Previous Chapters
Close
Chapter 12,339 words
Chapter 22,107 words
Chapter 32,789 words
Chapter 42,005 words
Chapter 5768 words

Chapter 5

Unconsciousness and.... darkness.

I feel myself falling, unable to control my decent.

Confusing imaging fill my mind, filtering down thought by thought until finally, I catch myself as I run through the dark woods of my life.

I am searching, groping for something to be founded upon.... but my woods are not so dark as it’s the tinted lenses I am looking through that cut out the brightness and clarity that I once had.

My quest to find a beacon, a guide, a functional direction to follow is only dampened by my own apathy.

I will my body to stop running but it fails to respond to any sort of stimuli.

How can I be sprinting so fast but unable to move?

My own negative thoughts and my own falsified data leads to such a dark, foggy run that I cannot help but break down.

I weep in the brokenness, in the darkness, in the confines of my mind at my inability to control myself.

I am angry, happy, loathsome, kind, harsh, forgiving, loving and hating all with such an intensity, that I feel as if I'm going to explode.

How can all of these emotions live within me without tearing me apart at the seams?

Maybe they can't.

I feel as if I am nothing, a broken shell of the man I could be.

I feel as if a blind has been pulled across my face, preventing me from seeing the beautiful landscape of my life before me... but it is not an outside source that has dulled my senses.

It is I.

These brooding thoughts continue and the more I run, the darker things seem to get and yet, I keep my silly little glasses on like an addiction, like a habit that won’t be broken without serious mind power.

The surface of my mind is muddied, the reflection of my life oddly twisted and contorted, like trying to look at yourself in water while some great beast is churning up the once life-giving liquid and I am far too concerned about how I am perceived to see that it is rapidly approaching me, ready to consume me.

Then, in the darkness of my mind, six words resonate:

What am I holding on to?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The light from the midday sun is filtering down through the trees, sending moving shadows down on top of me and Rose as we sleep on the edge of the grand Equestrian forest.

I bolt upright breathing heavily but in my state, I forgot that Rose was on my chest while we slept which, now that I realize, probably wasn't very comfortable since I still have my full military gear on.

I hear a loud *YELP!* of surprise and then a moment later, a "OOOF!!" as Rose hits the ground a few feet away.

Rose, now dazed, tries to get up and then, after a few seconds of stumbling, falls back down again and tries to get her bearings. "What in Equestria happened?.?...."

I quickly brought back down my breathing rate before I spoke.

"Heh, sorry about that." I say, rubbing the back of my neck. "I don't know what came over me. I just had the craziest dream..."

She shot me a quick look of worry and then trotted over and nuzzled my chest, totally forgetting about getting thrown a few feet just seconds ago. "What was it about? It must of been crazy for you to throw me off like that!"

This girl is just too good for me.

I smile down at her but she sees a look of trepidation slowly cloud my features. "Hmmm... well, at first I didn't even know what was happening, there was just blackness. But then the sensation of falling came over me. I don't know for how long or at what speed, but I plummeted down until my feelings changed. I was no longer falling, but running from.... something."

"Was it the hydra!?" Rose gasped as she remembered back to the great beast which almost took her and my life.

I smiled at this. "Haha no, no, it was something different."

My face changed once again as I looked off into the distance, but it was a totally different emotion than before, something that Rose hadn't even seen when I faced the hydra: Fear.

And that scared her more than anything.

"It was something far worse."

Rose looked anxiously in anticipation and compassion and her voice shook a little when she said, "W-What was it?"

My tone deepened in pitch and intensity as I almost whispered,

"It was me."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1,288 views

Previous Chapters