Shattered Mind Saga

(IAN) 28

Twenty-Eight

Ian

  Darkness surrounded me a cold and yet comforting darkness that took everything and promised me nothing in return. How long have I laid in this darkness. Days, weeks, months maybe? How broken have I become as I slept. Something nagged at me now. Something far off and muted. It tugged at my mind like a child tugs on his mother’s dress.

            What? My mind whispered to me. Why are you calling me back now? Where am I needed at this moment? Who wants me? How could anyone want me? And yet it was there nagging at me to do what. To wake. But I wasn’t sleep. To come? But I couldn’t move. To feel the pain and the suffering and the agony that was throughout the very core of this begin? But I was hallow.

            “You need to return.” The voice told me. Return but I left for a reason. I left for them for all of them. But in many ways I left for me as well. I needed the darkness. I didn’t know how to exist outside of it anymore. “Please we need you back.” Does anyone really need me? Who’s to say what is needed. How can you tell the difference from a need and I want. I need darkness I want darkness. I need freedom I want freedom. How do I know if my need is stronger than my wants? Who is to judge me on which is what?

            Seek and you shall find they tell me. I sought this path of isolation and here I find myself living in it. If you can call this living. Does it count I wonder. Am I even live to have these thoughts? To have a life and to live it is two different things as well. This shell we call a body has life. Who is living in it though I wonder?

            “It is time to get up.” It said, it nagged, it begged me. God this voice was very annoying why didn’t it understand already? I didn’t want to wake. I wasn’t sleep to begin with. I need to stay in the darkness. I have become one with it now. With it there is no me without me there is no it. “It is time now.” It said and I sighed as I turned my head. I could see it. A glowing light framing a door. Was it to be then? Had they come for me at last?  

            I turned my head from it closing my eyes tightly shutting it out. Shutting it all out because darkness was what I sought. Darkness is all I needed. I let out a breath as I resigned to my dreams. No to my memories.

            Seven was my age in this memory. I was seven and it was my birthday. I had gone to them each of them on this day. I had wished them well. I had left the words of wisdom to keep with them always. Then I left. Walking the halls that only a select few even knew about. Going to a place that only I held in my thoughts. Knowing what was to coming. Knowing that this was bound to break them. Knowing that it was already breaking me. I did not want to leave my children. And yes in many ways I felt as if they were children of mines. And at the same time I didn’t want to abandon my selves. All of my selves. The halves that made up me. The halves that made a whole Ian. I was incomplete I was weak and now I am hallow. How could I not be there are all I have. I have given them everything that I had left.

            “What will become of us?” he asked me as I laid down in the darkness of my special place.

            “I don’t know.” I answered honestly. “Ciar protect this place.”

            “With my life.” Ciar answered me and I turned my head away from the door. I held his footsteps leaving I heard his sobs as he wept for me. Then the door closed and I was in darkness. At first I was scared of this darkness. This solitude was crushing, this silence was deafening, this nothing was soul writhing. In time I was use to it. In time I was one with it.

            Now they come. Now they need me, want me, desire to have me back.  What of my wants? No one ever asked that question. What does he need? No one ever cared. The light grew and became blinding as it shattered my darkness.

            “Ciar.” I called as I sat up.

            “Ian.” He answered and kneeled on one knee before me. And so it begins. I have no choice but to return.