Irhaboggle Pride (2019) Spectrum

Sunlight

AN: The second half of this fic is graphic, so stop at the "ooo" if you don't want to read anything gory. It's based off the 2008 French horror film "Martyrs". As gruesome as it is, I really like the bond between the two leads.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Anna asked Lucie as the two of them lay on their backs and stared up at the warm summer sky.

"Sure is," Lucie replied, sounding content, for once. Anna smiled to herself. It was days like these that she loved the most. Just her, Lucie and the sunlight. There were no adults to tell them where to go or what to do. They had no schedule to keep and were not forced to stay inside, in their dismal little orphanage. On days like this, it was just freedom, freedom and sunlight.

But to Anna, the best part was seeing Lucie smile. The poor girl had suffered unspeakable terrors in the past. Now she was haunted by their ghosts, monsters. She was forever trapped in a dark, underground torture chamber. No light, no sound, just darkness. It had stained her very soul and darkened her heart. But on days like this, she became human again. She was bright and warm, like the sunlight. The sunlight brought back her humanity from the depths of the darkness.

"They tortured me down there, kept me totally cut off from everything else," she muttered darkly, shadows flickering across her face. "It was just me and my tormentors. No one else knew I was down there, and no one ever cared enough to look. They couldn't see me, so they didn't care. I was stuck in an endless night, never got to see the sunlight, not even one little ray... But, oh, if I could have!" Lucie stared longingly up at the sun. But a second later, her face became cold and hard. "I had to save my self, because the sunlight is not for people like you and me. We're just forgotten and ignored. Unseen. There is no sunlight for us."

"Well, today, it's ours," Anna declared, rolling over to touch Lucie's face. Lucie was surprised by the gesture, but because it was Anna, she was quick to feel soothed by the touch. "Today, we will be each other's sunlight! In each other, we will find and be found!" It was a rather deep thing for such a young girl to say, but Anna meant every word.

They usually were the ones who went unseen and unwanted by the rest of the world, kept in a metaphorical darkness just because they had nothing to offer society (they were two poor orphaned girls after all). But today, they would become the world. They'd be each other's worlds. And in those worlds, there would be nothing but sunlight. They would shine for, and upon, each other, and be everything that the world never was. Just for that moment, they would be each other's entire universes, and the sunlight would finally shine down upon them too.

"Ok, Anna," Lucie finally agreed, a tiny smile appearing on her face. "I'll be your sunlight if you be mine." And as her smile continued to grow, Anna felt the sunlight shine brighter and brighter.

ooo

15 years later, Lucie was dead. Her sun had set. The night settled over her burning spirit, and this time, it was everlasting. She even killed herself at night, vision darkening until it matched the sky. There was no more sunlight for her, and there never would be.

Anna followed not long after, thrust into the very same nightmarish pit Lucie had been subject to 15 years ago as a child. Anna had not believed Lucie at first, thinking that the concept of an underground torture chamber was too extreme to be real. But only a day after Lucie's death, Anna got to see firsthand just how real it was.

Everything Lucie had described, every torture, was all real, and now it was Anna's turn to feel it. Her body was broken, twisted and beaten. Fists, clubs, weapons, whips, brands, they were all utilized. Her skin began to rot while it was still on her body. It was browned and leathery. Her mind and eyes were hazy and unfocused. Blood perpetually spilled from cuts, bruises and other injuries. She was fatally thin, broken bones visible under a thin, worn, torn layer of skin. She had a permanent hunch from spending all her time chained tightly to a chair. There were even permanent imprints of the chains on her wrists and ankles. She was down in that darkness with only abuse for company for months.

She was fed gruel, but that was all. Her tormentors came around to dish out the punishment, but they never talked to her. They came in with empty faces to feed and beat her, then left just the same. Time no longer had any meaning here. Not when all she saw was darkness. The endless isolation was one of the cruelest tortures. She was restrained to the point of paralysis and put under total sensory deprivation. Her body, mind and soul were all numb now. She smelled of death, rotting from the inside out, suffering from internal injuries and starvation.

And yet, and yet, even in the endless darkness, Anna was never completely alone. Whether Lucie's spirit really had come back to comfort her, or if it was nothing more than a fever dream, Anna didn't know. All she knew was that even in the darkest, loneliest hours, Lucie was there.

"And will you stay here with me?"

"Of course. Forever."

And just for a moment, even through the shadow, Anna thought she saw a thin beam of sunlight spilling down in the distance. For that, she almost managed a smile. Cracked lips twitched and bled, exposing decayed teeth, some of them even missing. But none of that mattered to her now. Even down here in the tomb of the forgotten, Lucie still managed to find her and come visit. As a result, even down here, Anna managed to find some sunlight, HER sunlight, one blessed little ray, and with it, she became just a little more human again.

The distant sunlight warmed her skin and she felt Lucie's ghostly hand run down her back before she vanished again, but she would not be gone forever. She would make good on her vows to stay with Anna even until the very end and beyond into eternity. For that, even if the clouds passed by now, Anna knew she would see the sunlight again somehow, and then, she would truly be free.

"I will see you again, my Lucie. The night cannot last forever. The sunlight will return eventually..."

In the distance, the little beam of sunlight got brighter and brighter. It wasn't sunlight at all. It was one of Anna's tormentors opening the trap door at the end of the hallway that led to her torture chamber. They were finally coming back, ready to beat her bloody and unconscious once again. But Anna was too out of it to realize. She continued to stare at the rays of sunlight peeking down from above. She didn't see her tormentor descend, clad in black, carrying spiked chains and a metal club.