The Nightmare

Someone had to be the first. Alby had never complained or been grudging about this. He knew he could handle this, to be the one and only person in this weird place, and didn't even have any hint about whether there would be another one for him or not.

He was not a talkative guy, he knew it, though he had no memory about what he might be before being trapped inside those freaking walls. The whole month with nobody else around, however, made him felt incredibly devastating.

He never realized it until he felt it: this creepy, minuscule, tingling irritation rising gradually with the time went by, until reaching an unbearable level and beginning to drive him nut.

The first couple of days inside the glade Alby kept himself busy. It was not deliberate, since the first thing on his to-do list was to keep himself alive. Most of the nights he drifted off into sleep after the moment he closed his eyes, the exhaustion from the daytime made him have no strength to worried about other things. And at the tenth day after his arriving, there came the nightmare.

It was weird enough to him. How could he even possible to have a dream on account of the lacking of memories? It didn't make much sense to him, but the nightmares invaded his head all the same. And it wasn't the typical nightmare, to be honest – thought he had no idea about the typical one. It was just a silence blank, a complete, utter, defeated silence, and he was trapped in the middle of it. He couldn't put it into words, since there was no one to listen to him. How could anyone being trapped in a silence? It wasn't even a literary place. But still. The suffocating silence surrounded him in his dream, much more repressive than the high walls surrounding his body in the day.

More than once he woke up and felt himself soaking in his own sweat, his throat raw and scratched, arms hardly could move, panting like hell. He had a strange instinct, turning his head, trying to find someone beside him, yet found none.

This nightmare of silence made him refuse to sleep. He'd rather sit against the rocky wall through the nights than close his eyes and be back to the monstrous dream. Sleep became a torment, wearing his brain and his humanity. He began to talk to himself out loud, trying to make some human voice, trying to make his speaking be heard.

He would go crazy, he started to be aware about this, and the very thought made him startled. Whoever put him here couldn't want to create a lunatic or a psycho. Would he really be end up like that?

Alby had understood until that moment that keeping alive was far easier than being human.

He began to lose the track of time. Every night came as a catastrophe, and he made his effort to shut down his mind about all the things around him. Didn't think about it wouldn't do him any good, but at least he could free himself from being aware about his consciousness gradually wandering away.

The worst of all, he had thought, he would die. How could anything be worse?

When the box which sent him up here weeks ago began to rattle and jingle, the first thought floating in his head was he was really driven crazy. He must too thirst for someone's company to create the hallucination.

He stood at the edge of the box, open the metal lids when it stop trembling. He saw a boy with tender blonde hair curling up at the corner of the box, eyes filled with startle and curiosity, staring directly at him.

"Hey, whoever standing up there," the new boy called out at Alby, "You, I am talking to you. Would you mind to give a hand?"

Alby knelt down and reached out, the boy grabbed his palm and stepped on the cage, leaping himself up to the solid ground. Alby's hand dropped the grip; he took a step back, examining this new comer with an odd numbness.

"Thanks for the help, buddy." The boy said, holding out his hand, a smile merging from the corner of his lips, "I can't introduce myself properly, because I didn't even know who I was and where I came from. But I guess it doesn't matter, in any case, huh?"

Alby merely looked at him without a word.

"I am Newt. It is really weird for me to know my name. Pathetic, to be honest." The boy named Newt continued his speaking, "So what is your name, then? Where are we? I suppose you would know more than me."

Alby couldn't handle this conversation any more. He turned away, and dashed off.

"Hey! What's bloody wrong with you?"

He barely heard Newt yelled behind him. But he couldn't remain this communication. After these freaking days living on his own, talking to another person was just like a bubble too fragile to be penetrated, and his participating would definitely break this illusion of being company.

This Newt boy didn't force him to speak. They remained the awkward silence in the following days.

In the fifth morning after Newt's arriving, Alby made his decision. He stepped toward the boy sitting on the ground shaving firewood with a knife.

"Hey." His voice cracked, sounded funny. He swallowed. "Alby."

"What?" Newt frowned and stood up, putting down the work. "I can't hear you clear enough."

"I said," Alby made another try, "My name is Alby."

Alby would remember the surprise and smile on the boy's face for the rest of his life.

That night, when Alby drifted into sleep, he realized the most haunted nightmare was the isolation. Though he didn't escape from the bad dream of the complete blank.

But when he howling awake from it and almost drawn in his sorrow and fear, he would always saw a familiar face with white skin and worried eyes, a gentle hand patting him on the shoulder and a whispering voice repeating the words, "Alby? You al' right?"

By these, he knew, in some way, the releasing from the nightmare wasn't far away from him.