To Imagine...

Imagine 15: When Darkness Falls

In the beginning, none of us would have ever thought it would turn out this way. I never could have imagined where this road would take us.

It was Glenn, Lohan, and I, all together. Maybe there had been more in the beginning, but not any longer. We were talking peacefully as we walked, our incessant, meaningless chatter eventually moving from subject to subject until it turned to something that directly involved me, so I started participating in the conversation. We had been walking down this road for quite some time, and it was satisfying to break my own silence.

Words were passed between us, and I switched to the left side beside Glenn as we walked. It was beginning to grow cold, though I hardly noticed. The street was completely devoid of people, cars, or any evident signs of life, besides critters and things hiding along the road, chittering. Everything was grey and lifeless. Where we came from, there was an electric light--a store, perhaps? A house? It had life. People lived there. Other people existed.

Here, there was nothing.

Remnants of old cars now and then lined the sides of the road, darkened, mistreated, unusable. Everything was dead. The brush on the sides of the road that was once meant for decoration or beauty of the city became more and more lifeless as we went along, and equally as much it got colder. Though the death had nothing to do with the cold. The sky became gray, our talk less frequent. Sadly, we had all come to the same conclusion.

Though we had walked a long way, we had a long way to go. The endless road could speak for that, if anything around here even had life enough to speak.

It was far down our road when we came upon a ledge by the sidewalk that I decided to sit on. Everything was grey and dark; we needed a break, I said, and the grey-blue light from the struggling streetlamp brought some distant feeling of comfort. Everything was cold and dead.

The dull color of my own skin did not even spark recognition in myself, even as I reached out my hand for Lohan and Glenn to sit.

The freezing wind had subsided mostly in this space, though the sky was black, leaching color from the streetlamps with every breath. Compared to where we had come from, these lamps cast a considerably smaller light, the middle between each two teetering on the edge of darkness. Lohan was becoming restless, and though some of us were sitting, the two of my friends still stood, though close by. He wanted to keep going--and for good reason. But I wanted to keep staying. I invited them to join me where I sat, but in their refusal they made the decision to continue without me.

That sank my stomach past my knees. I could not walk this road alone. I tried that once--the thought terrified me, gripped my insides like this gray cold that was washing away everything else. I remembered that night, the night before I woke up here.

It was back when Loxi and I had enjoyed a great time together. The city was full of life, people wandering about everywhere, even though it was the dead of night. Lights all around the city made it glow, and simply the beauty of that light brought a smile to my face. We had not wasted the time that we had entirely, and though some may call it "wasted", we preferred the term more to be, "a welcome reprieve."

But Loxi had disappeared. I knew where she had gone--she had left earlier, without me. She had decided to take the long road to where we were going, the safe road, so she left before me. I had told her I intended to cut across instead of taking the walk all the way around the Dark. I had realized now that it was time to go, so my belongings in hand, I steeled my nerves and left the heart of the city to the outskirts. The glowing golden lights behind me faded gradually the farther I went.

It took me a hurried walk through two alleys for me to realize that this was a horrible idea. A very, very miscalculated idea. I quickly came to the conclusion that I would need the light of my phone to get through. I thought about rapists--an open door in a building in this grey, darkened alley shone light from inside, though it barely carried past the door frame. The darkness ate it like acid.

A man sat on the top step by the door, and another stood in the partial darkness. I knew this, though I hadn't even given them a second glance--the moment I had made it through that first alleyway, my mind had immediately gone to cliche movies and rapists. And in this shambled, dark part of town, though I originally attempted reining my fears, I realized that it was entirely plausible. A drunk man, hysterical about the hand he had been given, crazed by the Darkness, rejected by the life lived here... It would not be the first time that I had seen it. There was no day around here, exactly. Perhaps the day was worse than the night.

Because there is nothing outside.

The outside is terrifying.

I've seen it.

Many simply go from destination to destination--people fight their own demons and make their own peace. Many make that decision to be suicide.

That night as I cut across the Dark to meet my sister on the other side, I was terrified. After that alleyway my quickened pace turned into a frenzy; I ran, stumbled upon a railing and fled down stairs leading down to a parking lot. I saw a lone, dark man standing far to the right in the lot--I jumped the stairs three at a time and ran through the gate on the edge of the left, sprinting for the gate on the other side.

My terror grew as it came closer. The wall of black fell just beyond a cluster of cars outside of the lot. In my terror, I had no idea if the man was behind me. His shadowed form had appeared sinister--he had not been into the city for some time. His black form clashed with my glowing, golden light, my body like a lantern in the darkness whereas he was simply a shape that faded into it.

Tremors wracked my body even as I ran.

As I jumped through the gate I turned between two cars before the Dark enveloped me and my world stopped making sense. I might have tripped or fallen, maybe hit my head on something, or perhaps I had just gotten confused. In the back of my mind, though, I refused to accept the nagging that told me the man had grabbed me. My world had spun and I had been frantic--my only goal was to run into the Dark and come out on the other side partially sane. So I ran. I plunged into the dark, where my glowing feet fell on nothing but inky black, where the ground and the space around you had no correlation, no difference at all, where everything around you was nothing and dark and meaningless and lifeless.

I felt like I was drowning for air. My eyes were open wide and saw nothing, I was trying to run but I was stumbling. It was not hard to notice that the glow of my body was less golden, the light within me turning gray. I saw light in the distance--I saw light and I never stopped running.

That was it.

That was where I needed to be. What had been a light in the distance grew as I came nearer, and soon a building and lamp posts became visible--I knew I was in the right place. I had nearly made it from the Dark right there. I had nearly reached the edge to fall into the light, but I never made it. I fell, stumbled somehow, and my desperation grew. It didn't hurt, but instead pulled at my body, the thoughts running through my head dulling and losing sense as they regressed into simply emotions and instinct. I realized that as I looked up again from the ball I had curled into and saw the light--I wanted it. I needed it. I began to crawl, up until my hands had made it into the farthest, faintest glow of the light. My face fell onto the pavement, and within seconds my mind was lost.

A/N: The next chapter will be a continuance of this, which finishes the story of what she was talking about in the beginning. Enjoy~