Memories (Of Dreams and Demons)

The Tomb

Draft of two chapters.

I open my eyes.

I don't care how long passes. Days, weeks, years. I stopped counting time.

The door is slammed shut, blocking out the outside world for more than a week. It only opens for the times I tiptoe timidly down the hall to use the toilet add the moments my mother passes a plate to me.

Looking down at the carpet, I study the mess before me as if seeing it for the first time, needing to bring myself back into the now. Dozens of pages of paper, open books and old maps. A whirlwind of thoughts and memories swirls within my mind, and I try to force it to rest, to settle, so as I can make sense of it.

While every passing week feels an eternity, I only have a couple more years left before the path before me becomes a cliff and I know not where I will fill. I bitterly relish the thought. Either I fly or die, this chapter of my life over.

I'm in my room, a dungeon just beneath the surface of the Realm, the first level of the underground. The top half of my room holds windows still that let little rays of light through closed curtains, before becoming dirt half-way, as if my house is sinking into the filthy mud.

Despite the scars and burns that wreck my body, the sorrow and anger that threatens to bubble to the surface and effect me on any more than an internal struggle, my mind remains sharper than ever. There is a picture painted clean as day in my head resting behind a wall of blood. I remember her. Oh I do, Moloch. I remember her name: Naoko.

"You should have behaved." Is all she says.

My room is a mess of books and paper and blood. I sit on my knees in the center, a pen and a knife sits on the ground beside me. They are as interchangeable in my hands as my mood. Around me rests notes and maps about a dozen different places and people; half-finished stories and dreams. My head is bowed, eyes downcast, and tears stream down my face. As I write and draw, blood slowly sticks and dries between my fingers. I do not want to be here, trapped in this room or this place at the bottom of my dreams. The only positive is what has decided I must stay in here for a long time as punishment has also decided that it does not wish to visit or spend time here either. So I have some respite, some freedom from the anger and the pain. I scribble maps and paragraphs describing places from another world furiously. They dance in my mind and get put in their place on paper.

I put my pen down when the pain and sadness begins to overwhelm me. I will never live these fantastic lives or visit any of these beautiful lands. My fingers begin to shake. I feel lost, then a wave of depression, followed by a surge of anger at being stuck here feeling like this. Why does this hurt so bad? Why am I the one that has been chosen to suffer this life? I slam my hand down onto the knife, shutting my eyes and scrunching my face up in furious frustration. I want to scream at the world. I want to break the things that are causing me so much pain, but because of fear, or weakness, I cannot. The emotional pain inside is torture, my mind is a torrent of confusion and conflicting thoughts. Dull it. Numb it. Hide it. 

--- redacted policy

My life is pain. Accept it. Embrace it. Become it.

Without me realising she comes and stands beside me, her face sad and slightly white seeing me like this. She puts her hand on my shoulder, but I am too lost and blind and do not feel her presence. I am a child stuck in this memory, tears streaming down my face. The edges of my room are black with pain, shadows slowly slinking closer towards me as I cower in the middle. My pen a sword keeping the darkness at bay. My knife the moments the darkness manages to strike at me.

"Keep writing, my love. You will make our place real soon enough." She whispers in my ear.

My head shoots up, "Naoko?"

A Dying Light's Rage - Draft Chapter

And with a name remembered she appears beside me in my room.

A hallucination, I glare at an empty space, remembering a time when I had hope.

"You're hiding this from me," Naoko says lovingly. "Because you don't want me to see what you become?"

"It's okay," she smiles. "Because we're here now, together, no matter how dark things get."

She reaches out, "I love you because you are a light within the darkness. Because in the darkness, we found one another. Please let me be the light at the end of your darkness."

How are you still here, you are not real? What is real?

Leave me be, fantasy. Her voice fades away into nothing.

I kneel in my room, head bowed again, writing again scrawled around me.

My mind isn't on my writing. I've torn pages up and thrown them to the side. I ran into the forest and it never became The Realm. When I went to the school library she wasn't there. My mind is slipping apart to grief and hopelessness. Pain rebounds throughbout my soul. There is a book sitting next to me I borrowed from the local library indefinitely. A book about history in the medieval times, when knights fought one another for righteous or demonic causes. They were not mocked, but feared or loved, they lived their life according to their ideals or sadistic beliefs. They were free, and fought for their freedom. Loveless, lost, uncared for. I would give anything to have my princess and freedom and love and righteous justice to fight and die for. But I don't, I'm trapped in an old room in the middle of nowhere with no point to existing except to burn wood. I have no friends, no future, no hope, my dreams appear impossible. I won't get anywhere without outside help. There is no help here based on love, there are no angels looking over me or I wouldn't be here. There is only shadow, only darkness. That is all I have to draw upon. Lost, hopeless, I cave in and draw upon what I am terrified of, the demons within me. The book I borrowed shows me old drawings and patterns that draw upon the powers of evil. There will be no redemption. Freedom will require I am cursed forever.

My blood runs freely down my arms, dozens of slashes up and down patterning my pain. Shadows lash out of me, they've taken hold of my legs and lower body. They have me. I've given up. No light shines through the window, the air is a grey dull thickness. I lower my header further, shutting my eyes tight, slamming out bitter tears.

"I will swear myself to anyone, anything, no matter what you are." My voice quivers, whispering in deep pain to an empty uncaring room. "Please, just give me strength. Just set me free and help me survive this."

A black vortex appears, beckoning me inwards. No man or creature walks forth from it. I stand, facing uncertainty, and enter.

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