebel against me, continue to be a foolish, naive mortal, but soon you will succumb to not only your darkness, but mine as well, dear child.”
He glared down at me, but I was slowly drifting into the realm of dreams, the only place where I was safe from him, if it was only for a little while.
I’d never had such pleasant dreams in all of my existence.