Red Discord

Chapter 11 (end)

It was pure black, like someone had taken a crayon and scribbled out all the lights leaving nothing but the reflected color of the crayon—darkness. Kassy’s hand was just about pressed to her face, but she still couldn’t see it or make out even an outline. There was no light even though the outside of the door was bright as daylight. Nothing filtered pasted the door as if there were some invisible, glass net that caught all of the light but let none in. Sudden dread filled Kassy’s heart; she began to doubt and in her doubt she was only scratching her already open wound. She shivered, half in fear, half in the coldness of the room that caressed her skin. She grabbed for her arms and held onto them as tight as she could for they were the anchors of sanity for her, like the walls on an elevator people cling to for safety and security of mind. Her fingernails dug deep into her white grape-colored skin. 

“Who’s there?!” she called out into the darkness. “What is this?!” she tried again.

No response. 

As usual.

Kassy could see nothing in the darkness and it felt as if she were walking on a tightrope, like she could fall any moment, crashing through the glass that held her up and down to the cold, hard ground to her death. And it worried her because she could feel the room shake, slowly at first with only a few shakes here and there, slowly increasing second by second until it was a steady shaking that Kassy could easily identify. The shaking was still getting more and more intense almost as if it knew she had become aware of it and was ready and willing to torment her at the revelation. She shook her head. What nonsense. Escaping was her first priority and seeing that the door was still there, easily identifiable by the only thing that had light in the room, escape, she deemed, was easy as pie.

Hands shot out of the darkness behind Kassy. They grabbed her, pulling her back into the darkness she had thought she was escaping from. Her first instinct was to flail and break loose then full out run to the exit. The hands were faster, however. Her arms were quickly grabbed and pulled back, her feet intertwined with other feet that met her own on the floor. She screamed, but it was muffled within seconds. The voice that sounded in her ear was so surreal, so earthy and wispy, it was like it wasn’t coming from something living at all.

“Such a baaad child; a bad, bad, bad child. What a child! A child that doesn’t come to their own birthday party. Never is there such a child. Never.”

The words froze her. Everything just stopped. It was submission to a higher power. 

They dragged her stiff, motionless body deeper into the darkness until she could no longer see the door that lead out to where she knew she would be safe. She was lead deep into the darkness, where no light filtered through, where everything was one color, where everything was the same, the same, the same.

Darkness. It surrounded not only her body but her mind, polluting and polluting her thinking until she could think no longer. She bent down to the ground, hugged her knees to her chest, and rocked herself back and forth. If there were tears coming (which they most were), she couldn’t feel them. Everything in the darkness was the same.

A light flickered on somewhere off to Kassy’s right. The light seemed to go from a small light flickering into existence to a wide flame sucking in the darkness. From the little light it did provide, however, Kassy could barely identify a candle underneath. So, it’s a candle flame, she thought to herself when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, though nothing more was given a thought about it as she looked around the room more. 

The light from the candle cut through the darkness like a newly sharpened blade. It dressed the outline of her chin, like a decoration to a tree, giving her face an orange shade, and she yelled through the darkness: