The Darkness of The Light

At last I see the light

   We burst through the front door, and for the first time since I was a child, light floods into my vision. My eyes sting as they desperately try to adjust,  and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I'm not cold. The heat of the sunshine brushes past me, and I can nearly smell it in the air. I look up to see this man, dark, determined, and looking to be around my age, pulling me across the driveway with hurried desperation. My mind screams at me with the thought that he might be my keeper, but I push the idea aside. He would never help me like this. I reminisce on the vague memories I have of the man behind the wall, barely conjuring the thought of a muffled voice and a dark hoodie.  The man pushes me into the passenger seat of what I assume is his truck, and clicks the seatbelt into place, before slamming the door and getting in on his side. He cranks the truck and quickly pulls out of the driveway.

"Are you okay?" He sputters, his breath quick and heavy from the run.  His voice is smooth, like silk, even though he's visibly winded. It reminds me of the sheets I had on my bed as a child.

  "I-I don't know... What happened?" The sound of my own voice startles me, having not heard it since I was a child. It's gained depth with time, and I can barely recognize that it came from my mouth.

He looks at me, confusion in his eyes, "How do you talk like a normal adult, if you've been in there your whole life?"

I manage a weak smile, shaking off the the jarring question as to how he knows the length of my captivity, "My keeper left me a tape of lessons, and I slept with it playing for days in my ears.You learn things pretty quickly when it's all you can hear." He nods, my response satisfying the question. "Oh, by the way, thank you." I add, a distant memory of a lesson on manners echoing in my mind.

"No problem." There is a pause in the conversation that seems to last forever. "My name is Thomas, By the way." He concludes, slowing to a stop in the parking lot of a hotel called the Holiday Inn. My eyes follow the architecture up towards the sky, and I can't help but wonder what it feels like to stand on top.

He leads me to the front desk, where a lady sits, perched on a computer chair like a bird on a feeder. The way she quickly taps on the keyboard makes that resemblance a bit more obvious. Thomas shifts uncomfortably, asking the woman for a one-bed room. She simply nods, barely acknowledging us. The exchange is brief: He slides her his card with a shaky hand, she swipes it in the reader, her computer beeps, she hands him three cards back, two of which are our keys. The whole process seems much less magical than it did when I was young. I look around, admiring the lobby before Thomas gingerly takes my hand and I follow him down the hall.

Thomas guides me into the room, softly closing the door behind him, and I take a moment to scan this new environment. The bed has soft-looking white sheets, the floor is covered in a soft, grey carpet, and best of all, it's filled with light. Golden rays seep in through the blinds, a sight that I thought I would never encounter again. I wander over to a mirror, where a strange woman blinks back at me. I can barely recognize myself. Years of not being able to bathe show on my face, which resembles a desert from the amount of dust caked on. I refuse to even give a thought to how rancid I must smell, bringing my attention back to my matured appearance. My clothes hug me at uncomfortable angles, and I realize that this is the outfit I was wearing when I was brought into the dark. "I need to bathe. Is there a shower or something here?" I request, finally getting a whiff of myself and grimacing. He laughs, smiling at my lack of knowledge.

"It's right over there. Oh... You don't have any clothes...Uh, Here." He replies, handing me a wad of clothing. They're warm in my hands, a soft weight pulling me down. "These'll have to do until morning." He sighs, rubbing his temples, his eyebrows furrowed as he thinks.  I nearly sprint to the bathroom, and step into the hottest shower my already sunburned skin can stand, scalding myself until I smell sublime. I finish and dry myself off with what may very well be the softest towel ever, examining my body. It looks different than I remember. It's more developed, like an adult. It had never occurred to me that that is what I had become. I run my fingers along the clothes he gave me, excited at the textures as I spread them out neatly on the counter. There's a t-shirt, a pair of boxers, and a bra that looks like it belonged to a girl my age. Giddy with gratefulness, I put on the clothes and walk out the door, ready to drift away in an actual bed for the first time in years.