Day 1 Challenge: Transformation of darkness into light.
December 2nd, 2020
Title: The Journey
One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. I needed to remember to count - to count and to breath. Each breathe caught in my lungs, tugged on my diaphragm with an aggressive wheeze. I didn’t know how long I sat there, or even where “there” was. To be honest, I didn’t really care where I was or had been or would be. I didn’t care if I existed.
It’s hard to imagine a world without light. Light bears colour, distinction, life. It gravitates your soul towards the excitability to exist. It’s both beauty and disgust. My world feels like it will never taste the light again.
This darkness was not like the night. Instead, it was devoid of any speckle. It was true dark. Silky by nature, heavy and thick. It felt like a cold sludge against my body, weight against my soul.
One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three.
What does the darkness sound like to you? It used to sound like that to me, too. A low buzz, the appearance of being isolated but realistically no one was ever truly alone. How could you be in a world so full. No, this darkness is different than any you’ve lived through before. It is truly devoid of sound. It devours sounds silently, a slow and quiet slurp of any evidence of existence. The only sound the darkness couldn’t retrieve was the steady beat of my heart’s rhythm. Bumm-bumpa-bumm. Bumm-bumpa-bumm. One. Two. Three. Bumm-bumpa-bumm. One. Two. Three.
If time is immeasurable, does it ever really come to pass or does it stand as still as the air that caressed me? I had no way to know the amount of time that passed. I could have been there for years or seconds.
Both felt the same. It made me wonder what time was like before this place. The darkness seemed to have fed upon my memories as well, stealing any memory containing light. I had to think deeply, wade through the silkiness of my memories as images quickly faded from my mind’s view.
Who was I? Who am I now? I felt my memories slipping further and further away. The only moment I could grasp and hold on to was of the grey lady counting to three. One. Two. Three. Why was that important? One. Two. Three. Who was she? Hair the colour of washed out ink feathered to her slender waist to rest on her sickly grey hands, twirling around slender fingers. A crisp jawline angled towards me, stone grey eyes stealing my gaze.
“One. Two. Three.” The words formed effortlessly on her tongue, slipped elegantly in a whisper from her lips.
A brief flash of a smile tickled her face, bringing my gaze back to her icy, sharp eyes.
“One.”
Bumm.
My heart stuttered. Bumm. My breath caught. Bumm. My skin grew damp and numb. Bumm.
“One.”
The grey woman reached a withered hand towards me, grasping me in my memory and pulling my stiff body towards her. Bumm.
“One. You die.” BUUM. I could feel the way my heart screamed against my ribs in final protest. BUMM. Bumm. Bumm. Bumm.
I gasped, my body thrown from my memories back into the silky darkness where I now exist. One. Two. Three. Bumm-bumpa-bumm. My heart beat – or did it? Was I so accustomed to living a life with a beating heart of existence that now it was nothing more than a phantom memory?
My hands searched for any identifiable texture that could destroy the words that still echoed in my head. Air as heavy as swamp mud slipped through my desperate fingers, cascaded down my arms and onto my chest. The weight was crushing. One. Two. Three. There was no echo of a heartbeat. There was no sound. There was no light. And the body I thought I had, did not exist. I am no more.
One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. As I counted, a sliver of grey danced in my memory. I struggled against the image even if it meant having some semblance of answers. If I couldn’t recollect my memories, did they even exist to begin with? Did I ever exist?
One. Two. Ugh – what IS that? A tingling wave of heat trickled down my being. I could not tell where the sensation began or ended. I had no visible marker upon my being to offer clues as to what, or who I am. I had arms. I had legs. I had a heart. Now? Now I have nothing.
The fever compressed itself upon me. In me. There was no way to untangle the mess that we were becoming. Melted. Destroyed. Liquid. No light exists and yet I burn so brightly I would blind anyone looking upon my being. I am nothing and everything. I am life and yet I am dead. I am darkness.
