You spend your days in darkness.
Your only companion is your tortured soul.
You've been locked up for weeks. Months. Maybe even years.
They've beaten you. Raped you.
They try to see how far they can push you before you break.
You try to remember better days but every happy memory has faded into nothing but darkness.
Iron bars.
Shackles.
And bitter thoughts.
Your friends are dead.
Family. Dead.
And your soul?
Torn out and left to bleed.
You try to make the memory go away but all you can see is hands ripping into flesh, pulling your soul apart.
You hear the deafening cries for help.
You see the tears running down your soul's face.
You taste your soul's blood in your mouth.
It's all like it only happened yesterday.
They don't know you've already gone over the edge.
They don't realise they've took the only thing that's ever mattered to you.
You are no longer you.
You are now merely a shell of who you once were.
You wait for death.
He doesn't come.
Not in the hunger.
Not in the loneliness.
Not in the depression.
And not in the cold.
You're so cold.
You've tried to keep yourself warm but what's the point of that.
Who's going to miss you when you're gone?
No one.
They've all been taken away.
You spend your days in darkness.
Waiting.
Waiting for warmth to spread through your limbs like fire raging through a dry field of grass.
Waiting for happiness to return with your soul's ever fleeting, but oh so beautiful smile.
Waiting for anything to bring you back from the edge, to bring you back to who you once were, and not the shell you've turned into.
It doesn't happen.
It will never happen.
Light blinds you and you try to shield yourself from it.
You realise you've been crying.
Maybe you've never stopped.
You wait for the light to fade, but it doesn't.
The flames don't die, but seem to come towards you.
You shrink back, away from the flames, and yet can't stop yourself from reaching out to grab hold onto the hand covered in it.
The tears stop, your breath ceases to come, and your eyes widen in disbelief.
Your soul.
It can't be.
The flames illuminate the lips curved into a smile and your heart soars.
You don't remember pushing yourself off the ground.
Or pushing part the hands of flame and crushing yourself against the closest thing to home you've ever known.
But you're happy.
The cold is gone.
The hate is gone.
It's all gone.
All that's left is bliss.
Pure white bliss.
And you laugh.
For the first time in weeks. Months.
Maybe even years.
You've lived your life in darkness.
And now...
You'll live it in the light.