Into Darkness

Interlude

Screaming, so much screaming.  The screams all around.  Screams, scre-

The darkness was twirling around him, his ears bleeding from the pain of all the screaming.  A woman, she wailed like a banshee, more and more.  Everything was shifting, the world in and out.  No, that was him fading in and out.  He wasn’t sure when he was awake and when he was asleep, the screams followed him in and out of his nightmares.

He couldn’t see them.  

The pain was gone.  He didn’t know when, but he hadn’t noticed when it had slipped away.  Instead, the darkness around him had slipped into a void where his stomach screamed to him and his own throat was burning.  Was he awake again or had he fallen back to sleep?  

He didn’t think he could cry anymore.  He felt like there wasn’t anything left, and his eyes felt like they were locked closed from the dried crust around them.  Tears had come and gone, streamed in endless torrents, and still, no one came.

Where was his mommy?  Why didn’t she come for him?  Why wasn’t she there to get him?  She had always come to get him.  She was there to pick him up for school, and had always brought him home from his friends when he needed her.  Why wasn’t she here now? 

He felt a tickle under his nose and knew he couldn’t do anything about it.  The little legs danced across his skin.  It was long, and he could feel those probing antlers thingies or whatever the thing had that was touching the edge of his lip.  If he opened his mouth now he could stick out his tongue and touch whatever bug was crawling on his face now.  Though if he did that, the thing could also crawl in, and with how raspy his voice was, he could barely scream.  He didn’t think he could scream loud enough to get it to crawl back out.  And would it?  Or would it crawl deeper?  Would it work it’s way down his dry throat.  

He shook his head vigorously back and forth until he couldn't feel the thing on his face anymore.

Fresh tears wanted to stream, but there were no more.  Instead his eyes burned and he sobbed, lowering his head to his chest as he just wanted to curl himself up into a ball and hide.

Hide?  He was already in a dark who knows what.  He was as hidden as he could get.  How would he hide.  He was trapped in darkness, there wasn’t anyone around him, there wasn’t anyway for him to see anything around him.  All he had was a world of blackness, and he couldn’t tell the difference from when his eyes were open or when they were closed.  There was nothing for him to see.  Everything was gone around him.  

And all he heard was the constant scratching around him of little things that scurried.  It was the song of the underearth, the falling rock as earth was moved and the dance of the millions of legs that dug and spun their ways through their own worlds.  It was a constant tune that the longer he stayed in his haze between the worlds of sleep and waking, seemed to grow louder.  Either he was listening to it more sharply or the mass of the sound was getting closer.

“Mommy.  Please come get me.”  He could barely recognize the croak that escaped from him as his own.  It was so quiet and sounded like something some old villain would say to him.  It was alien and creepy.  No way could that be his own voice.

But where was him mom?  

“We don’t need him.  He was extra anyway.  We didn’t have enough money to keep feeding him, and he was always complaining.  I’m glad that he’s gone.” He heard his mom say.

His eyes flew open, not realizing they had closed again, expecting, briefly hoping that he had just heard her and that she was there.  He thought that maybe in the darkness he would see her, that there would her standing, that disapproving look on her face and the hand on her hip that said that he was in trouble and grounded again for life.  Yeah, he would be in trouble, but she would be there.

She wasn’t.  Only the darkness continued to surround.  But that was her voice.

“Its like I keep telling his father.  We need to get rid of the mistake, and that is what he is.  He’s a mistake.  My life would be so much better if I had no children.  You know I was supposed to go off to college, I wanted to be a doctor.”

“Mom!” he screamed into the cavern and heard the echo back to him.  He could hear her, why couldn’t she hear him? “Mom!  I’m here!  Mom, I’m right here!”

“I hope we never find him.  If we do, then I just have to get stuck taking care of him again.  I hope that we never find him, and where he is, he rots there.”

Why is she saying those things?  He knew they couldn’t be true.  She loved him.  His mom would always love him and would always be there for him.  She was his mom.  He knew she loved him and if she knew where he was, she would be right there to save him.  He just needed to find a way to tell her where he was.

“Mom, I’m here.  Get a flashlight, I’m just right over here!  I can’t walk.”

“Oh you can’t walk?  Well, then what good are you?  I can hear you.  It’s not that I can’t find you.  I don’t want to find you.  I don’t ever want to see you, ever again.  Why do you think you're here in the dark?  Do you think I want to look at you?  What are you good for?  You cry here and call for your mommy.  Is that all you want, is your mommy?  Well, get over it, because your mommy will not be saving you.”

“Mom!?”

The world around him silent again, her voice fading back away into the song of the earth.  As much as he screamed, listening to his echoes, she wasn’t saying anything else.  

Had she really been there or had it been another dream?  Her voice hadn’t echoed like his did.  Was it all in his head?  Was he speaking to her in his head?  Or was he just imagining things again.  His brother always said he had a wild imagination.

 

The song continued to get louder.