Welcome to my brain I guess?
Many Thanks to TakingFlight48 for her edits and encouragement.
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It was dark.
It was always dark now and she had somehow come to accept that it was unlikely to ever change. The sunshine was a pleasure only others would enjoy. Even the warmth from the meagre sliver of daylight she was afforded refused to penetrate the layers of darkness she lived under. If she had a conscience left, it might have reminded her that she deserved this. If she'd listened to her conscience rather than smother it, she might not have wound up where she was. It couldn't be helped now. Too late.
Time passed, though she was barely aware of it. Day and night no longer held meaning for her. Truthfully, she wasn't sure if she slept or not, though she did seem to flicker in and out of consciousness. It was impossible for her to know if it happened with some degree of regularity or not. She didn't care either way.
She lay still on a surface that was neither hard nor soft. She rarely moved. Somewhere deep inside herself, she held the certainty that she probably could if she wanted to, but she had no desire to do anything at all. Even thoughts felt like unwelcome intrusions in the silence of her mind. It was easier not to think. Words brought memories and memories caused pain. It was easier to be numb, to forget.
In the beginning, she had embraced the pain. She had spent days, maybe weeks, reliving the memories in her mind, clinging to them as though they could change her fate. Some faces and names had even brought comfort. But feelings were a currency in this place; there was a price to pay for feeling and no service was rendered in return. Once, she had made every effort to remain herself, to stay whole.
But the enemy did not care if she died whole or in pieces and there was no part of her old life left here. As that realisation sank in, she wished she had let go sooner. A quick descent into madness would have been preferable to grief. She had no energy left for grieving, but the endless supply of time she was given was anything but a kindness.
She had no news from the outside world, no way of knowing how the world lived on without her or if anyone missed her. Assuming her absence brought nothing but relief and regret to those she had once cared for, she killed them off, one by one in her mind. She had no use for happy memories in the face of endless emptiness. She had no need for love or joy.
Had she ever needed them?
Yes, there had been a time, before her essence had been corrupted and twisted, when love had meant something to her. But the rot of expectations had killed her need to love long before she had found herself behind these walls. Darkness had invaded everything in her life long before she found herself in the dark.
It had come slowly, burrowing in over time, taking over. It seeped over her like a second skin before spreading through her to infect everything.
Her grip on reality had been the last thing to go, snuffed out by life in forced proximity to beings that literally ate her very soul. Sanity was overrated, though.
It was easier to let it go, too. She had never been as strong on the inside as they seemed to think. It was simpler to become the monster that was consuming her than to fight it.
It was dark.
It was always dark now because the darkness came from within.