White, White Walls

[Rockinmuffin]

I would first like to state that all characters in this story belong to me, even though you won't be introduced to any names. I may write a sequel to this or more stories involving the same characters. Also, this story is written in first person. I hope you enjoy it!

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White walls. White, white walls in a white, white room. Such pretty white walls; innocent and clean. So unlike myself.

White represents purity; it remains safe and untouched. The darkness cannot get it. I find it funny how they lock me up in a white, white room. After all, I am the darkness. At least, that’s what he told me; he told me I was impure, a dark being sent from hell as punishment for my parents’ sins.

I am my parents’ sin.

He told me I was corrupt, evil. I was everything bad in the world. I was war, I was murder, I was rape, I was hate, I was pain, I was death. My life was the reason why others died, why others suffered. My existence was a sin, a crime against nature and all that was good and holy.

Every night, he whispered in my ear, telling me how much of an abomination I was. He told me I was worthless, that I was unloved. He reveled in my tears as they poured down my cheeks in flowing, damp streaks. He told me my sadness and my tears brought him overwhelming joy, so I allowed him to have his happiness as I cried myself to sleep, my tears dampening my already-soaked pillow.

But even in my dreams I couldn’t escape from him.

Thoughts of sugarplums and fairies instantly vanished once he entered the scene, turning my sweetest of dreams into the most hellish of all nightmares. The sun and the sky disappeared and all my surroundings turned pitch black. When I asked him why he did this he merely told me that the darkness belonged in the darkness and only the darkness. The light was forbidden to me and I could do nothing more than covet it.

The darkness… It was too much for me, too overwhelming. I wanted to escape from it, but how would I ever escape from the darkness? How would I ever escape from myself?

But still I tried. He laughed at me, telling me that it was useless. I could never escape the darkness because I was the darkness and nothing would ever change that. What’s darkness is darkness. What’s light is light. The darkness can never become the light and the light can never become the darkness.

The dark cannot be the light. The guilty cannot be the innocent. The evil cannot be the good.

I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand that I was the reason there was so much darkness in the world. I couldn’t stand that my existence was such a burden on society. It was too much for my heart to take and I feared it would snap in two from all the pressure.

He laughed; a dark, mocking, cynical laugh. He told me I had no heart.

“Then what is this?” I had asked him, placing a hand on my chest and finding temporary peace and serenity in the rhythmic beats that pumped blood through my body. My dark, dark blood. “I have a pulse, I have a heartbeat. Surely I have a heart.”

He chuckled; perhaps he found my naivety amusing. He smirked as he looked down at me, his powerful form towering over my own. He moved my hand out of the way and put his own hand in its place. “That pulse, that beat comes not from your heart, but from the darkness. With every beat the darkness grows stronger. Soon it will be powerful enough to devour everything around it, even the light.” He nonchalantly stroked his fingers through my hair; whether he did it to comfort me or to mock me, I don’t know. “This is nothing like the fairy tales you grew up with; the darkness shall consume the light and it will be your entire fault. As long as you live so does the darkness.”

“Then… Then what would happen if I didn’t exist?”

“There would be no darkness.”

“What if I were to die?”

“…”

He paused; his dark, dark bangs covered his eyes, hiding his expression from me. Slowly, his lips curved into a devious smirk. His eyes, his blood red eyes, shined with a crazed light as he stared down at me.

“The darkness can never die.”

I thought he was lying. I should’ve known better; he had never lied to me before so he would have no reason to start now. Perhaps, since I was such an evil entity, I just couldn’t stand to hear the truth.

Never before had the thought of suicide crossed my mind, but now it seemed as if it were my only option. I had been taught that suicide was an evil thing, as evil an act as murder or any other sin, but it seemed an appropriate way to go. After all, what better way to destroy evil than with evil itself, by evil itself; myself. Besides, only a person could commit a sin and I wasn’t a person; I was the darkness.

He had been right. Just as I had reached the edge, just as I was only a step away from returning back to hell where I belonged, I was stopped. My parents pulled me away from the ledge; they held me comfortingly as they wept.

He laughed, pointing out that instead of destroying the darkness I only succeeded in creating more sadness and pain.

My parents told me they could help me, that I could be cured, but they didn’t understand. I couldn’t be cured; I had no disease. I was the darkness, simple as that. And I had already learned the hard way that there was no cure for the darkness.

They took me to a doctor, saying that by spilling out my heart and soul to some stranger that I would be healed. But I had no heart; I had no soul. That’s what he told me.

When I told the doctor about him, the doctor merely gave me strange looks. After a few sessions the doctor declared me mentally unstable; the doctor said that I was schizophrenic, that it was my own mind that had created him. I told the doctor the idea was ludicrous, but I was ignored. After all, who would listen to insanity; who would listen to darkness?

