Authoress's Note: I am a very bad girl. I haven't updated this thing in a loooooooong time… Well, our speech team only went to districts, we lost the first three soccer games of the season, I got a II+ at contest for my flute piece, Handel's Second Sonata. I won first place at a poetry contest. Um… yeah, and I have been very busy…
Well, the disclaimer STILL applies. Thanks for putting up with my tardy, irresponsible nature, people.
"We are alone here,
Forgotten,
Shadows dancing across the walls
Like laughing demons.
Don't suffer or they will forsake you;
Don't breathe or they will tame you.
When the darkness descends,
Where can you turn?"
- from "The White Shadow"
I was led deep into the underground labyrinth; they blindfolded me to prevent me from seeing my surroundings. If I had known what was around me, escape would have been more likely than if I were blindly led through the passages.
Even though I knew it was hopeless, I tried to memorize the steps I was taking. Long walk, right turn, staircase, left turn, another left turn, staircase that goes down to the right, long hallway, another set of staircases that was so long that I lost count, another long hallway, a right turn…
Strong hands lifted me and the hands closed iron shackles around my wrists. The cold iron burned slightly, and somehow my mind registered that iron was wrong. There are so many legends that surround iron, aren't there? Iron negates magic, hurts unicorns, is the only way to kill several magical creatures… there are so many stories.
Enough about the iron shackles.
I was alone in the dark, and there was nothing to see or hear but screams from other cells and vampires and humans in even worse shape than me. There may have been more, though, for if vampires can exist, why not shape shifters, doppelgangers, were-creatures, and elves?
The mere thought of a doppelganger chills me.
Stalking you at first, maybe a little interested in you, and they learn to be you to a fault. Then, when you least expect it, they strike and devour your body. They know you even better than you know yourself, and nobody will know it isn't you until the doppelganger makes the inevitable mistake.
Eventually, my thoughts blurred into a horrible dream. Every scream I heard that night was somehow amplified; I don't remember what the dream was about, but it was enough to make me scream when I woke up. The screaming could have been the result of the hunger I felt.
It was worse than anything I had ever felt.
Try to imagine being stuck with pins all over your body, having a magnet run over you, and a nameless parasite devouring your insides. Do you have that picture? Now add that to being in the desert at full sun with no water for about seven or eight hours.
It didn't even numb like hunger is supposed to do. It kept growing.
And on top of that, I was acutely aware of what was happening all around me. The insides of the shackles were studded with metal spikes, and there was blood running down my arms. I tried to push up with my feet, which I realized had either not been bound or had been taken off during my sleep, most likely the latter. It helped the pain, but I knew I couldn't do that forever.
Hearts were beating everyone.
If this doesn't drive me insane, I don't know what will, I thought.
I closed my eyes again; I don't know how long they were closed, but when I looked up, there was gold light. From the center of the light, I saw a rotating eye, only it wasn't an eye; it was a golden ball.
Weakly, I looked up at it; it was more like rolling my head to the side. The glowing became so bright that I needed to shield my eyes, but I couldn't raise my hands and the light was so intense that I could see it even when my eyes were closed.
My eyes burned and there was a hiss as my skin darkened slightly to prevent me from burning to a cinder; I took it for granted back then. I never knew some idiot would give up our sunlight for the safety of the world. I don't know who it was; I think it was that tri-colored brat.
I also think he killed Ryou Bakura.
Well, before I get totally into the present, I have about two hundred years of past to go through.
Ugh, right?
That's what I was thinking, too.
The golden light was still burning me.
I don't want to die, I thought.
You won't die, then. My voice, yes; sometime in the past week or so I have decided that talking to myself is a great way to pass time. Something in it told me it wasn't just a response to being locked away.
"You are in my world now…"
The vaguest sense that the round eye was questioning me; I decided to risk opening my eyes. It wasn't like anything would change.
I saw images in the light… and the images brought voices…
"Maxie-boy, when will you ever learn that running never solves anything?"
"Don't call me Maxie-boy."
"I will call you what I want to call you. You ran from me; did you think for a moment that you had killed me?"
I hesitated and looked at him; I made sure Cerberus was safely behind me. This was the outcome. At least I had seen Egypt; at least I had fulfilled the last promise…
I grabbed Cerberus and tried to run past him, but he was there. He shoved me away from my boy and took him into a corner. "You have disobeyed me for the last time, Pegasus."
My hands found the form of a lantern; it was warm to the touch, and I knew it was lit. I threw it at him before he could touch my son.
"Run!" I screamed.
