Satan's Little Helper

X X I X - [ C H R I S T I A N A ]

MY HEAD feels like it's about to explode.

I let out a blood-curdling scream as I hold my head together. It may not be literally falling apart, but it sure as hell feels like it. And as much as I want to keep up the tough-girl act, this final level simply drives me over the edge and screaming my head off in attempt to ease the pain seems inevitable.

I feel Daemon's callous hands holding both my arms and shaking me, panicked but mostly confused on what's happening.

"Feia?" He asks, worry clouding his features. "Feia, what is it? Why are you screaming?"

I want to tell him that there's this pressure that's building up inside my head, but the only sound that comes out of my lips is a long shriek that does not seem to be ending anytime soon.

"Feia? Feia!" Daemon tries again, more frantically this time. He shakes me all the more violently, as if that's supposed to actually make me snap out of whatever trance or... Thing I am currently in.

The pain suddenly stops, however, and I gasp as I feel something entering my head.

Daemon disappears before me, and there doesn't seem to be anything at all. I am all alone in a dark and endless void, and the intense pain I had previously felt no longer exists—in fact, nothing seems to exist here at all except for me, myself and I.

I stay silent, not exactly knowing what to do next.

"Daemon?" I call out, hoping he'd maybe appear somehow like he usually would. There is no response whatsoever, though, except for the distant sound of thumping ringing in my ears.

I'm not able to register it at first, but when I do, my breath hitches and I am suddenly reminded of what Daemon had told me when I first met Lilith.

"Rumors say that in the last level, your nightmares will come true. Whether you have a great fear of spiders or something stupid like clowns, you will encounter them in this final level before you reach the center of The Circle."

To be honest, I don't actually know what my nightmare is. Yes, I'd been afraid of quite a few of the silly things out there such as inchworms and whatnot, but I wouldn't exactly call them my nightmare. But looking around me, seeing and hearing nothing but silence, I finally realize what my nightmare is: the deafening silence.

Quite frankly, I've never expected my greatest nightmare to be this. I know that I've never exactly liked complete silence all that much, but I didn't think that it would be my nightmare either. But then again, I'd never exactly been in a place where there are literally no voices at all, so I can't actually say—until now, that is.

The thumping sound quickens the more anxious I get, confirming my suspicions from before—I am currently listening to my own heart beating.

Doing some breathing exercises in an attempt to calm myself down, the pounding sound that's ringing in my ears slow down the more I relax myself. Aside from the sound of my heart, everything else is completely silent. As I listen more closely, however, I can actually hear the faint sound of blood rushing through my body, and just thinking about it makes me cringe somehow.

I remember this one place that I've read about in a book once. There's this room at Orfield Laboratories where you won't be able to hear a single thing. It may be oxymoronic, but they say that the silence is so loud, it may cause you to hallucinate; even the longest a person's stayed inside the room was 45 minutes.

Oh, if only they knew that I might just be beating the world record right now.

I press the palms of my hands against my ears, trying to will away the quietness that is driving me mad. I don't know just what's making me snap, but boy is it working.