The Allegory of the Abyss

Dark ichor was oozing out of his wounds, with iron strong chains hanging around him like a spider's web digging into them. His mouth was gagged and his voice muffled; it always had been since his childhood. If he tried to make even a single move, a demon would drive his blunt spear into his broken back, but he had stopped protesting months ago. He had gotten used to the pain, to the blood, to the darkness in this pit of hell and even to the demons themselves carved out of his insanity. Now he cared no more, felt no more. He was in a state of limbo, hanging into oblivion, a mere mannequin of mangled flesh.

He was in his usual position that night; bent broken back, lifeless arms dangling from the chains and head hanging low in an eternity of subjugation with his scariest Nightmare trying to come up with new ways of torturing him. The door of the room creaked open and shut. He barely even noticed. A demon whispered to the Nightmare and Nightmare glanced over the mannequin before instructing the demons, "Don't ever let it get inside, defend your home with all you've got."

That night there was a lot of yelling and uproar outside the mannequin's room, ghastly sounds that sounded like beasts dying. But the mannequin didn't notice. He had stopped noticing decades ago.

He didn't even notice when his Nightmare didn't come to torture him the next night.

Or when his demons didn't come to laugh at him at the usual time, or when the whispers in his head didn't return for his soul.

In his mind, he didn't even exist. He was nothing.

But the next night something happened that changed him forever.

For the first time he saw something he had never seen, tasted something he had never tasted, felt something he had never felt.

It was light, pure unforgiving light; ablaze under the heavens like a newborn star descending towards him in all its glory.

But the light was a foreign foe to this creature of darkness. It screamed and burned under the light, fending it off with the savagery of a cornered beast. He was terrified of its blinding splendor, of its angelic purity, of how it almost reached its heart once and filled it with light. He had been raised and trapped in his own darkness, chained and tortured by his own demons. He had suffered so much that he had begun to fear relief. He was a creature born out of misery. Although he suffered, he thrived in darkness, but not as a human, as a lifeless demon.

But the light burned it all away, his fears, his demons, his darkness. He fought back with all the strength he had left and surprisingly it worked. The light stopped burning and recoiled but never vanished. Instead of being a blinding dazzle, it turned into the mellow warmth of a night hearth, slowly warming up the cold ice inside him.

Brutally wounded and broken, as he lay down to rest against the stone slab, he noticed that during the fight the cobweb of chains around him had snapped. A flash of events reminded him it was he himself who had broken them in a frenzy while desperately defending his identity. But something else caught his eye. Blood. There were crimson droplets of blood oozing out of his wounds.