Silent Shadows: Book Two - The River of Secrets

VI

The Shining One.

She didn't know what'd brought her here, what had descended her into inexistence. All she knew was that she now existed within a void, an abyss where she could not even perceive her own presence. Looking up, there was no way to look up. There was no up. There was no down. There was no in. No out. No around. No life nor death. It was simple. More than simple. This place was nowhere.

"Hello," a whisper cut through the nothing. "Do not panic about your lack of existence here. We are somewhere beyond your perception."

Who...? Even though she had no mind here, somehow those words still came born of questioning.

"I sense your fear. Shall I give you manifestation?"

Where am I? The energy of the question spawned via aether, giving something to the nothingness for just a moment. She suddenly found her own psyche under control of another, before quickly it was released. She was here now. She could perceive her own soul, and yet that soul was still nowhere.

"Where am I?" She finally found that she could ask that question out loud.

"We are in your mind, living one," the voice spoke. "I do not hold physicality like you do. The physical self I once existed as is likely destroyed now, decomposed into nothing."

"What are you?" she asked. She found herself consumed by the fact that this was likely just another dream, it was her mind whispering simple ideas to her in corrupted ways.

"What am I? I am energy," the voice answered. "If I were to wander free like most of the dead do, I would quickly find myself stolen of the ultimate law that is individuality, and my existence would simply be the existence of all the other dead."

"...what are you doing here? In my mind?"

"I connected myself to you. In your living mind, my energy is protected. Although I am confined, and the personality my physical self once hold has been erased, I am still free to exist individually." 

She found herself tormented by wonder, by confusion as to why she couldn't wake herself up from this dream. "Leave me alone. Please, just...don't hurt me."

"You believe I will hurt you?" Despite those words, not a drop of emotion could be perceived by this presence. "You do not remember me, it seems. I have already noticed this, author of this mind. All the things you've written seem to have been locked away."

She felt herself engulfed by confusion. Somewhere within herself, she encountered a possibility. This was not a dream. This was not simply the deranged art of her imagination.

"You..." she spoke. "Are....are you the reason I can't remember anything?"

"Why do you believe this of me?" Still, nothing in that dead voice."It was you, living one. You could not live with the knowledge of what had happened to you, and so you locked away your mind. It seems you couldn't simply lock away the bad things. In doing so, you lost access to the memories of your entire life. Everything, everything before one point in time."

She felt overwhelmed, as though she was sinking away into another reality. She was possessed by the awareness of the things that she didn't know. "I didn't choose to forget everything." She knew how dissociative they way she spoke was, it was as if she wasn't speaking to an outside aspect of existence. "Who are you?"

"You should know the answer to that question. And yet you don't." The voice remained static in emotionlessness, and yet somehow, buried beneath the aether of information she was experiencing, she could sense the soul's unhappiness. "When I was physical, we held immense affinity, a unique connection between my self and yours."

Through the abyss here, she felt the travel of a wave. An unthinkable experience that had suddenly embraced the nothingness. 

"Now, even though I once believed I had escaped negative aspects of the living such as emotion, somehow the fact that you do not even remember me still brings negative thought."

The Silent One.

She felt herself arise from a darkness she'd never realized she had slipped into. Something was holding down her mind, forcing her senses beneath the surface. Beneath consciousness. Abnormally, it felt as if the hands that forced her down were formed by agony. Pain was gleefully stabbing at the one part of her body she could feel.

And yet, even with their force, they still faded away and ended. They ended like everything did. Yet unlike most, this pain ended without defeat, without reason. It simply faded.

She awoke.

Blue eyes, immediately, met her own.

She found herself in a state of confusion. Her mind had not fully awoken. That darkness that held her under had not truly let her break its surface, it'd simply gained waves that arose her somewhat higher towards it. Motionless, she simply continued gazing upon those pale blue eyes. Some area of her mind wished to turn away, but her mind was drowning. 

Soon, she rose higher. She saw her surroundings too. Yet her surroundings were nothing of joy or of beauty, they were unfamiliar. She delved deeper to avoid these strange black walls, this dark roof, this small, lightless place trapping her. Trapping her with those blue eyes. Blue eyes she felt belonged to an old companion.

Soon, the owner of those eyes whispered. "Hello."

A simple hello. A hello, a greeting, spoken without emotion and yet striking through her form to meet her soul. 

Are you...a friend?

She knew it. This was a companion. A companion she had left behind long ago.

Why, why did this absent presence come to reality? Why had it broken through out of her agonizing memories? Then an answer attacked her, invading her mind and taking the form of one of those excruciating thoughts. The feeling of physical pain, a sharp suffering that intimidated her consciousness to retreat to where it was nothing. And through mentality, through a word. A mentality that damaged another mentality from its release. 

"You murderer!" There it was. The damage. The impact.

Murderer. Who was it, this murderer? This monster, it felt as if it were someone close to her. Too close. Closer than close.

A friend. A friend was the murderer? A lover was the murderer? You are the murderer?

Revelations came into contact. Contact on the last line. The murderer was the definition.

I am the murderer.