When Calls the Dark

This story contains sensitive themes. Those themes include talks about death, gore, and though not specifically said, but heavily implied mental health.

Dark room, blank walls, loud sounds, scarce calls. Insanity has me in its grasp, choking me until tears fall and I can no longer speak. My heart is cracked, each small, sharp, shard of it stabs into my chest with every beat. I claw at it, trying to get them out but I cannot. Blood flows freely, making a pool beneath me.

Something moves to my right and I turn to see my mother. Her mouth is moving, perhaps she is speaking but I cannot hear her. I cannot hear anything.

I open my mouth willing words to come out. I try to scream. I think I even try to ask for help. Instead of my voice there’s a ringing in my ears. My mother seems concerned, but she is not freaking out at the sight of the blood seeping through my clothes.

Can she not see it? Can she not see the monster trying to free itself from my skin, can she not see its talons piercing my flesh?

I grasp my chest again, trying to stop the beating of the organ inside of me. Crimson stains my fingers as if I’d plunged them deep into the cavity of my sternum. I gasp, blubbering like a fish as darkness seeps into my soul.

I can practically feel the darkness taking hold of me, forcing me to submit to it. Next goes my heart, or, what’s left of it. The darkness covers each fragment, somehow turning them sharper than before. What is this?

Why must this hurt so badly?

I try to free my mind from the death grip this darkness has on it. I try to feel okay, I try to breathe deeply without it feeling like thousands of needles penetrating my lungs. I cannot do any of those things.

I am going to die wrapped in this darkness, this smothering blanket that is tangled completely around my limbs.

I open my mouth in hopes that I will be able to take at least one breath, but I might as well be underwater. I might as well be drowning, tied down with hundred-pound weights that are dragging me to the ocean floor.

I struggle against my restraints, try to pull myself free but they are tied tightly. They are impenetrable. The red of a beast’s irises peer into my soul, there is a slight humor in them. I can almost hear what they are telling me. I am so completely doomed. He reaches out and his clawed hand wraps around my throat cutting off my air supply completely.

His grip is bruising, punishing, like I am being dammed for every mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I have no one to miss me when I am gone. Perhaps my mom but even then, I think that her life would effectively be better without me because I am nothing but a nuisance. I am nothing but a mistake. That is all the beast usually whispers to me anyway; those are the only words he seems to know. Today though, only his eyes talk, only his eyes are telling me what I already know.

I am a useless sack of flesh and bones, and I deserve this impending doom. I deserve to walk the pits of the earth with this beast breathing down my neck. Death has come to take my soul, drag it into the deepest parts of its cave. Feast on my heart, and relish in the darkest parts of my being.

Suddenly everything stops, all at once, as if nothing had ever happened at all. I look down, eyebrows coming together, no blood. My fingers are clean, pristine, perfect. The beast has disappeared, leaving me cold and alone. My mother’s voice enters my ears, but I refuse to hear her. I refuse to acknowledge how completely insane I’ve gone.

I’ve hallucinated. All of it. My throat works just fine; my breathing is coming out ragged but I’m breathing all the same. I know that if I were to look in the mirror there would be no bruises. There are no crimson-colored stains on my shirt. I am not sitting in a puddle of my own blood.

My heart beats do not hurt. Yet, through it all there is an emptiness that surrounds me. Like I’ve been completely hollowed out. It feels like someone took a scooper and disposed of all of my insides.

The darkness may not have completely consumed me, may not have killed me after all but an immense loneliness seeps into the marrow of my bones and I want to cry. I want to break down completely and have someone hold me tightly. I want there to be whispers of okay, of something better, I want help. I cannot get the help I want though because then I’d drag everyone else down with me. I’d drag them into the darkest parts of this world, and I feel that I am the only one that deserves that.

I am the only person that deserves the scars that litter the inside of my chest. The only one that should feel the hurt I felt before.

For whatever reason this feels worse than the hurt. The hearing is worse than the silence. The emptiness is worse than the eyes that followed me everywhere. I do not know what to do with myself. I do not know how to feel. The unknown of it all scares me.

Perhaps if the beast were to come back, I would be able to refuse it. But I do not know if I am that strong and that brings a certain terror that strikes through my chest.

If the red-eyed monster were to reach out its hand to me, would I take it? If death were to call my name, would I blindly follow it? There is something so deeply terrifying about the thought that I am not strong enough to refuse deaths pull.

After all, when dark calls are you not supposed to answer?