Prologue
Everybody has witnessed darkness, the kind that makes our street like an archaic photograph, everything a shade of grey. This isn’t like that. This is the darkness that seizes your best sense and replaces it with a paralyzing fear.
“Mom, Dad, please don’t call off my school admission, please....” Panic set in, and I begged to get a grip to have any chance with my dream-school.
“Tiara, we are cancelling it for a better one. Chisel Halls of Ivy is the best for you. Not to mention, we can see you any time. Sweetie, we can’t always fly to come see you if you go to your dream-school.” The whole expression of my dad’s face told me that his decision will remain in force, no matter how much I may try.
“Mom, at least you try to understand, Chisel Halls of Ivy is wrong for me.” She was my only hope for solace.
“Right or wrong, the decision has been made Tia. You’re going.” Genevie hissed through her clenched teeth.
“Tiara, get ready, they will arrive now!”
“What do you mean by now! What about my things? I haven’t packed anything!”
“Your stuff can be sent later. Now, go get ready!” Genevie shouted louder than a stroke of thunder.
I felt powerless and confused a ball of endlessly tangled yarn. I changed into a striped top, tartan skirt and knee-high boots. What can I say? Life is short, make every outfit count. But little did I know, this was the last time I would wear my favourite clothes.
I heard the tires of the bus screeching to a halt. They had arrived
In this darkness I live, muscles cramped and unable to move and sense that anything is important at all – life, pain, death. The darkness grew darker; the pain grew sharper; all of it seemed to only grow in strength and I began to wonder if things could ever get better. But I never uttered a word. They say ‘Silence is Golden, Speech is Silver’ but how can anyone possibly be silent to this injustice – slavery, cruelty, torture.
Liberty, free will, independence became a big fat lie. Power became the means and dictatorship established to safeguard the revolution. The chains of dictatorship and fetters of oppression kept down the forces of freedom. Death became the solution to all problems, no man – no problem. The future is a journey into a land devoid of hope. It is one thing to look back and realize you were in darkness, it is quite another to look ahead and realize your days of happiness are numbered. Our society fell apart, for so long have we cherished greed, “might is right” and rewarded those best at manipulation.
Hell - that was the fierce word, the word to threaten children if they were too disobedient, and the word to send shivers down a spine. The fiery Devil whose barbed tails coil and their whips so pointy sharp, their horns like majestic rocks thrusting from their heads, wings spreading long and wide to swallow the man that dare stand before them. But Devil is not the evil, evil is the dictator. We all now lived in hell suppressed under the control of the diabolical Dictator and the Era of Darkness had begun.
