Nightmares Within Me

Night 3

I stared at the wall my face void of all emotion as I looked at Ryder chained to the wall. He fought for what I can only guess was a day. There was no way to tell how much time is passing as I sat in that cell. Ryder finally gave up as the chains stopped rattling and he finally stilled. I watched as he finally stopped moving and rested. Minutes passed when I began to hum the tune of a song. He just sat there and hummed the tune, not caring that his voice was cracking as tears rolled down his face. It took me longer to recognize the song than I expected. After a while of him simply humming the song he began to sing the lyrics as well, his voice coming out just above a whisper and his voice continuously cracking as he tried to sing and not completely break.

" Who cares if one more," his voice cracked before continuing again, " light goes out in a sky of a million stars," he sang

I began to shake as more tears fell down my face. You would think that I wouldn't have any more tears left but I guess I do. After a while I began to sing along with him, it sounded like I had lost my voice but it just kept breaking. I couldn't handle hearing him sound so broken and defeated. It sounded like all emotion and care and meaning had been taken from him and nothing else mattered to him. It was a tone that only someone who had lost everything he loved and everything that meant anything to him and he now had no reason to be here.

The tears never stopped falling from either of our eyes and as I watched him tuck his knees up to his chest and rest his head on them, all the while never stopping the song even when his voice broke and the tears still feel he continued to sing. Even when the song ended he continued singing, repeating the song as if it was the only thing now keeping him alive. The sight was something I had never in a million years thought I would see, especially from him, and it caused so much fear to course through me.

As the fear began to fade and it became a numbing emotion along with the others I had the creature decided to appear in front of me. I flinched a bit but that was about the only reaction it got from me. My eyes were dead set on looking at the ground and keeping my breathing even as to no cry.

" Do you want this to be over? Do you want this to stop?" it asked. It was weird, having a foreign voice in your head. I knew there had to be a catch and as I looked up and cringed at the brightness of its skin and lack of eyes I found its mouth turned up in a smile that I knew would never leave my mind.

" At what price?" I asked, almost breathless.

" His head, on my wall." my body shook with a sob as I listened to it cackle and leave. It moved over to Ryder and stopped in front of him.

It poked him in the back just to the left of his spinal cord and I watched the black ink spread before the skin sank and the blood began to ooze. The sight again made me throw up because now half of his spine was exposed. Ryder shot up, arching his back, yelling and squirming in pain. He yelled and screamed and cursed the creature that poked the right side of his back now and exposed the rest of his spin in that area. It was the worst sight I had ever seen. It seemed to do nothing to his bone but the amount of pain he must be in at enduring this.

The pride that must have been in my eyes at how long he was holding on and fighting must have been immense because I was truly proud that he was holding out this long. The creature deemed that enough pain for the day, or night whichever it was, and left. Ryder's head fell back to his knees and he began humming again. He was breaking and this time, I hummed along and sang when the words came. When he stopped humming and seemed to be asleep I began singing again but a different song.

" in case you didn't know, baby I'm crazy bout ya

I would be lying if I said that I could live this life without ya

Even though i don't tell you all the time, you had my heart a long long time ago

In case you didn't know." I sang. The tears fell and I just sang everything that came to mind, trying to soothe him though I know he couldn't hear me.

At one point his breath caught and his head shot up, his eyes darting around the darkness. I looked at him and just continued singing, letting my head fall to my chest. I sang and sang, only stopping when I heard the most heart-wrenching sob rip through the room. I looked up and Ryder was in hysteria. He was thrashing against the chains and flailing his one good leg around like it would somehow help him. I stopped singing and watched. He stopped moving a second after I stopped singing and looked around. Hesitantly he opened his mouth and what I heard was the end of me. I was going to die here and I didn't doubt it.

" Babe, don't stop singing. Please. Keep singing," he whispered. I sobbed and he sank, " Don't cry love. It's ok," he said and laughed lightly, " I must sound crazy, talking to myself." I sobbed again before speaking.

" Babe, I'm here. I love you. It's not in your head." he just simply laughed. He didn't believe me. He just simply asked to hear me continue singing. With a sigh, I continued and eventually lulled him to sleep. Even after that, i continued singing until my voice was gone and my throat burned. I finally stopped singing and when I did Ryder woke up. Silent tears fell down my face at how ragged he looked.

I was finally able to get a good look at him. Besides what is already seen like the broke or fractured leg and gaping holes in his body he was extremely malnourished. He looked like me, his skin sucking up into his ribs, his collarbones more apparent than ever. His arms were smaller than I remember and his legs as well. His eyes were sunken into his skull and the dark circles under his eyes look like they had been drawn on in sharpie or eyeliner. It looked like he had been here for months, and it probably had. My sense of time had become so bad hears could have passed and I would think it had been a month. It must have been close to two months we'd been here judging by how he looked, but I looked over at Lillian and Justyn and noticed that their bodies hadn't changed. They were staying the same if only to torture me and torment ms more. I just looked at them and tried to remember what they both looked like before but with my new time estimate of how long we had all been here it was hard to remember anything else but there bodies. A month of only seeing that can completely take over what you originally saw.

Maybe this was some payback that the gods decided I needed. After all the shit id done in my life they finally decided to come back and bit me in the ass. They force me to sit and look at my best friend and her boyfriend's dead bodies and watch my own be tortured and most likely killed. What better way to make someone pay. Maybe I deserve to pay but they didn't deserve this. None of them deserved this. I began wondering, if it had just been me taken would any of them have noticed, would they see that I wasn't there or would they overlook it. Would they care that I wasn't there? I couldn't help but think now that even if it had just been me taken it would be enough punishment to make me think they had all forgotten me. Just let me sit here in this cell, tied to the wall, and left to my own thoughts. I think that with the given time I would end up hanging myself with the chains that were binding me to the wall. To the prison, I called a brain.