What is darkness?
Not the darkness that we have pictured to be physically real, but the darkness that lurks inside of our minds. The darkness we cannot see, but which we feel. The same darkness that takes over our bodies and controls our minds during vague times. Think of that darkness as light. I know it sounds dellusional, but the light to guide me comes from the darkness within.
Safety is defined as 'the condition to be protected from', but in all reality at this point in time there is no such thing as safety. Nothing is there to protect me.
'The End of the World' had many theories. Each assumption coming from a different human, but still the topic of such an unusual situation was not yet planned out piece by piece. But that’s just it. Nobody could plan out such a demoniac predicament. The question used to puzzle me. I remember my younger brother asking me just a few months back how I thought the world was going to end. Never would I have been able to wrap my mind around the idea that just a few months ahead of time, I would be witnessing it.
What seems to frighten me the most is that mankind’s actions lead the world to destruction. Everyone had some sort of complex belief of what was going to happen to Earth, but nobody realized it was humans with power that was going to ruin it. Nobody realized that it would occur so soon.
Sometimes I think I might be the last human on Earth, which means I'm the last human in the universe. I know that it sounds dumb, since not everyone has died, but still, too many have. I see how it could happen though, eventually. And then I think that's exactly what my mind has poisoned me to believe.
So I'm probably not the last human on Earth, but I'm one of the last. Totally alone-and likely to stay that way-until I reach my desired destination, which at this point I don't exactly know where it is.
Reminding myself that I am alone is just one of my night thoughts. You know, the thoughts that stir up in your brain that make you unbalanced. It's gotten to the point where I curl into a little ball, so scared I can't close my eyes, drowning in fear so intense I have to remind myself to breathe. I'm alone. That's all I am. I, Ava Hales, am alone.
That's my name, Ava.
Not Ava for Aveline. Or Ava for Avara. Ava for Avalon, which means Island in Latin. Kind of a boring name really.
My parents didn't have any significant reason to call me that, they just thought it was pretty. Even when there were people around to call me anything, nobody ever called me Avalon. Just my father, but only when he was teasing me. It drove me crazy. I didn't think it was funny or cute, and it just made me hate my own name. I constantly used to remind him that my name was Ava, but now I'd give anything to hear him call me Avalon one more time. Just the thought of him makes me feel his warm presence.
That sounds crazy. Am I crazy? Have I lost my mind? I suppose that you can only call somebody crazy if they're being compared to somebody that is normal.
The strange thing is, I could consider myself crazy, since there is one other person that I can compare myself to: me. Not the me I am now, shivering in a tent deep in the woods, too afraid to even poke her head from the sleeping bag. Not this Ava. I'm talking about the Ava I was before tragedy struck. The young Ava, whose biggest problem was the freckles on her cheeks. I'm probably crazy by that Ava's standards, because she sure is crazy by mine. Sometimes I wonder what that Ava would think of me now.
What would she truly think of the Ava that is scared of the lonely?