“Two-woo-woo-woo.” The word echoed throughout me in the whisper of the Grey Lady. How was she here with me even now, in my state of non-existence. How did she not burn in my searing presence?
I tried to form questions to reply to the echo. My mouth would not open. Where was my tongue? My lips? Focus. One. Two. Three. Focus. If I concentrated my thoughts, I could begin to feel the center of the fire blazing within me. It pulsated in colourless ripples, slow and steady. Bumm-bumpa. A beat. Bumm-bumpa. The heat continued to pulse throughout my center, forging and reforming in it’s searing waves.
The darkness began to pulsate with the fever, condensing with each contraction and expanding with each breath. It crushed against me in protest of my existence interfering with its ability to absorb the source of its disturbance. Bumm-bumpa. A flicker. A beat. A sound. Bumm-bumpa. The silkiness of the void offered a cold respite to the fever that burned. The contrast was dizzying, disorienting in this strange world. I fought to find my lungs as the silky hands of death embraced me, crushed me, reformed me. My being reacted. I could feel the spark that ensued, the explosion yet to detonate. This was going to destroy everything I was. Everything I am. Everything I could be.
The pressure intensified, agony partnered with the darkness and lightless flame to create an unspeakable torture. My atoms were going to split. Bumm-bumpa. Bumm-bumpa. Bumm-bumpa. Bumm! A spark erupted from my center, sharp white in contrast to the void around me. It scorched my heart with every quiver as death’s grip struggled to conceal it’s potential.
“Two.” The Grey Woman’s voice slammed into my mind, shattering all thoughts of the war between light and dark. “Two. Transformation.”
The words ravenously ripped through my being. Tugging. Ripping. Stretching. Stitching. Bumm-bumpa. Bumm-bumpa. There was a universal war within this space and I was at the center of the feud. Bumm-bumpa. The spark encompassed me, small but mighty in it’s light. It joined the battle for my being and mocked my anguish. It sought the center of my pain receptors with the intent to torture, destroy.
What was that? A scent. A flicker of a taste. Something familiar and yet forgotten. I searched my mind for something to grasp, only to find that a fist formed within my being. No, part of my being. This realization came with a cost – the void now knew of my forming being. My body. Bumm-bumpa-bumm. One. Two. Three. Bumm-bumpa-bumm.
Darkness and light collided against me with the weight of the universe. They screamed and squeezed, crushing me with each passing moment. I struggled against the pressure, pushing my limbs outward in protest to only be surprised by a slick warmth coating my being. I could move. I had a body. I am a being. Bumm-bumpa-bumm. One. Two. Three.
A piercing sound erupted from within the void as the spark ruptured the darkness and grew. Light. I could see light. My limbs thrashed as I struggled and gasped, fighting my way to the unknown light ahead. Each movement resulted in the darkness contracting against me, desperate to keep me in this lonesome, empty place.
The Grey Lady appeared before me, blurred by the pain of the crushing dark. Skin wrinkled along her face as her lips formed the words I had been searching for.
“Three.”
The words fueled the fever and the light ahead. It stretched and tore through the darkness. My heart beat against my chest as something warm tugged at my body, guiding me into the light.
Bumm-bumpa-bumm. Bumm-bumpa-bumm. Who was I? This is important. There is something I should know. Someone I should remember. Where am I? What happened?
A cool sensation began to wash over my body, cleansing me of whatever moments were being left behind. The movement was quick as I soared through the air and was gently positioned upon a cushion of warmth. This familiar heat broke the bond from the past as I blinked against the brightness around me. I struggled to focus and as I did, I saw her. My blurred eyes chased after her shadow as it faded and moved across the light. In a last moment of grey contrast, it turned and whispered at me, a near silent farewell of all that was, all that is and all that can be.
Bumm-bumpa-bumm.
“Three. Rebirth.”
Bumm-bumpa-bumm.
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