darkness
Darkness. Pitch black darkness. Not even a scrap of light in the dark room. It’s so dark that it’s hard to know if your eyes are open or not.
It’s so dark it’s hard to know if you’re still alive or not.
How long have you been here? Sitting all alone in the dark? A day? Two? A month? Three years? You have no idea. All you know is that it’s dark, and it’s nothing else.
Slowly you close your eyes and rest your head against the wall. At least you know that’s there. You can’t see it, but you know it’s there. You can feel it behind your back as you try to move in your cramped position, your hands firmly held behind you with something cold and thick and what you’d like to believe are handcuffs but you really don’t know that as you can’t see them, can you? Your legs are tied too, you can tell because you can’t move them and you feel the bonds pressing against your skin through the material of your trousers but again… you can’t see them.
What’s happening to you? Why are you here? You don’t even bother to close your eyes to think about it, it’s so dark you can’t even tell if your eyes are open or closed. You stare out into the black, thinking. What happened? You don’t remember. Wait…
Sunlight. Warmth. Noises from the cars on the road. People walking, talking, laughing. Then…struggling. That was when the darkness came. That was when you lost track of everything… in the form of a sharp blow to your head that took you into the eternal darkness.
You try to remember more, but you can’t. All you know is that damn darkness that surrounds you, enveloping you in its cloak. You think that this is what death feels like, don’t you? Peaceful, quiet, and of course, dark. Just black, man.
But you aren’t dead. You’re alive, breathing, tied up and leaning against a wall that’s made of bricks, you can tell by tracing the outlines of the shapes behind you with your fingers behind your back.
Don’t you wish you were just dead anyway? It would be much easier. First of all, you wouldn’t be thinking so much. You wouldn’t know that you were alive and helpless and unable to do anything except sit there and wait for some unseen hand to take your breath away… literally.
Your arms are aching from being in one position for too long, and your body is racked with the chill that rises from the floor and into your bones. Idly you hit your head against the wall, wincing as pain spasms through your skull. Smiling as you realize, again, that no, you’re not dead.
Not yet.
You maneuver your body a little way in front, grinning now. No one can see you grinning, but you know that you probably look like you’ve gone insane. Probably because you have gone insane. Snapped, cracked… you’ve sure lost it, haven’t you? The laugh that breaks the silence around you is something new, but it won’t be there for long. Your laugh won’t be there for long, and neither will you.
Thud.
You slam your head backwards against the wall. Ouch. That hurt. It really did. But then, why are you laughing? Didn’t it hurt enough?
Thud.
Again. This time, you could have almost sworn you felt something crack. Shaking your head, you feel the throbbing pain that radiates from the back of your skull and grin. It won’t be hurting for long. Nope. You know it won’t.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
A flash of light shoots across your vision. It’s so bright that you close your sensitive eyes against it, until you realize that the light is inside your eyes, it’s flashing at you from beneath your eyelids. It’s making your eyes sting and burn and your head is hurting and feels like it’s going to explode and at the same time you can feel the numbness you wanted for so long but now suddenly you’re not sure you want it because even as you open your eyes, even as you stare at the sudden shaft of light that’s creeping down the steps you didn’t know were there, you realize what’s happening, and now there’s nothing you can do about, nothing, nothing you can do about the cold, black metal circle that’s in your face now and as you close your eyes for the last time, you laugh.
You laugh as you feel the bullet pass through you, you laugh, your laughter dying away as you fall to the floor, lying on your side. Replaced by another. Much crueler, much louder, the laugh rings around you, but you couldn’t care less, because you just don’t know.
Because you’re dead. Because you cracked before they could come for you. Because you cracked and gave into the darkness, because you closed your eyes and went to sleep… forever.