The Dawn of Darkness (Part 13)

When I come to, I'm not even sure if I'm alive anymore. I'm surrounded by total darkness. My arms and legs are curled up tightly against my body and my muscles are aching. I feel around with my hands and realize that there are walls on every side of me. I am in a very small area, crammed in. I feel up the sides of the wall and my fingers connect with nothing but air. When I look up, I can slightly make out an outline of light. There is a square opening above my head, but I can't reach it. I try to stand and discover that I cannot.

My crying is intense, my shoulders heave and my sobs are loud and echo in my ears. I can still taste the faint flavor of blood in my mouth. When I wipe the back of my hand across my face, I feel flakes of what must be dried blood peel away from my skin. This only makes me cry harder. I start to remember how it was that I got here. The fear inside of me gnaws away at my gut.

I try hard to think of how I know the male, the one who looks like the person I am in my waking life. He is not more than 16, the age when I recall being most uncertain of who I was and the time when I was most apathetic about life. I was drifting through classes, maintaining high grades, a semi-active social life and a some-what dismal romantic involvement with girlfriend number two.

The memory of me looking at my dream inhabitant's legs and those pink Converse sparks something in my mind. There was a girl then, a friend of my girlfriend, another member of the academic team that we were both on. She wore shoes like these. I desperately tried to remember her name but couldn't ferret it out of my brain. She always wore bright colored clothing and had a wide, gapped tooth smile. Her ears were pierced several times up both lobes. I reached up and ran a finger over my right ear. It connected with one earring, then two, on up to four. I was this girl. I was this fresh faced girl who excelled at her given topic, art history.

I wrapped my arms around my folded knees and rocked myself back and forth as much as the space I was trapped in would allow. I looked up at the trace of light. It was nighttime. The world around me was dead silent. Whether that was because of the time of night or due to the enclosure I was in, I couldn't determine. I just knew that I was scared shitless, alone, banged up and at the mercy of the insane version of the dream male me.

My head began to throb. This was too confusing, there were too many things that didn't add up. The picture in the house of the twin boys was weighing heavily on me. I had only two brothers. My older brother, Sam, would have been about 20 and a sophomore in college right about now. He no longer lived in the home. My younger brother, Evan, was 14 and a freshmen in high school. But that was the year that he spent in Japan, traveling and studying with our mother's sister, Aunt Karen. She was married to a Marine, and he was constantly tied up with work. Our parents had allowed Evan to go live with them, to soak in the culture and keep Aunt Karen company.

It was coming to me more and more. I was in my junior year in high school. Often times there was no one home but me, studying. I went out with my girlfriend on the weekends and occasionally managed to score a Wednesday study session at her house when her parents would allow it. We'd mostly make out on her bed and she'd suck my cock, fast and sloppy, always fearful that her parents would walk up the stairs and discover us. But it was something, I remembered thinking back then. I took whatever was given to me, never asking for anything even though there were those times when I fiercely wanted to.

The girl that I now embodied was a friend of my girlfriend, someone that both of us knew. She laughed and smiled a lot. She would touch my upper arm whenever my girlfriend was out of the room, then yank it away when someone would approach. She had dirty blonde hair, dull in color, and it was always pulled back into a ponytail or bun. She hardly, if ever, wore make-up. Her body was sporty in size, no more than 5'3" tall, her breasts perky and her legs short yet firm and muscular. She could've easily passed for 12 rather than 16. There was nothing exceptional about her.

I blinked hard into the darkness. It slowly dawned on me that that wasn't entirely true. Her eyes. She had a set of round, wide-open blue eyes that sparkled and crackled with energy whenever she would laugh. And she would laugh a lot around me. It never really occurred that she might have a crush on me, but all of those signs were there. The touching, the excessive laughing.

The day that she called me and asked if I would meet her at the park.

My girlfriend was away for the weekend, visiting family. It was late on Friday when the phone rang at my house. I thought maybe it was her, telling me that she was leaving, wishing me well, perhaps whispering something dirty into the phone before hanging up and boarding the family mini-van for the 2 hour drive. But it was this other girl, this girl whose body I was now inhabiting in dream form. Her nervous giggles filled my ear and she was soon telling me that she thought it might be a good idea if we got together and studied for the academic decathalon that was going to be held in two weeks. I hadn't thought twice about it when I'd agreed.

That was where the memories turned hazy. I remembered getting her phone call. Remembered agreeing to meet her. I could almost make out the vision of me getting into the car to drive over to the park where she said she would be waiting. But that was where they stopped. I had zero recollection of anything that had happened from the scene where my dream began. I didn't remember meeting her, sitting down on the bench, driving back to my house.

