City of Light

Chapter 17

The darkness surrounds me again, I feel nothing, I hear nothing, I see nothing. Then the voices, the whispers, all around me, there back. Oh god the voices, the sounds, mocking, laughing, tormenting, discouraging. 

"What are you doing? She won't make it out alive, ha ha. Stupid, what are you doing? Do you hear their screams? The darkness will consume you eventually, you won't live to see the end. Do it, try to block us out, I dare you. Worthless. Why is she doing this?" The whispers in my head, their right outside ear, I feel their breath. I hear their mouths, it makes a sound like pop rocks. I can feel them turning my brain to scrambled eggs.

"Can you feel that? Oh yeah, she can feel it. Yes, yes, yes. Scratching. Crawling." They're all female, they never leave, even in my sleep I hear them. 

"Do you remember the tragedy? Yes, she thinks about it every day. Knives! Knives! Blood! Blood! Death! Death! Death! Remember the suffering." The images flow back to me, the blood soaked soil, the bodies hung from the trees. Tall spears, with bodies through them, they never rotted. I could feel the death, the souls grabbing on to the only living thing in the land. I walk among the dead for eternity, my physical body fighting, repairing. They cursed me, so I wouldn't go a second without them reminding me of my faults, the tragedy. I was to blame.

"You are! Suffer like us! Do you feel the burns, the cuts? She can't forget them, but you tried thousands of years ago. She found a way. No longer human. She prayed to every god but none answered. But one fallen god, answered, he would take away the suffering, the voices, for a price. Yes a price indeed, to use her body to hold his corrupted power. Two corrupted beings from the same universe. This time you live in is a lie. A lie!" They speak the truth, they made me remember, everything. 

"This world means nothing! He had you in his grasp, he blocked us out. But we never left. The new chapter of your eternal life would begin. We followed, your past will never leave. Don't you see that? He wiped your memories clear, we screamed to be heard. Now we pushed him out, now you must carry our families souls, and their friends and their families tormented souls on your shoulders. You killed them all! Why are you still here? Useless." Each sentence these voices speak another one talks, carrying on what the last one was thinking. The angry ones shout insults, then the one who asks the questions. The anger they possess is so human, I feel their hands on my back, my neck, my shoulders. 

"You witches, you all deserved to die! You poisoned our land with your, spells, power and your laughter. "Death to the betrayers!" You cried, slaughtering people by the hundreds, displaying their bodies as a warning. Corrupting their restless souls to cast a veil of darkness over our land. Cursed me to let the darkness eat away at me. I would have never joined you, and I sure as hell won't let you torment me after all these years. You made this bloodbath, I am not to blame, everybody stood against you and murdered them all because of the feelings they felt. All I wanted was peace and you took that away." I let everything I have been holding all these years flow out. I had nobody to talk to who knew my pain, my suffering. After I was reborn, I buried my past under the sand and tried to start anew. But I couldn't help but hear their echoing screams, smelling the stench of blood in the air. I joined the war to drown the sounds of the screams out of my head, focus on something every second of my existence. Every moment I lived in this world I tried to live a life without remembering the darkest time in history. In the fastest moment, I saw the boy in the rubble and I thought of the Purging. I took hold of the boy and held on like I held on to the fading light of my homeland. I saw the despair, the anger, the darkness in the boy that day, I found something to fight for. I spent all those years with him bringing back the light that left him. I gave him a friend, I gave him safety, I gave him hope for a better world. Nothing in the world matters, but him. Over the years I fell in love, I saw the blooming light, sensitive and kind. He never spoke a word but his actions spoke for him. In all the years I have lived, he is the brightest human being I have ever seen. I won't let the beautiful, shining light fade away. Where there is shadow he will bring light.