Darkness:
The rain pours and water drips. I am wet, here alone in my cave. I can do nothing to dry myself for I am not here of my own will, nor do I have the things needed to properly care for myself. I was lured here, how so, I do not remember. I do feel a presence in these dark depths, where the light does not bother to extend its welcome revelation. I long for the identity of these horrible shadows to be shown. I whimper for help. The darkness surrounds me, silent and unforgiving.
And then, I hear a feminine voice. “Hello? Is anypony there?” I respond giddily,
“Me, I am here!”
“This is good,”says the voice.
“Can you see me? WIll you help me?” The voice replies,
“I’ll.. try to find my way to you.” I hear a few whimpers and groans accompanied by unsynchronized footsteps. Soon, the darkness retracts slightly to give way to a new face.
A pony’s face. “AGHHHH!!” I scream, backpedaling and knocking into something on the hard cave wall. It blazed to life, the flames licking greedily at the moldy wood. With the new life given to the cave and the ability to see, I make out the details of the pony’s face, along with the rest of her form. The pony’s body was beautiful to say the least.
I am reassured and I venture forth to greet the pony. The pony however, is not so reassured as I. She steps back away from me.
“What… are you?!” she frightfully asks. I look at myself. “I am a human? And what are you, talking horse?”
“How dare you insult me so?! I am no whorse! I am the noblest of ponies, a unicorn.” I now notice the horn upon her head.
“Cute,” I say. She looks at me in annoyance, not to mention disgust. I smile at my new found talking pony who was quickly becoming my enemy.
“I am sorry for insulting you, please take no offence.” She is not appeased.
“Please,” I say “be not angry with me.” I realize that I have just apologised to a talking pony. Why was I not so surprised at the existence of this unicorn creature? How could these infinite dark depths give birth to such strange equine beauty?
I reach my hand forward, with the intention of petting her mane, but instead my digits are met with a well curved and shapely hoof. I am stunned before I recognise that the notion was a handshake, or hoofshake in this case. We shake and then step a foot away from each other. She still glares at me, but she seems more reassured of the civility of my nature.
“Do you know why we are here, ‘human’?” she speaks.
“I know not. I had hoped to find the answer to that with your arrival. I have noticed that you have quite a vocabulary.”
“Why does this surprise you?” She raises an eyebrow, clearly unaffected by my attempts to please her ego.
“Where I come from, hors-....ponies...are not known to be sapient creatures.”
“Is that so? Where I come from we do not have standing, furless-....humans…”
We stand in silence for awhile before I speak.
“So, do you know of any way out of this god forsaken place?"
“If I had, would I be standing here with you now?” she shrugs.
“Because you may find my figure attractive?” I flex. She facehoofs.
“Stop being so full of yourself and let’s get out of this place.” she says and I nod.
“And how do you propose we do that?” I ask. She stomps a hoof.
“We…..We….” she stutters.
“Yes?” I ask. She gives me a look. I lean against the stone wall, while she sits and runs a hoof through her mane.
“Maybe….We rest for a bit?” she suggests.
“That doesn’t sound very productive.” I say.
“Do you have any better ideas?!”
“I say that we take this here torch, and try going down one of these tunnels.”
“We don’t know what's down there!” she protests.
“And we won't until we try,” I argue. She does not look as if she will be going anywhere, so I snatch the torch and make my way down one of the many dark and barren tunnels.
I am not far before my torch goes out and I can no longer see my hands in front of my face. I am surrounded by dark and stillness. I become frantic, for I can not see what awaits me. What we fear most is what we do not know or understand. I fear the void before me. Many things creep into my mind, a drop away, a cliff. There is a trap or an obstacle ahead of me that I can not comprehend.
My pace is slow, my steps shuffled. My hands are stretched before me, although I am blind to them. I continue to make my way forward, one step at a time. Every second I fear that I will find something, or that I will not sense a drop or pit before me. For minutes or hours I do this and eventually I stop, for I hear something behind me.
They are not footsteps, for I am sure the thing following me is four legged. This new sound could be coming from either the unicorn or some other four-legged beast. I turn, the dead torch held as a weapon. How I intend to use it I do not know, for the darkness disables me. It hides my peril and the further possibility of death that awaits me. It cloaks the thing, its dark grasp making the identity impossible for me determine. It speaks,
“Paul, is it you?”
