Drifter

The Light

***

I reel at those words; feel myself stop fading. There is still a numbness threaded in my limbs and in the vessels of my brain, but it's being subdued now, slowly.

And suddenly she is there, standing beside me. "It's all lies," she accuses, her voice like velvet. She can see me, beginning to break, beginning to crumble. "You can't listen to them. They don't care, not really - not like I do."

"No..." All this time, how could I be so delusional? The realisation sends tremors through my body: I have never been completely alone. All those messages she made me delete, and all of the people she made me ignore... I finally have clarity. "I have to go. I have to see someone..." anyone.

"I can't let you do that, sweetheart, I'm sorry." The walls begin to shrink around me, collapsing in on us, pushing us closer together.

"Let me go!" I scream. And the walls stop moving. She looks stunned, and then all at once she loses her grasp on me.

"No," she snarls, the word soaked in anger. Her black eyes are flat and her mouth is twisted into a grimace.

"I am sick of being your prisoner." The words escape my lips, and I am surprised by the truth in them. "I was always just your prisoner... never anything more." I begin to walk away, turning my back on her.

She lurches forward and locks her hands around my shoulders, pulling me back, away from the door. "Don't go," she croons in my ear. Her fingertips are like satin against my arms, so terribly inviting. She is strong.

But I am finally stronger.

I keep fighting, to the door, shaking her shackles loose with every step. I am done with you.

She wails, shrieks in fury. "You wretched girl, don't you appreciate everything I have done for you? I am protecting you from the world, from all those people." She spits out the final word like it is a curse.

"No," I disagree, shaking my head. "No, you kept me away from the people who care."

I unlock the door and push it back like it is a dusty treasure chest of memories I have finally rediscovered, and step outside into the sunlight, into the sound of engines grumbling across the road, into the world again.

And the girl in the rabbit mask is no longer there, whispering delicious lies in my ear, starting wars in my mind. The bullets have stopped; the guns are gone. I have defeated her.