“_This is the story of how I died” _that's how tangled starts, one of my favorite movies, at least it used to be. I remind myself; rocking **back and forth, back and forth**, squeezing my eyes shut to stop everything, to try and **forget**. 

“This it the story of how I died- That’s wrong, this is the story of how everyone else in this life, in my life, died.” I rephrased. 

**Back and forth, back and forth. **

“This is a story about a girl named _Aster_, she was scared of the light instead of the dark.” _In Fact she preferred the darkness_. I told myself in my mind, continuing what I was saying. 

Everyone’s scared of the dark, but why not the light? The light, that’s when you can actually see, but when in darkness it hides what’s in front of you; your fears, the truth, everything. It protects you. So why be afraid of the dark when the light is so much worse? So much scarier? 

Asters the one who had it right. 

“She made friends with the monsters, and feared the stars.” **Back and forth**, rocking myself… **Back and forth. **

Fearing the stars. Funny, fearing the stars and loving the darkness, how does that work when the stars peak out in the dark? But maybe it’s because the stars- and the moon- just steal the attention away from the dark. Shining a light that most people say they _need. _But Aster didn’t. 

Palms digging into my eyes, burying away from everything else. 

**Back and forth, back and forth. **

“She hated all the screams, but hated the silence even more.” **_The silence kills. _**

Keeping my eyes closed and being submerged in complete darkness. Relief.

**_ Forget, forget, forget. _**

My mind filled with a million thoughts, thoughts that drowned inside my mind, **_the silence kills. _**

“Aster despised flowers, because they die too; A single petal falls and the rest dies.” I said. Rocking myself I just had to **forget**, **back and forth. **

  I pleaded in my mind but nothing was calm. A chaos. A storm. 

_ Something beautiful shouldn't be able to die, but yet it does. _

Aster’s the only one who ever saw the truth. 

“She followed the shadows” I bit down on my tongue “But all the shadows left, _just like everything else_.” I swallowed down hard as I finished the last part, finished the story and all that was left. 

It ran in my mind over and over again, echoing in my mind.

** Back and forth, back and forth. **

** Forget, forget, forget. **

_ “Please.” _I screamed out, but no one would hear me, and even if they did, what would it matter? They would do nothing. _“Please” _The plea dripped from my tongue. Tears filling my dry eyes.

**_ Forget_**_._

“This is the story about a girl who was scared of the light, instead of the dark. She made friends with the monsters, and Feared the stars. She hated screams, but she hated the silence more. Despised flowers because they too die. She followed the shadows. But all the shadows left, just like everything else.” I repeat.

_ I couldn't forget, no matter how hard I tried.  _

That is the story of Aster. But what is the story of me? What is the story of Lila Abney? 

Rocking a little harder than intended my head hit against the wall, with a bang I stopped rocking as I waited in silence. 

A reply answered the bang “Is everything alright in there?” A gruff voice, the same one that kept guard of this room, that kept guard of me. 

“Everything’s **_perfect_**” I answered back. But it didn’t matter, they had security cameras that watched me 24/7. And ‘is everything alright in there?’ is code for; _are you trying to break out. _That’s all that mattered, I didn’t matter to them. 

**_Absolutely perfect. _**

Maybe perfect for them, perfect that I’m stuck in here, but my perfect: I would be out of this awful, stupid place. 

**_Where did everything go? I’m all alone, I am lost. 

_**_ I can’t remember._

_ But I also can’t _**_forget_**_._

Lost in my own thoughts, drowning in myself. _Someone please come save me! _The truth of both Lila Abney, and of Aster, was that no one could save us, no one saved Aster, and no one would save me. That was the truth. **The plain, perfect truth.** 

There was silence, and I couldn’t stand it, I had to keep talking, even if it were only to myself. **Silence kills.**

“There’s a land far away- far, far away.” My heart seized with each breath. 

