Keep Me in the Dark

Keep me in the Dark

5:50am

I lay awake, counting down the minutes. It was dark. It was always dark. Ever since the blackout, everything was dark. My breath was warm against the pillow, and my eyes hurt from trying to adjust to a light that was never there. That would never arrive. It had been months, maybe years, since I had seen light. It wasn’t that there was no light; it’s just, what lay waiting in the light was so much worse. I had heard stories growing up of children whose glowing toys stood to attention, guarding them against the terrors of the night. Now those same children, grown up and with children of their own, told stories of creatures, of real monsters, that no longer used darkness for cover - they were brave now, emboldened by our fear, dauntless in our dread. Those who dared to venture outside, those who were caught cowering from a sliver of sunlight between hastily drawn shutters - they were gone. The only way to live, to survive, was to become that which children of forgotten generations had once feared - the foreboding shadow in the corner of the room, the hand grasping from under the bed, the creak of an attic floorboard.

I reached out my hand, slowly, purposefully, and found comfort in the presence of someone else. Someone else trying to disregard the horrors we could face. The horrors we had faced. My hand drifted up her arm, to her shoulder, and felt the familiar tingle of stray hairs brush against my palm.

At least I wasn’t the only one left.

I could hear her breath, the shallow inhale and exhale of someone too anxious to sleep, but too exhausted to be awake. I turned my head, straining to see a feature, the glint of a half-open eye, the silhouette of a head; to no avail. I knew she was there, but sometimes it was too easy to forget. To feel alone. You see, before the blackout, I didn’t know darkness. No one did. True darkness is not the faint glow of the stars, the shining beacon of a street light as you meander towards it; darkness is pure. Impenetrable. Black. It burns as true as the sun burns gold. True darkness is not how to stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night, when your mind knows the way even if you feel like you don’t; true darkness is the terror of not knowing how to put one foot in front of the other. Of where that next footstep leads. Of what might be waiting for you. The blackout didn’t just take away our sight; it took away our perspective, our courage, our chance to fight back.

6:00 am

A bright glare shone through the layers of cloth, the safety net we relied upon so naively. It was so bright I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t move. I forced myself to sit up, stumbling for the edge of the bed, scrambling to protect us, to save our lives - or what was left of them.

Before I could stop it, it was gone. Like a horrifying beacon, shouting that we were there; just to vanish, as if to give way to the thrill of the hunt. But something was different. I could feel it. Watching. Terrified, I slowly lowered myself back down, squeezed my eyes shut, as if that would stop them - as if it had ever stopped them before. I felt warmth, warm liquid, splashing across my face. In the darkness, I could almost smell the metallic tang of blood. Of her blood. I covered my mouth with both hands, too afraid to scream, too terrified not to. I dug my nails into the side of my cheek, futile in my hopes that it was all a dream, an awful nightmare, one that I would awake from in a sweat, heart pounding, every fiber of me twitching like a rabbit in the jaws of its captor. I wished that it would all be over, and that soon I would find the bliss of no longer living in fear.

My heart felt like it was trying to claw its way from the confines of my chest, pounding so loud that it was like it already had. My eyes bulged from their sockets, as a primal instinct forced me to search unfathomably for danger; but the danger lay not in what I could see, for there was no longer sight to be relied upon. It lay in the slow, shallow breath of the thing that I had been running from for so much time. The real monster. Not one of fantasy or fairytale, for this was not a creature of vampiric fangs or scolding fire-breath; this was something much, much worse.

As I lay, petrified in the dark, the worst thing was the thought of what could lie in wait. No one had ever seen it and lived. They made no sound as they stalked their prey, no faint rattle of an upturned tail, not even the glow of foreboding red eyes lying in wait. They let the mind race uninhibited, as a thousand and one questions spun a yarn around their victims, ready to pounce at the fatal click of a light switch or an ill fated trip towards a half-open door.