I loosen my grasp on my weapon and my hands fall to my sides. Relief floods my body and soul. A comrade has joined me, I am no longer alone. I find comfort in sounds of my name, and I reach into my memory for hers. It does not come. I stop all previous thoughts and concentrate on one thing. Why does she know my name, while I do not know hers?
“I am so sorry, but for the life of me, I can not remember your name.” I say.
“I would be ‘the life of you’ know wouldn’t it?” I feel a hard blow to my stomach. I am flung backwards onto the cold hard floor. My head contacts the ground hard and I feel blinding pain. Had my vision been lighted, blackness would have drawn forth anyway. I grow close to fainting. Another blow is felt on my chest, and I slide back into a wall.
“You were right to question why I knew your name. When I brought you here you mumbled to yourself for days. At first I felt sorry for you, how could such a monster seem so….so….innocent in his sleep? I had to remind myself of what you have done up above.” I cough blood that tastes metallic, I can not speak.
“When I remember the damage that you and your kind caused, I shudder with rage.” I attempt to speak, the damage to my chest makes for hard breathing.
“Wha-what d-dam-damage?”
“YOU DO NOT REMEMBER?!” I am silent.
“It does not matter now. You will get what you deserve!” The feminine voice has moved closer to my right ear.
“For all the PAIN!” There is a blow to the right side of my face.
“And the SORROW!” Another hit.
“And the DEATH!” Another searing punch. My face is bloodied and I can feel it. My life’s essence slowly drips from my face and mouth and pours into space inside of me. I can feel the shattered bones ripping the vitalist of my tissues. They leak inside of me and I grow cold and numb. I begin to shake. My body is beyond moaning, so I gurgle in my life fluids.
“This is how it will be.” I hear my chest crunch as my condition is worsened further. I can not cry out, I merely splutter and spit blood.
“We will sit and wait. I want to hear the sounds of your death. It is a shame that I will not be able to see your face as you fade. It is tempting to grab the torch and light it, but I believe that the dark is scarier to a dying pony, or human as it were.”
And so we wait. I am indeed scared. I fear the feelings of my body, I no longer fear the darkness but I still grasp at something to hold my attention. Nothing is there to concentrate on and I plead to the universe. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die like this. I do not know what awaits me when I slip away. Will there be paradise? Will there be hell? Will there be nothing? An eternal sleep? Will my essence just fade away into nothing? Will I cease to exist? I feel myself fade and I am shaken to my deepest roots. I panic, for I do not want to simply fade away, I do not want to become nothing. I do not want to just….turn off...and never think or never breathe again. I want to have fun and I want to enjoy my existence. I will never be able to do that again.
If I could, I would cry. I gargle and spit blood pitifully. I try to move my head, I try to beg for escape. I can no longer feel, I am fading. The less I can feel and sense the more panicked I become. I am trapped within my own body, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to see.. I can not help myself in anyway. I am certainly doomed. Silent terror grips me. It holds me over a void of nothingness, the knowledge that the void is the end, no more of anything. I plead and beg to be put back down on hard land, but my fate is sealed. The time that passes is time spend slipping out of the terror’s grasp, closer to that void.
Nothingness…..Nothingness…..Nothingness….I would take hell over nonexistence. The pain of a trapped bird is within me. I lay and cry at the inevitable, I watch as the pendulum swings toward me, as the guillotine dropps. It is the slow waiting, the knowing, the trying to escape even though you know you can not.
Hopelessness…...Hopelessness….Hopelessness…..No hope, no salvation is available to me. The darkness holds all that is dear. The darkness is what I will become. We see darkness as a blanket that covers what we want to see, while in truth, darkness is the absence of light. Darkness is nothingness. Darkness is the void, the place where nothing exists. Darkness is what is left when everything is gone. It is just me and the darkness now. It is silent. I hear nothing of the pony beside me, not even her breath. The darkness reach out to me now and my terror is absolute.
Helplessness…..Helplessness…….Helplessness….I am beyond help. I am shut off from everything. I am shutting down. I sense the nothingness surround me, the pain inside soul sears. I can do nothing, I am helpless, hopeless and becoming nothingness. HELP ME! HELP ME! PLEASE NO! I DON’T WANT- NO. I WANT TO EXIST PLEASE! DON’T LET ME FADE AWAY! I CAN’T JUST FADE AWAY! NO! WHATEVER DID I DO TO DESERVE THI-
Darkness, nothingness, emptiness. Gone.