**_Back and forth, back and forth. _**

Definitely sounds like a fairy tale, one that little girls dream of, the ones that end in ‘happily ever after’, the ones that teach the same girls that they need a prince charming to save them, that true loves kiss is real, but guess what, I’m not a little girl anymore and I know the truth. And do you want to know a secret? Want the truth? None of it’s real, it’s all **a lie**. Those fairy tales are **all lies**, especially their teachings; the girl gets the guy, he kisses her and true love saves all and just like that they live _happily ever after. _**But it’s all fake, it’s all a lie. **

I used to love fairy tales, like Rapunzel, but someday that girl has to wake up and see reality, see that **it’s all fake**. That’s what I saw, and that’s exactly what happened to Aster she just had to wake up from the dream. 

“But this land, that’s supposedly _far away, _it wasn't a dream, wasn’t a fairytale, it’s the nightmare. But this land was never a nightmare to Aster, because all the monsters lived there, and all the monsters ever wanted to do was protect her.” I said, tracing back my mind to the monsters and the land. 

_Weren’t the monster’s supposed to scare people?_ Maybe. But maybe that’s because all the stories were wrong, just like fairy tales. But even if the monsters scared others, they never scared Aster. 

“And it’s not silly little monster’s like cookie monster from Sesame Street. But real monsters, bone wrenching, horrifying things that normally haunt the dreams. Shadows that lurk in the night. **Death. Fear. lonely things that feed on fear and pry on the heart. They’re fear themselves**” I said. The state of rocking, the continuous motion almost comforting of the **back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. **

My words echoed in the room, reverberating off the surroundings of the plain, almost empty room. 

“The monsters originally protected her.” I swallowed down my words tasting bitter in my mouth as I continued “but then they stole her, and kept every good part of her, until there was nothing. Aster’s trapped in this land, trapped with all the monsters that were supposed to be her friends, but they, like everyone else, **took her fears, and used her.” **

Bitting down hard on my lip, picking at the skin, blood fills my mouth with its defined coppery taste, the metallic blood set on my tongue with its usual unpleasant taste. 

**_Just forget. Forget. _**

That’s all I wanted. That’s all I thought as I rocked myself **back and forth.** 

My eyes blinked open, almost expecting to meet the gaze of a monster, but nothing, absolutely nothing. 

The room was the same, there, left the same to fill my life with horrors. 

**_Torture_**_. _

_ _It’s white, completely white. No color in sight, not even a shade, it’s just all white, the same plain white that I was forever stuck in. There isn’t even a shadow. It’s just all white.

**White room torture. **

**Loss of complete sanity. **

They weren’t kidding when they said I could lose my sanity.  

Here I am, sitting here alone, on the floor in solitude, but not really I was never really alone. I rocked myself **back and forth**, pleading myself to **forget**, but that was no good. I told myself **stories to try and fill the screams inside my head, because the room was too silent.**

I can never sleep, can hardly eat, they have to force me, funny _they _**torture** me and yet they still want to keep me alive. 

**Complete torture. **

I wanted to screw my eyes shut again, but at this point I couldn’t, my gaze directed down to my shirt, my plain white shirt and pants. Prisoners clothes, but in all white. 

**White torture; **a white room, you wear white, even the foods white; you only eat white rice, nothing more, nothing less. **White torture. **

My gaze fixated on my shirt, staring down at it, a spray of red, a deep crimson red splattered across the clean white shirt- at least what used to be a clean white shirt- **Blood**. 

I focused on the small spot of blood. It was red, not white, for once within this tortures month i’m seeing a color, a color that wasn’t just **_white. 

Red_**_._

I studied it, like I’ve never seen blood before. And then my mind settled on the coppery taste of blood that settled on my tongue. Creeping from the crevices of my lips the blood kept dripping. **Red. **

The blood spilled from my lips as it dripped, it wouldn’t stop, it just kept coming. **I want to bleed**, I want the blood to spill all over my shirt like a dye or ink seeping in to a single sheet of paper in the matter of seconds. This is one thing they can’t take away from me. **I want to bleed**, I want to see the blood, I want to see the color, a color that’s not white, but **_red_**_. _

_ _I want the blood to get everywhere, and I don’t care how dirty this room will get, if anything will stain this _perfect _room, **I want to see red, I want to see blood. **

_And is that so wrong for me to want? _

_ _No. Not when I’ve been tortured for so long.

I want darkness, and red, monsters, and shadows.

I’m scared of the light.

***

Aster: meaning Star/a flower

Lila: meaning night/beauty