DISCLAIMER (apparently) - I don't own the Kingdom Hearts franchise, trust me if I did I'd be bragging. ;)
Also! The cover picture I used is owned by an artist with screen name Narxinba222 over at Deviant Art. Not mine! Just borrowed.
"I've been having these violent nightmares.
And always, at the end, this black thing swallows me up.
I can't breathe, I can't—"
She used her hands to tightly grip her face and pushed on her eyeballs till they hurt, then returned to the page with her pen.
"—think."
She finished.
She closed up the journal and tucked it under her bed ready; it seemed, for a sleep filled with nightmares of dark and evil figures. She whispered a question aloud.
"Would they leave me alone for just one night?"
Then laid back and closed her eyes.
It would be appropriate for the ocean to be warm on a clear summer day. And for her to be floating on her back in it, well, that would be common sense.
But it was different today.
She was alone to stare up at the blue and to feel the blue on her back and to hear the blue crashing against the shore. It was weird, for it to just be her and the ocean.
"Where are my friends?" She soliloquized.
But there wasn't an answer.
The world stilled further as she let out all the air in her lungs and sank beneath the lonely sea. She convulsed as she drowned.
But this was a dream and she wouldn't die, she knew. She would dance a tango, the same tango she had danced all the nights before, with the voice that didn't come from anywhere, except maybe the black of the ocean.
The blackest, most ocean-like voice she'd ever heard would be her partner in this sick game repeated every night. Every night.
"Why doesn't that big glass floor break? I always land so hard."
Her dream journal had been plagued with questions like that. Unanswered, for the most part, but warranted surly. Was she going insane?
"Do not be afraid"
She stirs from the floor, that same glass floor.
"Please, do not be afraid"
She stands, mesmerized. Wondering what would it be?
Tonight.
The dark birds are roused from their nest on the ocean floor, and fly off into the depths.
"The door is still shut. But."
She hears a snickering, then a small sonic boom.
It is the dark birds, returning from the depths. They are smashing against the bright floor becoming shadows. All around her they are returning. She hears more small sonic booms. More and more refrain from flying away, to come back. To attack defenseless her. They close in. And snicker, and widen their beady eyes.
"Deep down there is a light"
She begins to smile as the key shaped blade she has been waiting for materializes. Those dark figures, once nightmares, are ripped to shreds and reduced to nuisances.
"I am always saved by that key. It is always such an amazing feeling."
She tears a leg from a shadow's body, and then an arm. One jumps, and is split in half by a vertical slice. Another has its beady eyes gauged. And still another rushes, and its neck is broken by a horizontal blow to the stomach. More persist, but fail. Again, and again.
"I always know in that moment, the voice is true."
"But."
A tenth shadow is decapitated.
"The closer one gets to the light, the greater their shadow becomes"
A fifth shadow gets its right leg cut off.
They howl for assistance. They always call for help. And it comes to heed.
"The closer one gets to the light…"
The great shadow rises from the bright floor with majesty, no, grace. A figure of fifty feet tall it is, massive heart missing, or never there to begin with. Unstoppable.
"Do not be afraid"
It slams down its grand fists, cracking the floor under the left, smashing it under the right.
"You hold the mightiest weapon of them all"
Its yellow eyes demoralize. There is no hope. She blacks out and is sucked into the dark again.
"I always wake up screaming, and sweating. God, what is wrong with me?"