A Demon's Tale

Chapter Sixteen

- The Dark Room -

- Part IV -

Strange images flashed up before me while light and luminous fog along with black smoke and slimy shapes moved around. I saw turbid faces. I saw something strange sweep around above it all. I saw strange strings hanging down attaching to objects and figures. It was all blurry and chaotic, like winds clashing as if a storm of thoughts was taking place inside my head. The environment kept changing as scenes played out before me as if multiple different environments from different moments of place and time merged together. I saw trees. I saw walls. I saw hallways. I saw a meadow. I saw streets. I saw bookshelves. I saw water. I saw tile floors. I saw a bridge. I saw stairs. I saw swings. I saw carousels. I saw a fireplace...

Everything kept rearranging, assembling, and crumbling like ash, all the while the strange black and white fog swept over, clashing and shaping the scenes over and over again. Eventually, the scene seemed to settle to a particular one and the environment changed into a corridor with lockers along the walls. Multiple, blurry, faceless people moved around and passed by in a hectic manner. Then among all the strange shapes and faces further down the corridor, I spotted a grey mask from within the crowd facing towards me. I recognized that mask, but I was too delirious to really make sense of anything that was going on. Then a shape moved across it and the mask disappeared. Slowly the picture became more and more clear, details more distinct and the light brighter...

I walked with a straight back through the school corridor. There was a lot of hectic movement from students all trying to reach their lockers at the same time, everybody full of energy and excitement from having just come back from spring break. I too felt full of energy and excitement, both because I had had a great week, but also since I was looking forward to seeing Colin again. I had spent the whole spring break with Sara. A whole week without so much as a text from Colin. He had just come back from their family trip yesterday and we had only had the time to hang out for less than two hours.

I had been hanging out with Connor and Lucas by the town square until late in the evening and then Colin had joined us as soon as he had been able to but only just to hectically try and catch up with the topics at hand and the things he had been missing out on during his time away, not nearly enough time to reconnect and with no time whatsoever for Colin to share any of his. He had also been in a hurry to get back home to pack up stuff and prepare for the next day. And though there had been a nonstop blabbering from everyone, there had not really even been any time for just me and Colin to conversate the way we were used to, since Connor and Lucas had been the ones leading and dominating the conversation.

And so, our reunion had not really been one worthy of its name or one of satisfaction, having left us with nothing but half-finished sentences and the chaotic late-night texts from the night before and the quick 'see you in school' text exchanges in the morning. I was eager to make my way through the corridor so that we could get back to our usual ways, the way things were supposed to be.

The time away had really built up pressure for the need for a valuable social exchange that would otherwise have been provided through a very constant flow, a kind of exchange I could only receive through him, -a kind of value only he could provide. He was the only one with whom I felt that I could just fully let go of everything and just be myself with, and we had a special way of interacting and talking to one another, an unfiltered and easy communication link, in exchange of thoughts, perspectives, values, and ideas, where no topic was too strange and not much explanation was ever needed since we often thought in the same patterns and were, therefore, able to understand one another without even finishing our statements.