To Imagine...

Imagine 17: When Darkness Falls

A/N: Not edited.

My brother went first. The doorway behind where the woman-man-it had been lead into another hallway quite like the one we had first entered into, golden with red designs. The gold light from another lantern warmed me and eased the grimness in my scowl, though the feeling of sick repulsion for myself still settled in my stomach. Each and every time, the fright in me as I unwillingly devour and mutilate them perpetually mortifies me. The first time it happened, I sobbed and tried to kill the man who made me take their heads and their spirits, the man who procures the heads from me each time.

He disgusts me.

I remember our first entrance to this place. Gold hallways, red designs, a glowing, warm light. I had the knife in my purse, and I thought nothing of it. None of us had any idea why we were here, and it was just the three of us. Behind us... Darkness. In front of us, light.

Our choice was simple. The hallway turned to the left, we entered the gate, and the man was there. An older man, gray hair, mostly bald on the top. Dressed in casual clothes, khakis and a button-up tucked in with suspenders. He seems completely harmless, always. Even as he is setting up your doom and failure. The end of your life. Death machines used only to distract and kill you.

But of course, we listened to him and he welcomed us. He did not explain much, but only that we had to get through to the exit to survive. We weren't sure why, but there was nothing but darkness behind us. Maybe that darkness may have led to something, maybe we could have backed out of everything, maybe there was a peaceful, normal life back there. That, we will never know. There is no answer; there are no people who "tried to go back." Maybe people do--maybe that's why they never come back on the other side.

Maybe people that do just get lost in there and die.

In the beginning, the Dark was like poison. Venturing into it at all could prove fatal--you could say we were infants to it. Helpless and inexperienced.

But inside here, there is always light. As the man talked, we soaked it up, and we glowed. We flourished.

And we needed it.

The light in us is power, the light in us is will, the light in us is everything that allows us to live. Without it, there is nothing.

He did not tell us this. We might not have believed him--we never noticed the glow.

The longer he spoke, the more bizarre he became. He began laughing and talking and his voice lilted in tunes, he seemed giddy and even began to dance. We were clueless, unsettled and unsure, until he turned in a circle, stopped relatively silent, and pointed to me.

"You, my dear."

My stomach dropped; his kind smile never left.

"Are mine."

Those were two words I was not prepared to reply to. Nobody spoke, and he moved closer to me, his taller form looking down to me. His, I remember, were soft and blue.

"Your best problem now, dear, is that you belong to me." Dumbfounded, I said nothing. I did not know how to respond; I didn't even know what any of this meant. "You have no choice, you have no say, you do as I will and you work for me. You will all live, or you will all die."