Voices, screaming in a language I could not understand, surrounded me. Midnight came at me again and I felt the searing pain of flames. There was the sensation of being thrown backwards through the window and I rolled into a small pool of water on the ground. It had just rained here, which was quite unusual. The rains had stopped earlier this evening.
I recoiled from the vision; it hadn't taken me long to come to my senses. The damned eye was pulling me. I felt like my hands would be ripped off.
Do I even need to say that it hurt?
Perhaps my cries stopped it. I heard another questioning emotion coming from it – like that thing could feel! – and there was more gold light. I then realized that it was actually me questioning myself.
That was very frightening.
God, what have those monsters done to my son?
I had a feeling that the eye knew.
The Millennium Eye still knows stuff I don't know.
Shadi said at a later date that I was the spirit of that damned thing.
Unless I have a split personality, it's not true.
Not like anything he says is.
I remember fading in and out as if I were intangible and ghostly; the gold light surrounded me, and sometimes it beat me when I felt like I would die. It kept me alive… and it tried to kill me… and it was breaking me…
Hey, at least I was alive, unlike the others in the lower dungeon. I could feel their deaths.
I also noticed that when they died, the eye glowed brighter. It somehow reminded me of the dying in the top floor, how they never moved or did anything, and how when I looked at them, their eyes were vacant.
Over the hum of the eye, I heard faint music. It was in my mind, but it was coming from all around me.
I've gone mad, I've gone insane, someone please lock me up… wait… I am locked up…
When I was young, I played the violin. As I aged, I played it more and more; the emotions I felt were locked in the violin and playing it was the only way to let them out. I broke about two strings per practice when I was feeling a passionate emotion, and sometimes when I was sad, the music would go so slow that people were astounded that I could even move the bow across the strings.
Everything is a vent for some emotion. Opening the vent is the little problem; once it's open, you have to make sure you don't let out too much or you're so empty that someone could stick a knife in you and you would feel nothing: no pain, no blood running down your chest, just a horrible emptiness.
When things got really bad with the abusive Midnight, I bought my own violin. It didn't cost me much; I pawned off a few antique rings he had in his possession. He never wore them, and he didn't care what I did as long as he never noticed what went on.
I locked myself in my room and brushed my fingers over the instrument. My eyes shone with childlike delight, and my bruised fingers and muscles felt like they were screaming when I lifted up the light instrument. He kept me so weak back then so I could not fight back until he developed an interest in my son.
My son was taught to play a variety of instruments, and, unlike me, when he made the slightest mistake in tone, he would be hit.
Cerberus was three at the time, and it had been several years since I had poured out my emotions in a wave of crimson music. The last time I touched the violin was when I was still a teenager, and now I was twenty and my birthday would be in two months.
It was a beautiful instrument, medium in quality, and so very beautiful with its dark stain and the carvings. I brought it up to my chin and I pressed my fingers down in a position; I didn't remember exactly how to do it. I brought the bow across the strings and I relaxed when I found that my lack of practice in the past few years had not negated my skill.
Playing brought back memories, and I recalled how I was a young child and I ran and smashed my violin against a rock when I was in a particularly foul mood. It brought tears to my eyes, tears that quickly melted into the music that my fingers were playing.
My parents never understood; they thought I was a genius that could compose beautiful, moving pieces and play them.
I never played the violin. The violin played me. Emotions played me. Pain played me. How someone could be named after a silver wingéd horse and play something so dark and depressing is beyond my comprehension.
Light coming out of me, yes, light, but amplifying the light is a wave of darkness from me that swallows the feeble light whole, making you see light when there is almost none, and light I see when I see myself, and no one sees the darkness until it is too late to run and too late to hide and there is crimson flowing everywhere and Gods, I think I am going to become a sobbing heap. Not one God, either, but many gods that all hate me and want to see me break down and cry and I won't let them see me cry, I won't let them see me cry, I won't let them see me cry salty tears…
And I saw myself reach for the violin, which wasn't there but it was on the floor. And Midnight was there, and he held me against him and did not hurt me. The violin was in his hands now, and he pressed it against my chest and whispered, yes, the music is beautiful, play more, play a lot more, play it until I cry and fly into a rage…
But it wasn't real, and it faded away and I realized that I was hanging off of a cell wall and I had no idea how many days or months or years had passed, just that there was nothing but darkness everywhere and then the gold light, streaming from the eye, cradling me, and Midnight's voice calling to me from some other place, screaming, and me crying and sobbing and wishing I had never been born.
Sometimes really pathetic people can do really colossal things, no matter how evil or dark those things are, no matter how many people die. Just look at me.