I felt my heart starting to slow - as if it would have collapsed under its own weight to go on any longer - and cautiously tried to feel the world around me. Whatever the cause of that blinding light which had claimed the life of my only comfort, it would no doubt return, and this time there would be no distractions. I would be next. I recoiled as I felt the warm blood pooling under my left hand, insensate of my right which I found already tightly gripping the cold metal of the bedframe. I needed to move. If I found myself in the same position when the light returned, there would be nothing I could do. I would be swept into the cruel embrace of the end of this nightmare. There was a fleeting second where I considered, maybe I should stay here. Maybe I should finally give in to the call of the night. But then, what would all of this suffering have been for? Who would it have been for? For all I was aware, we were the only two people unfortunate enough to be alive in this godforsaken nightmare - and now, I was the last. I was perhaps the only one who could survive until the age of darkness expired, until order returned to unkempt gardens, life and laughter returned to the streets we once owned. It was an unavailing thought. I knew that deep down. But I had to try. For the ones we had lost, the ones who chose to give their own lives in the hope that someone, somewhere, could live a better one.

6:10am

It was time. I had to find a way out of this room, away from that thing, to somewhere where, if the light returned, I would be out of reach.

I had grown up in this house; and years of travelling in darkness had taught me well the intricacies of each step, the places where shades had been hastily flung across windows - and more importantly, the places with no windows at all. I was on the first floor, the place where we slept - the place where now, the only person who had stayed with me through all of this, lay lifeless, her flame extinguished. I knew that below me, through the labyrinth of messy hallways and past the broken memories of forgotten rooms, down the stairs and through the kitchen - there was a way. A hatch, almost unnoticeable unless you knew it was there, and on the other side? Safety. Freedom. Maybe.

Through gritted teeth and baited breath, I cursed myself. How did we become so bold, that we had emerged from the safety of the basement in the first place? If we had just stayed there, cowering in shadow, then we could have both held on. Living in ignorant bliss of the bright lights that had just cursed us with their beaming glow. I knew that really, truly, if we had stayed down there for any longer than we did, our chapters in this gruesome story would’ve been over long before tonight. We were starving, desperate, driven mad by the perpetual nothingness that lay before us. So we took the risk; a risk that, for a while, felt like it had paid off. We roamed the house at will, wrapped tightly in the comfort that this place was our own. We had rationed, and rationed those rations, enough until we were just barely able to fight until the next days’ meal - although a meal is not what we had. That was maybe the one saving grace about all of this; there wasn’t much time, or space, to grow hungry. Our lives had consisted of waking up, holding each other in the darkness, for comfort, for sanity, until we could no longer keep our eyes from drifting shut. And then doing it all over again.

And again. And again.

I had to find my way to the sanctuary of the basement, for all those who had succumbed to the dark, for all those who may still be living in fear. All this time, I couldn’t help but cling onto that thread of hope that maybe one day, things would be alright. And I couldn’t let that go now; all of this suffering, all the days and nights of terror, they couldn’t be for nothing.

6:15 am

Clutching the bedframe with my right hand, I slowly swung my legs around and lowered them onto the cold hardwood. I could hear the sound of blood, now soaked through the sheet, dripping down to the ground. I lurched forward so both hands were tight on the edge of the bedframe, and took a deep, purposeful breath inwards. Carefully, I stood. I peered into the darkness, hoping to catch a glimpse of my surroundings, but knowing what it would mean if I did. Hesitant, as I had learned to be, as the events of the last few minutes had forced me to be, I stepped forward into the unknown. Instinctively I knew my way; I couldn’t count how many times I had crept through this very house as a child, hunting for a midnight snack, listening for the familiar sound of the TV as I battled through nightmares that at the time felt so real. Little did I know then, how real they could turn out to be. But then, despite all my experience, the familiarity this home had once provided, I felt lost. I lifted a cautious arm out into the darkness, and took another deliberate step forward. Two more steps, and I gasped as my outstretched fingers grazed against the cold, ridged paint of the bedroom wall. I turned, keeping the wall on my right, shaking with the fear of what might come next. My mind raced with a thousand possibilities - what would happen if I was walking right into the path of my predator? What lay in wait for me then? Or worse, what if the light returned, and I had to face it head on? I tried in vain to push these thoughts to the back of my mind, for now. Yes, they were fears that my brain was conjuring up, just as it does in the face of any unknown - but they were in no way unfounded. 3 more steps. A pause. Listening. Still futilely straining to catch a glimpse of anything familiar, still filled with dread as to what that shadow might mean for my escape. A final step, and I found my hands latching onto the sides of the doorframe, nails tearing at the chipped wood, arms locked outwards as though they were fighting to keep me standing upright.

