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Shards

A short story

By Amatsi WritesPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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I looked up into the light and smiled. I smiled even as the tears burned their way down my face. I smiled as the light slowly faded away and disappeared. I smiled as darkness enveloped me, and I welcomed the death I so deserved with open arms, but it never came to greet me.

The darkness seeped into everything, I could no longer tell where I ended and it began, the darkness became me, and I it. It told me of the world outside. It told me of the way they had forgotten by the end, that my sacrifices did nothing to save them. In between the words I begged it to end me, to kill me. The darkness did not oblige. I begged it relentlessly in a never ending cycle, until I could beg no more.

-

I felt it then, a faint tug inside of me. as if someone was pulling a string attached to the center of my chest. slowly scratching at my soul. I couldn’t tell you how long I had been here, but in all that time, I had not felt this before. I didn’t know what it was or what caused it, and something told me it would only break me further if I knew. The darkness sensed it as well, and with a shaky breath, it withdrew its claws from down my throat and settled around me like a curtain; it seemed to wait, watching. Without its ever present weight, i felt inexplicably hollow. The darkness had scraped every last bit of who I was from me, all it left was cold hard flickers of memory. Memories of a life, and a lie. It was then that I started to remember, started to see the broken bits of my soul lying in shambles around me. It was then that I started to pick up each tiny shard of me, of who I was. As I sat there, I allowed myself the first bit of hope, the only bit of hope I had felt in those long cold years. Hope for what? I didn’t know, but it was hope nonetheless.-

I was wrong. As soon as I picked up the last piece, as soon as my hope reached its highest point, the darkness slammed into me with such a newfound vigor that my mind shattered again, and again. And yet, still, every time I'd feel that pull I'd start again, never ceasing until the darkness came back to me. The pieces grew smaller and smaller. Eventually, my luck ran out. It wasn’t a tug that greeted me in the end, it was a roaring, screaming, rip; a knife slicing through me with such ferocity I thought I might implode from the sheer pain of it. It left me so broken I didn’t even try to get back up. I no longer wanted to, I just lay there, broken in that never ending pool of inky black darkness, whatever hope I had harbored had left me now. I wished more than ever, begged more than ever, to be released, to finally end my eternity of suffering. As if in answer, the darkness left me then, and did not come back.

-

Light. There was a light. It stood directly in front of my eyes, barely more than a shift in the tone of darkness. but it was there, a pale echo of what once was, I could tell. I could tell, that like me it was once strong. Once a bright shining beacon in the darkness, once we had hope. Now we were both here, broken and given up, pale echos. It saw me too. I could tell, It was no longer than my hand, no wider than a sheet of paper. A mere crack, a scratch in the darkness. It began to grow, slowly, so very slowly. It could have been days, months, years even, but slowly I watched it grow 'til the light was a rip in the world I had come to know. The light began to overcome the darkness. It was not like me. It had hope, a purpose, a will to fight. Bit by bit the light grew and grew until it replaced the darkness. Where the darkness took away it filled me up. In those moments I felt something I had not felt, not in the time I was here, it was not hope, it was something much stronger, where as my hope was feeble this was strong. Stronger than anything I had ever known, not even the darkness could shatter it. I didn’t know the name, a name wouldn’t do it justice. Whatever it was it overcame everything, anything I could ever remember, it transcended language, and reason. I let it fill me up; and then I yet again began to pick up the pieces of who I was. And as I worked the light began to speak to me in a voice that sounded like home.

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About the Creator

Amatsi Writes

I write because I can't speak when no one listens.

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