The light

He woke in the dark, his feet were cold, he felt lifeless like someone had taken all the life out of him. His heavy breaths sliced through the silence like a knife. His head throbbed, the voices made him think, am I alive or am I dead. Are these voices in my head or are they people? were these voices alive. His head was spinning and a deep sleep once again fell over him.

He awoke once again but this time he saw a light, a window a small window a few meters in front of him. Bright light leaked from the window, but the darkness seemed to scare the light, the light seemed hesitant, scared, scared to take the darkness’s place.

He tried to see out of the window but the light was all there was. There was nothing through the window but the light.

A high-pitched sound pierced through the silence, he didn’t know what it was, where it came from was unknown. Was it from his head? From the voices? Soon the sound just became normal almost like it wasn’t there, but it was.

“I’ve been searching,” the voices said, “been making a whole lot of changes,” But he just ignored them. The voices seemed so close yet so far away.

The voices continued blurting out messages, to him the messages seemed useless, gibberish except for the voices that said, “The escape, the escape is one step away” the message was important. In his eyes this message could help him escape from the darkness into the invisible light that shined so brightly, if only he knew that the light was only a hallucination from the real world, that it was all darkness and there was no escape.

He imagined his escape into the light, in the light it was perfect. The darkness didn’t have a place in the light. In the light it seemed that the dark would never have a place, that somehow darkness would never exist and the light would forever swallow the darkness up until it was no longer there.

Hot air balloons floated in the light, they floated towards him. Soon they were close but they were so far away, suddenly, vividly the hallucinations disappeared and he was brought back to the dark place where light wouldn’t dare show itself, where the voices seemed so real He continued to try and discover more about the light; how did this light exist? Did it exist? Was it just his imagination? He continued to question the voices and their messages.

Did they have a meaning? Was there a meaning of this place in the darkness? Why was he there? How could he escape? Was there an escape or was he stuck in the darkness?

He heard yelling, a wave of relief washed over him, he wasn’t alone. He tried to yell out but he couldn’t, it didn’t matter how hard he tried nothing came out. He kept hearing the yelling and he persisted in trying to talk, trying to yell but he couldn’t even whisper. Soon enough he realized that the yelling was no yelling at all but it was just his mind playing tricks on him, yet again.

He thought and thought, if he could think about the voices, about the darkness then maybe they would tell him how to escape, maybe they would tell him about the darkness and about the light. Maybe then could he have a chance to escape the darkness which felt was swallowing him up and eating his soul.

Every second that past, every minute it felt as he was disappearing, into the darkness. He was scared that he would become part of the darkness, that he would just be pulled into the darkness and become stuck and not be able to get out.

He tried to remember before the darkness, before the voices started talking to him but he couldn’t. All he could remember, all he could see was the darkness and the mysterious light.

After a while he felt useless, an escape looked impossible, how could he escape? The voices suddenly screamed out “There is no escape!” and with that he realized the light was no light at all but just darkness hiding waiting for him to give up, he looked into the window. The hot air balloons were still visible in the distance.