“Breakfast.”

The sliver of light was mirage, a hallucination in an obsidian existence. A distant clang of metal remedied the world to raven feathers and coal dust

The familiar darkness stretched for hours, filling my lungs, my heart.

The manacles were wrapped forever-too-tight and my arms ached from where they were pinned above my head.

The cell was dark

heartstoppingdark

fleshrendingdark

and my eyes knew nothing but black.

Color was a memory, an echo of shadows that swallowed me whole.

I didn’t know how long I had been in this place of nightmares. I used to rage, used to scream and cry and 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. I used to remember something, anything, other than this inky void.

Now there was only this cell and this pain in my arms and this emptiness. A hundred nights, a thousand nights of starless never-ending-midnight.

Lazy footsteps cut through the panic, and moonlight

toobrightmoonlight

realnotrealmoonlight

filtered in from a small slit in the wall.

The guard grinned at my frail, scarred figure, sliding another tray through the gap.

“Dinner.”