The Bane of Light

Nightmares

"She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick" - Flannery O'Conner, A Temple of the Holy Ghost

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I woke up with the acute awareness that I could not breathe.

I jolted upright, dazed and disoriented as my eyes strained to make something out in the dark around me. That was the first thing I noticed: I couldn't see anything. There was no light. I had gone blind. Everything was so black, so inky, that there was an undeniable divine interference in it. The world had finally gone dark, and I was trapped in it.

This wasn't supposed to happen. I could always see in the dark. But this was not the usual dark, as if the consistency of night had changed, thickening and swelling to the state of tar. I was drowning in it; black, oily tar. Everything around me was tar. I trashed at the thought, clawing at whatever was holding me down. That's when I had my next realization.

I became painfully aware that somebody was on top of me, painfully squeezing my throat. Coarse fingers dug into my tender skin, nails tearing at the flesh of my neck. I couldn't help but scream as I realized I was being choked, smothered, strangled in the cover of the night. Somebody was strangling me, their entire weight pressed against my throat, their heavy body atop of mine. That's when the screaming really, the feral sounds belonging more to a savage animal than a mortal girl.

Instant regret hurtled into my body, as I realized that I couldn't inhale afterwards. My eyes bulged from my head, as everyone of my facial features strained to rip themselves from my purple face. I couldn't breathe. My throat burned. Tears were streaming down my face as my nostrils flared for air. I was mouthing mute pleas, none which had any air to be any decipherable words.

The third thing I noticed, which I could have gone my entire life without seeing, was the body on top of mine, pinning me down and restraining me as they strangled the life out of me, as if I were some rag doll whose back was to be broken. Paris Arobynn was strangling me. His hands were bruising my neck, shoving my throat inwards in an unnatural angle. My esophagus was not meant to sink so far into my muscle. Paris Arobynn was trying to kill me.

I simply stared at him, frozen in place. I didn't do anything. I couldn't do anything, but stare into the sight of Paris Arobynn's black, lifeless eyes staring down at me, murder depicted within them, as he tried to break my neck— as he tried to break me. And that's when I began screaming again, despite my lack of air, hoping the action would smother out the air from me before he could kill me. I didn't want him to be the one to kill me. He hadn't earned the right.

I couldn't help it. Strangled cries clawed out my throat, each pathetic and more measly than the last, as if I were a whimpering animal. I clawed his hands, trying to get him off me. I was wheezing, gasping for air, pain beating into my skin and my bones and face, ready to burst with the unbearable pressure. I tried to call out to Paris. No sound came out, just my wheezing pleas. The wetness on my face informed me that I was sobbing.

I couldn't understand what was going on. Was he having another nightmare? Why was he attacking me? Was he possessed? Did I do something to set him off? To trigger him? What did I do? He shouldn't be hurting me like this. Even at the peak of his rage, he didn't squeeze like this, digging his nails into my already wounded flesh. He didn't strangle me in such a harsh, animalistic way.

He held me and he burned me, but he did not try to collapse my windpipe by crushing it together. He was trying to collapse my throat, to squeeze my muscles and tendons and arteries into one impossible form. I felt as though my neck would erupt with the intensity and pressure that was crushing it down.