Echoes of Warmth

The darkness has fallen. It had fallen long ago, really. 

It first came years ago, when the creature nobody could see arrived. It was there, they knew, lurking in the shadows, forever unseen. 

It was larger than they had imagined, as large as the world itself, and it came with its gaping maw as it descended on them. It howled, a noise that sounded like wind, just on the edge of hearing. 

Its mouth was studded with black shifting teeth, sharp and unyielding. It sunk these daggers into the world, surrounding them in chilling, hollow darkness. 

Nobody knows if the darkness came over years or in the blink of an eye. Some say they awoke and it was simply there. 

All that is known is that one day, there was nothing but darkness, and it had never left. Nobody could remember anything different. 

She stands in the barren shelter she calls home, four cramped walls and a cracking ceiling. There is a single string of lights affixed diagonally across the ceiling, shedding blue hued light slanting across her features. 

Something is moving -- behind her, around her. She cannot see it. The short hairs at the nape of her neck bristle, blustery cold filtering through the poorly constructed walls. 

She knows it is there. 

It is made of shadows, of quicksilver strands of unyielding darkness, and it waits. Crouching low and hidden, it holds its ground, watching, waiting. 

Hunting. 

It does not come for her, not yet. The Other comes first, the one that she doesn’t see. It crawls its way into her chest and curls up, making a home for itself. She doesn’t seem to notice.

She can still remember the time before the darkness, sometimes. She remembers the light and the warmth, remembers running through a sun-kissed field in a gentle, warm breeze.

She doesn’t think anyone else remembers. She hopes that one day, the sun will return. She would like to see the sun again, just once more, before she is gone.

She would like to understand what it is like to be alive once more, to be real, to be warm and happy and free again. She wishes the memories would leave her, because they are only wishes and promises that will never come to fruition. 

The shadows curl around her ankles, dark shackles she can never break. She tilts her head back, eyes screwed shut until spots dance across her eyelids. The faint blue light lances her skin, and she imagines a different world.

Sometimes, she gets these sparks of pain, a sharp and unrelenting ache that coils beneath her skin and simply hurts until she can hardly bear it. These days, there is little she can remember outside the near-constant pain, as if her body has forgotten how to feel fine, how to not hurt.

She isn’t honestly sure she could remember what that feels like, if she tried.

She is tired, as she is always tired. She hasn’t slept in ages, not that she has a way to track the time as it ticks by, not in the darkness. Her eyes burn and pain clusters into a lump at the very back of her throat, making it impossible to breathe.

Her quiet gasps come ragged and sharp, punctuated by brief pauses to blink back tears. They are not tears of pain, nor of sorrow. The tears prick at her eyes solely so there is something for her body to do.

It is a strange feeling, the detachment she feels from her own form.

Shriveled fingers of a creature formed of agony claw at the tattered shreds of her heart that it has left behind. It barely even hurts anymore, more of a dull feeling, just at the edge of her mind, as blood seeps sluggishly through the blackened leathery grasp.

The creature -- the Other, she calls it, as it is not one of the shadows -- has been there for so long. Time blurs and bleeds past any lines she might have drawn, but she knows much of it has passed despite how murky it seems.

She is used to the agony now, the screaming of her body fading into a dull and listless roar, then a hum. It is barely there, little more than a reminder of what she has already seen.

She is so young to have seen so much.

She does not know how old she is, these days. She does not think of it. She is not an adult yet, however, and she has no illusions of living to see maturity.

She is dying. She knows very little these days, mainly suffering, aching agony and empty, unyielding darkness, but she knows this. She is going to die, very soon.

Reality is a far away thing these days, distant and muffled. She drowns in the fog that clouds her head, vision blurry and blocked, mind filled with static. Dark spots of shadow lurk at the very edges of her vision, threatening to draw closer each time she blinks.

I do not mind, she wishes to say. I am already dead, you know? You might as well claim my body, claim my soul.

She cannot get the words out, and the black edges stay at bay, just lurking, waiting.

One day -- soon, very soon, so soon it should terrify her (it does not) -- she will lose the barely real battle, finally felled and crumbling. Then, only then -- it won’t be long, now -- the shadows will finally claim her.

She could not see them before; she did not want to. Because of that, they stayed away, in the shadows but out of her mind. They have always been there. 

They do not scare her. They are welcome to her damaged body and her ravaged soul.

Being afraid would mean feeling, and you must be alive to feel. She feels nothing. She is nothing.

She is becoming the darkness.

She finally stills, and no longer does she hope for sun.

No longer does she hope.