It all felt like some psychotic delusion gone horribly awry. I had never had it in me to be physically aggressive in the slightest. Hell, I'd never been the one to make the first move, to kiss the girl, to touch her. They always set those wheels into motion with their own initial advances. Yet the dream version of me had done just that. He'd kissed this girl. He'd laid her back down on the couch and flattened his body out on top of her. He'd.... he'd hit her. And more.

This all had to be some twisted dream. Completely made up. No merit to any of it. I was thinking this as I was rocking my female form as much as I was thinking it in the vague connection that I had with the part of me that was lying asleep in bed, present day. I could feel hot tears flow slowly down my cheeks and I wondered if it was only in the dream that I was releasing them.

My dream self rocked back and forth for an indeterminable amount of time before there were sounds overhead. The square sliver of light had changed in tone as the night progressed on. It was darker still, firmly gripped by the dead of night. There was a shuffling, steady in rhythm. The sounds of footsteps. They stopped very close overhead.

A creaking sound followed and suddenly moonlight filtered down on me. My eyes met the vision of myself once more. The perspective of this position caused my heart to go dead in my chest. The dream me looked as if his body stretched straight into the sky, monstrous in appearance. I opened my mouth to scream.

As I did, I was jabbed in the arm. Pain shot through me and I yelped and raised my hands defensively. There was a hole bored into my skin, a half inch in diameter. Blood was flowing out of it, dark and thick. I whimpered and started crying loudly. The metal instrument in the male's hand jabbed downwards again, connecting with my other shoulder. I looked up fast and saw that it was a fire poker, one of the tools that I remembered seeing next to the fireplace. I curled my body over as much as the space would allow and cried out as I felt the poker pierce my back repeatedly. I counted up to 6 and then stopped. I could hardly breathe. My crying tapered off and I could no longer take normal breaths. I was light headed.

"Please...." The word hissed out of me. My breathing was shallow, each inhalation was a trial. "Please.... please.... dear Jesus.... please....."

The jabbing stopped. My eyes closed in an oddly peaceful way. He was going to take pity on me. The pain was intense. My brain was soaked in it. My nose was dripping and I sniffled at it.

The next sensation that accosted me was wetness. Warm wetness. It was on the back on my head, running down my back. I sniffled again. I winced when the odor met my nostrils. Urine was slowly absorbing into my clothing as quickly as the blood. I began to wail.

"NOOOOO! NOOOOO! PLEASE!!! STOP!!!"

Laugher showered down on me along with the piss. I was bawling and screaming. "STOP!! FUCKING STOP!! STOP IT, YOU SICK FUCK!!!!" My heart was racing. I was insane with humiliation. I scrambled desperately, trying to stand. Scraping skin off in large chunks from my knees, I managed it. There was a icy cold feeling in my feet, that one you get before you pass out. I screamed up at him.

He looked down on me dispassionately. The last burst of piss was falling down on me from the tip of his penis. It hit me in the face and felt like a stream of acid. I shrieked and tore at it with the fingers of my right hand. "YOU FUCK!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??"

I opened my eyes wide and glared up at him. He was laughing, his head thrown back. He'd dropped the poker on the ground. It glistened in the pale moonlight. Even if my hands were fully extended, the lip of the hole was still almost a foot away from my grasp. In my delirium, I attempted to jump up and grab the edge. I missed and came down hard on my feet. I screamed and he looked down. I looked back up at him again.

His eyes met mine and his brow creased. His features softened. He stared down into my eyes, transfixed. There was something about my eyes that brought him back to humanity. I seized it.

"Please," I started slowly, carefully. "Please.... Let me out of here. You're hurting me. I'm bleeding. I need to go to the hospital..."

His eyes narrowed.

"I won't tell..." I shook my head violently. "I SWEAR! Just let me go. Let me out. PLEASE?? Please let me out?? I'll leave. I won't tell anyone. I'll just leave. I want to go home. I want to leave. Please? Let me out? Let me leave? I'll keep my mouth shut!"

The words were pouring out of me. My arms were up over my head. I was clenching and unclenching my fingers like a toddler trying to get an adult to pick them up. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. Snot was dripping from my nose. My knees were seconds from giving out, collapsing under my weight. But I kept my eyes open. I glued my gaze to his. I didn't blink. I was praying inside my head, asking for assistance, asking for a miracle, asking for my Mommy to come and swoop down and rescue me.

He crouched down. "Yes! Yes! Yes! That's it!" My fingers were spasming wildly. "Lift me out! That's it! Let me out! Let me go! Let me go! Let me out!" I saw him sigh. My heart disintegrated.

The hatch door closed in slow-motion.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! PLEASE!!!!" My body was sliding down. My legs were finally giving out. I took a sharp breath in and passed out.