There was darkness. It was suffocating, maddening darkness. There was almost a stench of it that hung in the air like a murky gloom, pressing closer and closer until I almost choked on it.
I curled in on myself, becoming smaller as I pulled my head into my chest. But as I shrunk, the walls pressed in tighter and tighter. They were damp and jagged stone with slime oozing through the cracks. I could almost feel the creatures slinking through the blackness, crawling over me, leaving trails of their ooze and muck.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn't bear to bring the sound to my lips for fear the noise would just join the darkness, taking up what little space was left. To admit defeat, even let a whimper slip out of my mouth would crush me.
But I didn't want to be alone anymore.
Then, through the blackness came a flash of light. It was so sudden and so unexpected I assumed I imagined it. I had hallucinated many images to ease my suffering, but they too left me soon enough, making the return to torture almost unbearable. I had once imagined a feast laid out before me in a grand endless hall with enough room for me to run and scream and dance. But it vanished before long, transporting me back to my hole. But the light seemed too real.
A clicking noise followed the flash. It sounded like the pincers of a million insects snapping as they scuttled toward me. The noise filled the little space left in my cave, squeezing me against the wall to make room for it. No one realizes how much space noise can take up. I didn’t either.
But then the sound ended. It vanished from my chamber in an instant and I could breathe again. I relaxed, but only slightly, assuming it would return soon. Only the pleasant hallucinations, if this is what it was, left me alone. But as I went to peel off the wall I found with a sob my hole had shrunk around me.
The flash of light came again a little while later. I was prepared for it this time and studied it as it came. I realized that it was a dark green color. The color I imagined when I felt the slime on the walls drip onto my back.
I shakily held out my hands, wanting to finally see them after an eternity of darkness. I wished for the light to illuminate a part of me so I could know for certain I wasn’t a hallucination of my mind.
I almost wailed in misery and despair as the light left me alone. The wish to prove I wasn’t a phantom conjured by a faint dream filled me with a rush. It almost crushed my quivering soul. I was not quick enough to catch sight of anything illuminated by the light. I would never see myself again.
But I had little time to think about the light before the noise sounded again.
The next time the light and the noise appeared, my mind matched them to a creature. A monster. If I couldn’t see myself I could at least see something. Even if it repulsed me I could see more than the darkness in the air. The creature disgusted me and I almost wished it would disappear the moment it crept into sight. But it was my monster and as long as it was with me I wasn't alone.
It only came with the flash and the sound. It had a huge, bulky body that took up most of the pit, shoving me so hard into the jagged walls that I bit my tongue in pain. But it wasn’t just darkness. Even the pain was preferable to the sensation of numbness that came with the blackness.
It had black scales glistening with ooze. The light that had once come from a mysterious source now shone from its green, bulbous eyes that pierced me it’s revolting gaze. It only had five teeth, but they were long, curved, jagged things that jutted from its jaw like daggers. It had claws that scraped and scuttled across the ground, creating the noise I hated so much. But now that I realized the monster made the sound, the noise didn't frighten me. I relished the sound because it meant I wasn't alone.
The creature created more and more pain each time it appeared. It slid over me, beating me to the ground and stealing the breath from my lungs. It came more and more often, but I still didn't dread it. It was more than darkness. The suffocating, maddening darkness.
But the last time it came, it didn't leave. It wrapped around my neck and chest, squeezing, embracing, crushing me. A tortured gasp slipped from my lungs as I struggled to breathe. But I wasn't fighting. I wasn't writing, trying to escape. Even as my mind grew dim and the blackness closed in, I sat unmoving and silent, reveling in the feeling.
The slime of the monster disgusted me and it's empty, gaping eyes filled me with revulsion. But I endured the pain and the discomfort. Because those things weren't just numb darkness. The monster wasn't darkness. I wasn’t surrounded by the nothingness and silence that pounded in my ears and filled my head with ludicrous visions.
I just wanted the nothingness to end. The suffocating, maddening darkness.
Chloe dabbed the tears dripping down her face. She looked through the one-way mirror into the dismal room at the mental facility. She put her hand up to the glass, hoping against hope that her sister could see her against all odds instead of the reflection of the room.
The room was small, with only a cot and a chair in the corner for any doctor that tried to talk to her sister. Nothing that her sister could injure herself with was left in the room, which Chloe guessed was smart, but it seemed her sister was doing more harm to her brain than her physical body.
Chloe liked to imagine that while her sister was inside her head, it was pleasant. Maybe she was reliving good memories or in a magical paradise where she could finally breathe easy. The doctors had told her this lie many times. That her sister was inside her head but in the best way possible. They even said they made progress in the years that she had been a patient there.
But deep down Chloe knew the truth. Her sister’s situation, expression, and body position were virtually unchanged and no one knew what to do. Something was horribly wrong with her sister and she knew it. As watched her sister curl into a tighter ball, pain and fear etched onto her open, unseeing eyes, Chloe’s fears seemed to be confirmed.
Her sister was trapped. But not in a good place. Not in the room...no, it was much worse than that. Her sister was cornered in her own head, enclosed in the terrifying space of her mind. Trapped in the suffocating, maddening darkness.
Naomi Whipps | About the Author
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