Now I was moving ever quicker, unable to shake the feeling of a sinister presence lurking over my shoulder, hounding me with every step. I found myself almost at a canter down the hallway, feet thudding against the carpet, with not a fleeting care of the horrors that I might be awakening. I found my eyes, my hair, my mouth, tangled in a net of cobwebs that were strung from wall-to-wall like twisted party decorations, a cruel end to maybe the only society that could thrive in this new world. With my free hand I wiped them away, struggling not to pull the other from the temporary solace of the wall. I felt the wall fall away, to be replaced by the crumbling wooden spindles of the stairs. I froze. I could hear the sound of spiders scuttling back to their nests, as if even they knew to stay away from the monsters which lurked in the dark. I grasped the banister with my left hand, and with my right reached out into the dark. I lowered to almost a crouch, and with my first step began my descent into the unknown. Not even the comfort of knowing this house so well would help me now. I had to keep moving. Another step down, and a piercing creak as the wood warped under my foot. I froze again, listening out for a sound, anything that might apprise me of what lay waiting before me. Now, only one thought raced through my troubled mind - I had to keep moving. A hesitant second, a lingering pause to gather my bearings, could be the difference between making it to safety, or succumbing to the light. I took another cautious step down, feeling the familiar weave of the worn runner under my feet, guiding me as I moved ever closer to the bottom. 4 more, and I was almost there. I could feel the ominous presence of the slanted ceiling, entrapping me in a space that suddenly felt so small. Another 3 steps, and as I took the last, the relative warmth of the carpet was replaced by the harsh cold of tile. Now I was barely 10 feet away from my destination, yet in the dark it felt like an eternity had passed already. I reached out for the wall again, and flinched as my fingers brushed what felt like a frame of a now- obsolete photograph, which jumped from the wall and crashed to the ground. The sound tore through the darkness, and suddenly the hallway felt alive with echoes of the past. I recoiled as shards of glass darted into the air, impaling themselves in my bare shins, slicing the skin and tearing at the muscle underneath. I could feel every warm rivulet of blood spilling down my legs, onto my feet, my toes, and pooling onto the floor around me. I screamed, a feral, unhinged scream, and clutched at my legs, trying desperately to remove what felt like daggers tearing at my legs, but in the darkness all I could manage was to force them deeper. I staggered forwards, doubled over in pain, snatching at the air, trying to find my way. By luck, or by an unconscious will to survive, I found myself resting against the kitchen door, shards of glass impaled in the soles of my feet from where I had trampled down the hallway. I knew I was almost there; almost in the safety of the basement. Every step was torture, as the glass forced its way further, pushing against every nerve ending, sending shudders up my spine. My legs slammed against the table which had sat in the middle of the room, the host for so many memories, good memories which were quickly fading into the darkness. With the last of my strength I grabbed onto the oak with my quivering hands, and dragged it ferociously to the side, mustering everything I had left, all of the pain, all of the animalistic will to keep going. I dropped to my knees, frantically searching the floor for the recessed handle buried in layers of dust and dirt. I let out a gasp as I felt my fingers latch around the metal fastener, and, with the sudden thrill of excitement that this was all about to be behind me, that I was going to live, that all the people I had lost wouldn’t have died in vain, I pulled.

Then the lights came on.