To Name The Dark

can't fight this tide

Okay, I fell asleep. I sometimes wonder how long it would take for someone to die of sleep deprivation. Can you die of sleep deprivation? Maybe you wouldn't be able to resist the lull of dreams, of recharging. Maybe your body would decide for you and you'd collapse, unconscious. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to die. In fact, it seems likely that I am already dead- I haven't eaten or drank anything for... a long time...

Anyway. Maybe I am dreaming now, but I refuse to think my subconscious would be so cruel as to make me suffer through... the thing that happened that I don't want to talk about. If I did, the dark might claim me. And I have spent too long building these sandcastle walls for that.

I hold the dark in, bind it with scribbles on paper and subject changes, convince myself (almost) that there is no monster under the bed. My captor, whoever they are, (Death? My subconscious brain? Well-meaning members of society? Mutant squirrels?) keeps me trapped with padded walls and silence. I am working to keep the dark thing quiet and they are working to keep me in.

We are... shockingly similar, my captor and I. But they do not understand the dark thing because they don't live with it, like I do. It is always just there in my peripheral vision, so I know how it works. I know what this confinement does to it, and me. The problem is that trapping something makes it fight for freedom.

The best way to erase the dark thing, this tea stain on the coffee table of the world (Weird analogy?) would be to run, far and further, to a blank wilderness where the sky coats the earth, and let it erupt, volcanic. Let it explode until its fury cools to hardened rock. That way it cannot hurt anyone.

Well. No one but me. I am not some kind of martyr, a Harry Potter in a cold white room, but it is better, that way. If I am to face it, to drag it up from the frozen depths of my (mind?) (soul?)- to drag it up from the frozen depths, I must face the memories, stop skipping around what happened that day.

Or I could procrastinate a little longer? Good idea, me. Before I tell you what happened, you should probably know about my brother. He is, after all, a large part of my story (that I will tell, after I finish procrastinating). And it gets harder every day to remember him. So.

He is five. (I can just hear him screeching 'five and three-quarters' at me.) He is five and three-quarters. Auburn hair permanently snarled up in knots, huge puppy eyes the colour of dark chocolate, 90% cocoa. Just a few shades off black. I envy his hair- mine is less auburn than orange. Bleached looking, rusty orange. Oh well. It's not like there's much of it anymore- I woke up here with my head shaved.

My brother's name is- it is- oh no. It starts with an A. I think. This is... why can't I remember? It feels like... something else is filling my head, pushing out old memories. It feels like something wants me to forget. To forget, and be forgotten. Washed away like a sandcastle built tall, so tall that it surely must withstand the waves- but next morning the beach is a blank slate, no evidence of the sandcastle. Nothing to show how the waves began to erode the sand walls, pulling it out to sea. Nothing to show the fight it put up or the way the waves closed over it, final as death.

I am reading this back and it says I have a brother. I don't understand this, or the tears welling in my eyes. A brother?

What is happening?

My name is Thea, I know this from the book. I need to remember this.

MY NAME IS THEA MY NAME IS THEA MY NAME IS THEA MY NAME IS THEA...