There was darkness, thick and suffocating from all sides. It felt like mud was filling my lungs, and yet, I still somehow managed to breathe through all of it. But it hurts. It hurts and I wanted nothing more than to escape the seemingly endless barrage of pain. The more I struggled against the darkness, the harder it squeezed. I fought against the air being pulled into my lungs, and yet I was still breathing. My heart was beating, is beating, but something within me also slowly became loose.
I was pulled along with the current, being dragged to the surface despite it being against my will. The darkness gave way to the blinding light, and against all odds, I opened my eyes.
Memories from the past have come to light, despite all those efforts to hide. All those precious seconds, hours, days, years that had fled my mind, locked away in a golden cage, key lost along with its keeper. Only time worked away at it, hinges rusted and weak as the lock cracked and distorted. With enough pressure in the right places, be it lashes, bruises or scars forming on the skin, no matter how strong, one would break. Long nights filled with nothing but relentless questioning, blood and loath. The cage rattled and clanged as the bars started to give beneath the weight it held. There was enough blood on the bars to let the pieces slip through as the cracked and shattered bones chipped away at the lock. Then, as the blood runs dry with bones past the point of healing, the cage bursts open as the lock clatters onto the ground. Memories of the past came, flooding an unconscious mind. And I woke up, as an entirely different person from before.
There was a brief moment where there was literally nothing going throw my head, her head. Like a blank piece of paper, empty with an intense whiteness that was almost overwhelming. Then everything came back, and there was just too much. Familiar faces and names flashed by along with their voices screaming, crying, laughing, smiling, all combined into a senseless melody of white noise. The air seemed too sweet as it filled her lungs. And the light was almost blinding.
In a toxic fog of nothing short of pain and delusions, I fight for freedom in desperation.
“Where are you? I can’t find you in this place, abandoned by all.”
No distinction between the blood and bruises on my own skin and the dribbling blood from the broken body of a stranger was made. The shouts, screams of fear and anger all blended into a senseless melody. My hands move unbidden. I am a stranger in my own head, a spectator, watching as someone else pilots my broken and bloody body.
“They will pay for what they have done to you.” A voice eerily similar to that of my own, her voice, resounded in my head. Feelings of rage and pure blood lust washed over me, blending along with my fear, our fear, our grief, our pain, and danced into a broken waltz across the conscience of our mind. Tears of bitter regret were wept as we lost the love we once held dearly to the cruelties of the world. A love now bond by the physical form, two sides of the same coin, a vessel made for one. Our hearts broken in tandem, the vibrations resounding across the void. Heavy and weightless. Painful yet precious.
A heavy shadow creeps in, dark and suffocating with sweet promises of the end we hope but would never get. Thus we fight until our body can no longer obey and our strength slips away from our grasp into a broken heap of flesh and bone.
“Can you hear the wind? Singing within the walls, traversing the realms of dream and reality to lull you to sleep. It’s aching, it’s lonely. A lullaby for you. A lullaby for me. Fall, trust in me. With the two of us together, you’ll never be lost again.”
Thus, I fell. Into the deep and dark consciousness I went. Letting myself fall as she took command. My other self, no, my other persona. A mask I made, one that’s always standing tall, cold and ruthless. A mask I hid behind, a persona I relied on, to hide the part of me which I never wish for others to see ever again. As well as the loneliness which has always followed and stuck to me like a shadow.
