Why the Caged Bird Screams
He was scared of the dark, but if he told you so, he'd be lying. He was good at that, lying. He was even better at screaming. You get a knack for it once you spend long enough in the dark. The warm, dark, enclosure that presses your knees to your chest and surrounds you until you cannot breathe. You hold your breath and begin to sweat and shiver but it's too warm to consider that it might be cold and you're just insane.
But then it gets colder. Colder and colder, not in the room, but in your bones, in the marrow. You try and move but your elbows bump the walls and your knees suddenly feel locked as they are; pressed up close to your pectorals. You can't breathe. You smile. Grin. You must be insane! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
Tears stream down your face as you hyperventilate. You can't breathe! God, somebody, anybody let you out! You feel hopeless, afraid, and utterly alone. Your hair sticks to your dampened cheeks and the nape of your neck, pressing you in closer than before. You cover your eyes, flail about, anything, anything to break the impenetrable darkness. How did you get here? What are you doing here? Stupid. Stupid!
Try and be rational, he reasoned with himself. Rational. Rational. You're not trapped forever. You won't suffocate. You won't die. You're okay. You're okay, you're okay, you're okay. He pressed his pale hands over his ears to block out the sounds coming from the walls. How did you get in here?
How did you get in here...
"What are you doing in here?!"
"Go! Go! Out of my sight!"
"Fine, you won't leave?"
"Leave her alone!"
"I'm not crazy!"
"You fucked-up little miscreant. Go!"
"Don't lock me in here! Don'-"
Slam. Click.
Scream.
He began to pant again, screaming. His clothes felt restricting. He felt hands crawling on his body. There just wasn't enough air! He was suffocating!
"HELP!" He screamed. "HELP ME! LET ME OUT! HELP! HELP! HELP!"
For what seemed like ages he screamed again and again, "HELP! HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP ME, PLEASE, HELP ME!"
His voice seemed to go unheard. His throat was tightening, aching and dry. His knees began to lock, arms folded over his chest. He whimpered as the world seemed to collapse around him. Why him? What did he do? Why?
He tucked a strand of his damp hair behind his ear with a trembling hand, his heartbeat resonating in his pounding head. His throat was raw, his mouth was dry, he couldn't breathe and was crying, but he couldn't help it; he began to scream again. His limbs flailed about without his permission. His bony elbows knocked into the walls and echoed off inside of his head. The dark closed in the more he moved and he jerked about desperately, wanting, needing to get out of that enclosed space. His shoulder knocked into something that gave way.
He stopped, wriggling until he was on his knees in the enclosed space. He felt around desperately for what had given way. There had to be a reason he was in here. Maybe he was a bad person. Why was he thinking he was a bad person? There was no way this was a punishment for being bad for something he didn't do. Did he do something wrong? He was seventeen years old, not to be admonished by a child. Maybe this wasn't an act of an authority figure? Maybe God hated him and locked him away in this Hellish purgatory to punish him for being such a bad boy? Maybe he was an awful person. He dreamed of killing somebody, but who? Somebody who looked like him. Who looked like him in the world? His father, maybe. But not his father. No. The only person he could think to want to kill was himself.
God must be angry that he would want to kill himself. And now the monsters were keeping him in there to teach him a lesson because he was such a bad person but he didn't know why and if he wanted to kill himself that was a perfectly good option because nobody else seemed to like him anyways. Why should he be punished for wanting to die because Shisui had wanted to die, too, and he did it and he wasn't punished but maybe he was and he was in the dark here with him!
"SHISUI! SHISUI!" he began to scream, his delicate, trembling fingers wrapping around his slender, pale throat. His dark hair fell around his shoulders and he screamed that name as if it would provide absolution and solace in the unknowable darkness. The pitch-black cast enough light to let his imagination wander, to see the shadows looming overhead that scowled at him and mocked his tears. He looked up at them, pleading, begging for mercy, please, let him out! Please, let him see Shisui again!
They laughed, their voices booming like tolling bells as he recalled some wreched day that must have belonged to somebody else. A coffin, the rain, all pitch black bodies meshed together as he began to scream, without knowing, "COME BACK! COME! BACK! COME BACK!" It must have belonged to somebody else, because he couldn't stand such pain.
A voice among the laughter, an angel among the demons, a light among the shadows as something louder than the bells yelled, "LEFT!"
He smashed with all of his might to the left, the wall giving way lightly. He pulled back as much as the small, confined space would allow and smashed again into the left, and again and again and again because he must have been there and he would see him again so he smashed and smashed and smashed again and again and again until-
-"I want to see you again."
The wall gave way to a burst of light and Itachi hit the floor, sprawled out on the tile of his kitchen floor. He heard a light scoff and opened his eyes, blinking away the haze of tears and the aching light, the cold hitting him suddenly, alleviating the fever and melting to a gentle warmth. He looked up in time to see his father's feet walking away, and looked no higher. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the confined, empty space of his kitchen closet where he often experienced such nightmares, no two the same, but all terrifyingly real. He didn't have the physical, nor psychological strength to get up and instead lowered his head to the floor again and began to cry, not knowing how he survived the pain of revisiting the closet, revisiting such pain, such claustrophobic memories, but knowing how, exactly, the caged bird screams.
-o-