The Dark Place

An experiment. Turning negative emotions into a visualization of a sorrowful and lonely place. May be disturbing to some readers.

The dark place. The darkest place you can possibly be. A place where the blackness is so thick you can taste the oil on your tongue. The air is so stale that every breath you take is like breathing sand. The floor is splintered wood, covered in dust. You can hear the spiders skittering across it. You can feel them crawling up your skin, even when they're not. This is my dark place.

I can hear them moving in the dark. Silvery glints of metal visible for a mere second. They're watching me, always watching and waiting. I know that if I go to sleep...they'll hurt me. I try to tell them to go away but they're always there. How could anyone expect me to stay awake forever? There's nobody to hold me here, there's nobody to tell me I'll be okay...I try to tell myself, but after a while it doesn't work anymore. I can't hear myself speak over the sounds of the screaming inside my head.

I hold a pillow sometimes, because if I pretend hard enough it feels like another person. But that's only after I've cried. That's only after I've stopped shivering because I'm too exhausted to anymore. I hold this imaginary person and tell them how scared I am, I beg them to just whisper to me. Just tell me it's okay. Tell me you love me, please. Please! Say something! I need to hear your voice!

Please...

I can't even feel the pillow anymore. I've grown too cold. What would I feel anyways? The salted caress of dirty cotton? Would that even comfort me?

Not anymore. The only comfort I can derive is that the watchers care enough to watch me, with their slitted, yellow eyes. They stick their claws into the floor and drag it backwards, splintering wood. Every breath they take is a curse, a hissing rasp of hatred. One will hiss, and then his brother, and then two more. I'll put my hands over my ears but more, and more and more of them hiss. The sound is excruciating! God! Stop! Stop stop stop stop stop!

But they wont stop until I go to sleep. Dreams were meant to be my sanctuary from this world but they've taken that away from me, too. Even as my eyes draw to a close I see them seeping out of the blackness like a wave of locusts, feeling knives slide across my skin.

I bellow out in pain and snap my head back but it's too late. They've caught me. And they have taken me inside my own personal hell.

I sit in a chair in the middle of a small square room. The walls, once white, are now yellow with age, water damage and mold running down from big cracks near the ceiling. The roof is made up of crumbling white tile, with stained yellow insulation showing through. A light hangs in the center of the room, above my head, the dusty inverted yellow shade casting a dull glow across the room from the aged, flickering bulb making a constant buzzing sound.

The floor is sick. Old, ratty blue carpet, heavily discolored with wear and stained with dark splotches. Flecks of ceiling debris spread about. I can smell rot and disease, like something died under the floor.

I want to get up and leave this place, but I can't. My feet have been nailed to the floor, and I gaze upon the bleeding, aged wounds, torn open again and again. I realize that some of the older marks on the floor must be blood.

My blood.

I look upon my hands and see that thick, rusted chains have been wrapped around my wrists. An iron guard locks between the fingers of each hand, and the rest of the chain runs down, connected to bolts in the floor. I could never hope to pull them free.

The light flickers dangerously close to going out. I begin to panic. No! I need the light! Please! Dont go out! Don't let it go out! Please! It's the only thing I have! Please!

The room plunges into ebon blackness. I hold my breath as every muscle in my body becomes tense.

Wood creaks.

Scraping behind me, debris crumbling to the floor.

I feel the drip of something wet against my nose.

I can't breathe again.

They'll hear me.

Tap.

Tap tap.

Tap tap tap.

I felt something brush against my leg.

I inhale.

And they howl, as wind lashes against my body and the room shakes!

I hear the sickening snaps of plank as they pound on the walls from the outside, screeching bloodcurdling wails of terror.

And then it just ends.

And everything becomes silent.

And I sit here.

And I cry.

Alone.

Author's Note

Experimental, so not really seeking critique, but do feel free to comment!

Reviews

[Sarah McConnaughey]

I love this! I think you did an amazing job with it! :)