Darkness.
It surrounds. It consumes. It is a void in which nothing can survive. And yet we all need the darkness to retreat into, away from ourselves. It heals even when it hurts. Only in the dark can you truly be free to be yourself. No one to judge. No one to condemn.
He closed his eyes rather then stare out into the darkness. Open or closed there was nothing to see. Closed or open he could still smell the sharp tang of blood. It pervaded the senses, never letting him forget, no matter how still he stayed and tried to not jostle his injuries.
Maybe this was his punishment for having to accompany the family to the zoo. So what if he had done everything his keepers had told him. He still wasn't good enough. Strange things had still happened. And anything that wasn't normal was automatically his fault. This was the way of things.
Freak. Useless. Boy. That's all he was.
In primary school they had taught that everyone deserved to be happy. But what about when you always did things wrong. Did that deserve happiness?
No, of course not. Being bad got you in trouble. Strange things happing was him being bad, so of course more trouble.
This was the way of things.
It was almost soothing to listen to the sounds of the quiet house. Everything was so quiet at night. Like there was no one there but him. He would just close his eyes and lay back, pretending to be floating away on a river of darkness. It was safe in the dark. No one ever hurt him in the dark. Only in the daylight or under lamplight was he in danger.
Shivering, he lay back onto his cot, trying to stretch out the best he could. Softly he hissed in pain as he strained a cracked rib. He could barely breath without it hurting. The pain distracted him enough to keep his mind from drifting to the lazily flowing river in the dark, from letting him dream about a place where he could never be hurt again.
Letting out a soft sigh he got as comfortable as he could and started cataloguing the day into separate mental folders. It helped keep a check on his emotions by doing this. He could let go and focus on what needed to be done instead of feeling. It was only when he was alone in the dark that he let himself feel. Only then was it safe to have opinions or thoughts.
Even now he wondered why he had imagined that he could actually speak to the snake. People couldn't talk to animals. That was stupid. Although... this wasn't the first time he had pretended he could talk to snakes. Last summer, while working in the garden, he had held a small conversation with the garden snake, just talking about the weather and the local prey.
It was so nice to pretend to have a friend... just for a little while.
But he didn't deserve to have friends. No one liked such a useless person. A waste of space. At least he could contribute in the little ways.
Finally, after he managed to reign in his thoughts, he managed to fall into a restless sleep.
Tomorrow, things would begin to change.