Something I allowed myself to write this morning. I don't usually delve into this type of writing, but the mood was right for it so I did....
The Darkness...
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.