My name... I think I forgot the last thing that made me... me. It's been so long, now. I remember being terrified I would meet my death here. I also remember agonizing longing for that very death to come. Now, I just know I'm tired.

It's so dark. But it has to be, doesn't it? The dark is where they live... Where they feed...

I feel them. Even now, I feel them crawling on my flesh, burrowing into festering and open wounds, clicking and scuttling and hissing and buzzing, the crawling and tickling and scratching and biting... Are they part of me?

... No. The pain is too real.

The pain is always too real.

The sound of metal scraping stone. The sound of a scream I can no longer produce. He hates screams. There used to be a rule... a rule about screaming.

...

... It's no use. It's gone with everything else when it starts again.

I'm crying now. It doesn't matter how much of a fight I put up anymore, the pain comes anyway. I'm too weak to keep my ribs where they are. Too weak to fight the wax stitches. Too weak to staunch the blood. Too weak to stay awake.

I hear them squeaking at me. Asking permission for their feast. I'm awake again, but I don't remember why. What do I remember?

Darkness. I remember darkness. Something lives in that darkness... something evil. It frightens me to my core and I'm shaking again. Whatever I'm trying to remember, I don't want to remember. Everything is gone.

... Who am I?

Metal scrapes the stone again, and I freeze. Even the scuttling stops for a second, and we all hold our breath for what comes next.I think my friends take pity on me when it happens.

I try to remember the names I gave them as the burning envelops me once more, but it's just no use. Everything is gone.

... Why am I here?

Then I feel the pinch and darkness spins and I know I'm in over my head again. The darkness is where they live.

I don't want to go back there, but I'm too weak to fight it. With slimy, aggressive hands, I'm pulled back into that swirling vortex of agony and terror. At some point, I feel the usual warm liquid beneath me. And for a split second, the searing pain sparks a fleeting memory; a name. Someone calling out my name. A desperate voice screaming my name over and over again like a chant, or a prayer.

... My name...

...

... But it's gone. Everything is gone.

... I'm gone.

Was I ever really

here?

.

.

.

Metal slides across stone once more, but instead of blinding nothingness, suddenly there is everything. A light so hot it burns my eyes from behind my eyelids and I don't know what to do with it. I want to cry again, but no tears will come. I want to scream my frustration but the words are lost in chords that no longer function correctly. I want to move, but my friends are ever vigilant, slicing across my flesh in an attempt to protect what is theirs from this outside force.

I hear garbled sounds, and then rough flesh is scraping against my own, and I can feel each and every void created as my friends leave me. I weep on the inside, knowing this is the start of a new game. I can't remember the old game. But I think I remember there was one. Or many.

I must be very still. I must be very quiet. Or I won't know how to play.

Hands are on me again, this time at my shoulders. Out of instinctual reaction, I bite my scabbed lips, and feel the gush of warmth down my gums and chin. Pain... so much pain...

The sound of metal slams into the floor next to me and I jump. I'm breathing too quickly. Something bad is happening.

There's more babbling noises, but somewhere in the unfamiliar voice, there is a word that catches my attention. A familiar, yet foreign word that makes my eyelids twitch. The searing light won't allow my eyes to more than crack open, but the swirling colors and shapes that take form despite the ever constant beam of chilling radiance seem somehow familiar as well.

Do I... remember something?

... A face. That's what a face looks like. This is a person. ... Does that mean I... know this person?

That word is said again, and I feel my stomach violently churn like it wants to loose its contents all over us both. What's wrong with me?!

Now the hands are violating me, touching inflamed, irritated and infected gaps of skin, poking and prodding at unbearably sensitive and tender areas, before I learn how to fly.

The sensation is as new and frightening as the extra pain. My knees tremble and as soon as I am as high as I can go, I begin to fall again, but something is holding me. My shoulder is at a white-hot angle, and my hips grind together, sanding down the bone grain by grain.

But I'm moving.

A new game?

That blinding light now bathes me, and though my eyes won't stop squinting, things become a little clearer as time goes on. There is stone as far as any eye could see. Darkness and windows and halls and doors and-

There's that word again.

Why can't I remember what it means?!

The face is really close to mine, and eyes are what I find my sight drawn to the most. Intense, staring, human eyes.

This is real.

I think.

I have the strangest urge to reach out and touch the face, but my arm only meets me halfway in the gesture. My fingers slip through air without connecting to anything. Am I just imagining things again, or am I just too weak to move? I try the motion a second time, hoping the first was just a fluke, when millions of explosions rock their way out of my head and into my body.

I start flying.

Then I hear it. Even in the light, I can hear the darkness encroaching. I can hear him. Every hair on my body stands on edge and I just KNOW I've done something terrible. Something that will never be forgiven.

I'm shaking as I realize I'm no longer flying. I feel familiar cold through my lower half, numbing a tiny portion of the burning in my hips and legs. What vision I have now spins, the light growing brighter and dimmer with each pass, tinting the world pretty shades of colors I never knew the names to.

It took no moment of clarity; just a sharp whisper of that same, familiar word rasped against the inner confines of my ear, and suddenly I was washed in the past.

I feel the terror grip at my heart and squeeze, choking the life from me. What I've witnessed... what I've experienced... what's yet to come...

I forgot. I didn't want to remember.

The taste of blood is sickening.

Oh god, I can't do this anymore...

"Just let me die!"

I want to die too...

"Stop it!"

"... Just another casualty of war..."

Why won't you let me die?

"They've all abandoned you..."

I'm alone...

"Get upstairs! NOW!"

Evil is here...

"YOU did this to him!"

"Come back to me..."

"... just a nightmare..."

"You and your family will suffer as I have suffered."

... Haven't I suffered enough?

"... back to me..."

What am I suffering for...?

"... come back..."

"... casualty of war..."

" ... just another casualty... "

What did I do to deserve this...?

"... -uu..."

Why is this happening to me...?!

" ...-yuu..."

"Suffer. As I have suffered."

"Uryuu!"