The silence was deafening as the door closed and left her sitting in the darkest of places with no light, no sound save for the voices in her mind. Demonic things spring up when one is faced with nothing but silence, darkness and their own fears and she was no different, in fact she was oddly the same as she had always been. Silences either a most welcomed gift or more painful than the most abusive beating and it all depended on the silence that she heard and from whence and how it came.
She liked to be alone, but never liked to be out of touch. She liked to have time on her own, but always with the knowing that the connection was there should she need it. There were times when she felt as though she had fallen into a pit, she didn’t like to call it despair, she knew that wasn’t the right word for it, but it was an oddly lonely feeling when she could look up and see the light, yet there was no hand there for which she could reach to help her from the pit and so she clawed at the walls, to drag herself out while they seemed to turn to mud to make the crawling all the harder.
Sometimes she would just give up or give in and allow herself to slump to the floor of the pit, tilt her head and look up at the light. Sometimes she would call out and ask if there was anyone there to hear her, but sometimes she would just sit and wallow in what seemed like a mile of her own mire before she could actually find the resolve to begin clawing at the walls again. She liked the darkness, what she didn’t like was the despair. She liked being alone, what she hated was being lonely.
She could always avoid the pit all together given enough medicated bliss, but she had long since decided that she’d somehow earned the visits and therefore decided that she would be her own hero and save herself from the despair, however things never quite go as one plans them to and she wasn’t even sure if escaping was a possibility. She closed her eyes tightly as she envisioned the demons flying over head and the voice of a scared little girl rang in her ears begging and pleading with her to not let them find her. She’d long since given up on the benevolence of others. There was no one out there to aid her, not one whom she could truly trust with knowing her demons and so she kept them all locked up within the pit and since there was no one there to help her extinguish the fires of her fears, she had no choice but to spend time in the pit and feed them little bits of her soul every now and then. If they were somehow satiated they would take their reprieve until the hunger grew again and demanded feeding.
She’d made the mistake, she’d shown her tears, the window of weakness through which they crept. A lesson that should have long since been learned, but she could never seem to hold them in once the well of swallowing became too full and she sobbed out the poison, gasping for air as each wave seemed to pull her into the undertow. The waters there were dark and dank and cold and smelled of something dead and rotting, her soul perhaps; maybe her sanity? And her demons smirked their toothy grins knowing that by the time she knew it would be too late. Courage was for the strong and the brave and she, of course, was neither.
She screamed out a wretched painful scream and the demons ate the sound before it could reach the light, then mocked her with it and called her a fool for even trying. There was none that cared enough to notice that she was gone, let alone to hear her screams and they taunted her by playing it over and over again within her mind, both the scream and the torment and as they did, they did their best to bite holes into her resolve. A choir of children’s voices sang out Ring around the Roses as she buried her face in her hands in attempt to hide her weakness from them.
A distant drumming echoed, and yet its sound grew ever closer, louder, pounding, almost resonating through her. This, this was the sound of her own fear keeping time with her heartbeat and the only reminder that she had that she was still alive. Breathing not the signal, nor blinking, nor eating, nor movement, no, the only sign of life she could truly rely upon was that distant drumming that grew ever closer, willing, begging, pleading with her to fight that which meant to consume her this time. The light at the top of the pit seemed further away than she ever remembered it being, she didn’t know if she could make it, she wasn’t sure if escape was even possible.