terror

The voices hounded him.

He wanted to sleep, but he couldn't, because the voices wouldn't shut up, and he wanted them to stop but they wouldn't.

The voices wouldn't shut up, and his eyes were stinging, and the voices were loud, they were so, so loud, and he wanted to deafen himself, wanted to put his hands over his ears but he couldn't because his wrists were cuffed together, and he needed to cover his ears, he needed to not hear them anymore he needed the cuffs off.

He screamed, screamed to try to drown them out, screamed as loud as he could, screamed until his throat was raw but he could still hear them, and he yanked at the cuffs until metal pressed against bone and they were slick, slick with ink, and he desperately hooked the chain connecting the cuffs around his feet and yanked.

There was a crack as the joint of one of his thumbs broke, and he hurriedly wrenched it out of the metal circlet, hands to his ears and ears filling with ink, but no matter how hard he pressed his palms against his head he could still hear them.

He was sobbing, and the voices were in the walls, the floor, all around him, and he lurched to his feet, tried desperately to escape his cell, yanking at the bars and begging to be let out because the voices were talking and they wouldn't stop please he needed to get away please please they were eating him, ripping him apart, please, he couldn't take it any more, please, please make it stop.

But he was weak. He was so, so weak, and his arms gave out, and his legs, and the floor was waiting with its cold embrace and the voices surrounded him, monsters crawling out of the stone and laughing as they dug their sharp fingers deep into his chest, into his heart and pulled.

He gasped, staring with wide eyes as they plucked his heart from him, held it beating in their hands and laughed as they clenched their scaly fingers around it, and he screamed and screamed but they wouldn't stop.

Ink dripped over their claws, his heart beating desperately outside of his chest, and they laughed, they wouldn't stop laughing, wouldn't shut up, and he couldn't argue when they told him that he didn't know who he was; he didn't know anything.

They told him that the sky was red, there were no such thing as stars, that walls didn't have eyes, that dreams were death, that he was insane, but he knew they were wrong about all of it, because they were the ones who were insane, not him, and the sky was gray and that stars were cold to the touch and the walls had eyes that never blinked and dreams were doorways to other rooms and death tasted like angel cake and was sweet but without substance like a cloud except it hurt like hell.

He begged them to let him sleep, but they told him that he wasn't allowed to sleep because sleep was only for people who had done good things, and he'd done very, very bad things, so he wasn't allowed to sleep, and when he tried to curl away and close his eyes, cover his ears, they poked him and prodded him all over with sharp fingers, hooked his skin with needles and thread and pulled.

He tried to squirm away, but they started sewing him up, telling him that he was falling apart and needed to be fixed, but he needn't worry, they were there to help him, and they started sewing his lips shut and his eyelids open, started sewing broken wings to his back, and he tried to scream but his throat wouldn't work.

His throat was dry, cracked, and when he tried to crawl to the faucet for water they destroyed it, poured ink down his throat instead, and he choked on it, and when he sobbed it was ink, not tears, that stung his eyes and trailed down his cheeks.

One of the creatures ate his heart, and when he didn't die they laughed and called him a monster, and he couldn't deny it because he'd felt nothing.

But he knew that even if he was a monster, he was still better than all the other monsters, and when he pulled himself up they watched in surprise and in trepidation, and when, feeling a terrible and powerful darkness radiating from within him, he told them he was their God, they slowly lowered to their knees and bowed their heads, shivering.

He told them to die for him; and when everything was silent (except for the sound of liquid dripping; slow, thick, and unceasing) he leaned over and vomited up ink.

He straightened, then, wiped his mouth with a hand, right thumb dangling from its socket, metal cuffs dangling from his left wrist, and felt free.

(The ink was still trickling out from behind his teeth.)

He stared over the monsters' skulls at the darkness dripping down the bars of his cell, and knew that he would never sleep again.