The Tearsmith

A Book

Innocence is not something you lose.

Innocence is something you are,

In spite of any pain.

I couldn't move. My legs were trembling, my eyes blind. The darkness was too dense. My gaze was darting from side to side, as if hoping that someone would appear. My nails scraped against metal, convulsive and feverish, but I couldn't get free. I never could.

No one would come to save me. No one would answer my screams. My temples throbbed, my throat burned, my skin cracked under leather, and I was alone...alone...

Alone...

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I woke with a stifled sob.

The room was spinning. My stomach was in knots. I sat up, gasping for air, trying to calm down, but cold sweat clung to my back, terror sinking into my skin.

Clammy shudders ran through me, and my heart threatened to burst out of my chest.

I curled up against the headboard and clutched my caterpillar plushie.

I was safe. That was another room, another place, another life...

But the feeling remained. It crushed me. It crumpled me up and sent me right back there, to that darkness. I went back to being a child again.

Perhaps I still was.

Perhaps I had never stopped being one. Something inside me had broken long ago, and remained small, childlike, innocent and frightened.

It had stopped growing.

And I knew...I knew I wasn't like the others, because as I grew up, that broken part of me stayed a child.

I still looked at the world with the same eyes.

I reacted with the same naïvety.

I searched for the light in others, just like I had searched in vain for it in Her when I was little.

I was like a butterfly in chains.

And maybe...

I always would be.

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'Nica, are you okay?'

Billie was staring at me. Her head was tilted to one side, her bushy hair pushed back from her face with a headband.

I had been awake all night, trying to keep my nightmares at bay, and it showed on my face.

The darkness was unrelenting. A few nights, I had tried leaving the bedside lamp on, but Anna had noticed and, thinking I had just forgotten, came in to turn it off. I didn't have the courage to tell her that I would have preferred to sleep with a nightlight on like a little girl.

'Yeah,' I replied, trying to sound natural. 'How come?'

'I dunno...You look paler than usual.' She scrutinised my face. 'You seem tired...Did you sleep badly?'

Anxiety tightly wound itself around me. I was used to sudden, unwarranted reactions like this. I was often overcome by excessive worries that ate away at my most fragile and childlike self. It always happened when I thought back to that.

My palms were sweaty, my heart was so tight it felt as if it was about to burst, and all I wanted was to be unseen.

'Everything's fine,' I replied faintly. I wondered if I sounded convincing, but Billie seemed to genuinely believe me.