And so, because they could not stand the darkness, because they feared the darkness, they locked the darkness up. They imprisoned the darkness in a room filled with light because the only way to fight the darkness, the only way to suppress the darkness, was to surround it with the light.

So I sat and I stared at the white, white walls in the white, white room. I sat and I stared at the pretty white walls that were everything that I was not.

He came to me, frowning. “Why do you sit there? Why do you just sit here and take this? You are the darkness, you are evil, you are all that is bad in the world. Why won’t you fight back?”

I smiled. It wasn’t a true smile; who would expect anything true from the darkness? The darkness is full of deceit and lies.

“True, I am the darkness.”

“Then why won’t you destroy the light?”

“Because the light is too strong for me to destroy. The darkness may never die, it may never be destroyed, but the darkness could never snuff out the light. The light is stronger and it overpowers the darkness. The light holds a power that the darkness could never begin to understand.”

He snorted in distaste, glaring down at my pathetic form. “You may be the darkness but you remain as foolish and naïve as ever. You may admit that you are the darkness but you’ve yet to accept it. You still think of yourself as a person; you are not a person. You are nothing; you are everything; you are evil; you are darkness.”

I turned away from him in favor of staring at the white, white walls. I could do nothing but long for them, so close yet so far. The only thing keeping me from reaching out and touching its smooth surface was the jacket that restrained my arm’s movements. How ironic. No matter how close I am to the light I’ll never be able to reach it, to become it.

He continued his verbal assault. “Why do you try to deny your fate? Are you afraid? Afraid of the dark?”

“…Yes.”

“You shouldn’t be. The darkness and the light, though they are polar opposites, are very much the same. People enjoy the light because they can see where they are headed, but when they come to the darkness they are blinded. They stumble about in the darkness in fear, panicking when they hear the slightest sound just because they don’t know what it is. They don’t understand the darkness, they can’t see its true nature, and that is why they fear it.” I felt his slightly-calloused hands firmly grasp my chin, lifting it and forcing my eyes to meet with his own dark, bloody eyes of crimson. “Foolish child, you of all people should know better than to fear the darkness. You are the darkness.”

“And that is why I fear it.”

Silence. Beautiful, fleeting silence.

“…You fear yourself?”

“No. I fear what I might do. I fear what I may be capable of.”

His dark chuckle resonated through the room, sending chills down my spine due to the coldness behind the disturbing, throaty laughter. I just barely refrained from shivering, lest I give him the satisfaction.

“Don’t be afraid. Embrace the darkness; embrace your true self. You are corrupt, evil. You are everything bad in the world. You are war, you are murder, you are rape, you are hate, you are pain, you are death. You are the darkness. Only once you accept that will you be able to escape.”

“I mustn’t escape.”

“Why not?”

“I need to stay here. If I want to get better then I need to stay here.”

Another indignant snort from him. “Tell me, do you feel any better now than you did before you were taken here?”

“No, but-”

“Have I left you?”

“No.”

“Are you able to reach the light?”

I stared almost longingly at the white, white walls. “…No.”

Although I wasn’t looking at him, I knew he was smirking at me. He thought that he had won, that he had convinced me to embrace my darkness. And maybe a small part of me was. But as long as I had will power, as long as I still had a fighting spirit, I wouldn’t give in. If I accepted the darkness, my darkness, there would be no return. Assuming that I could control my destiny, that I could somehow stray from the path of darkness. The path that was made just for me. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was impossible.

Any path I took was a path of darkness.

I remember asking him, that if I was the darkness, what did that make him? He simply looked down at me with his usual smirk, purposely ignoring my question. Whether he did it to further irritate me or because he felt I wasn’t ready to know the answer, I wasn’t sure.

I sighed to myself, my gaze never leaving the wall. My eyes took on a glazed, far-away look as I continued to stare, temporarily turning my brain off. I had done enough thinking for the day. Right now, I just needed to rest my weary mind. Maybe things would start to look better later in the evening.

Besides, even the darkness needs to rest. That’s what the light of day is for.

I felt my eyes flutter, my eyelids suddenly feeling ten times heavier than normal. My breathing started to slow and my eyes closed completely. I knew that if he still had something he wanted to say to me he would enter my dreams and turn them into that hellish nightmare, but that still wasn’t enough to keep me awake. Just as I was about to enter the realm of dreams, I heard his voice; though it was hazy due to my barely-conscious state, I could still hear every word.

“Fine. Continue to resist your darkness. Continue to live your life as an oblivious fool. Soon enough you will realize your place. You will understand that the darkness can never become the light.” And the moment the last word passed through his lips, I passed through to the land of slumber.

I’d never had more pleasant dreams before in my life.