It seemed like an eternity of darkness. I didn’t know how much time passed, nor did I really care anymore. I awoke to a dimly lit room... No... It’s a cell. I looked around my surroundings to get a better idea of my situation. A bright light burned my eyes. “Ah!! My eyes!!” The little light in the room burned my eyes. “What’s wrong with my eyes?” Burying them into the darkness of my hands.

“Huh...? My hands are smooth.” I slowly removed my hands as my eyes got used to the sun’s light.

“Woah!! My hands are like children’s hands. Is that my voice?” It is high-pitched and girly compared to my old voice.

“Echo!” I shout into the empty room. My voice echoes back, “Echo!” “My voice. It’s so weird sounding.” I whispered to myself. “Am I dreaming?” I rub my eyes and open them again. The sun again burns my eyes, and I quickly cover them. “Goddammit!” I bury my face on the cool metal floor. “What should I do? I want to get out of here, but I can’t see. It’s… just… I don’t feel like it.”

“No, I need to know where I am.” I look around again, now that my eyes didn’t burn. The room is a large cell, about the size of one and a half living rooms. On each wall is one small barred window on each side... Well, more like slits. The windows are the only things illuminating light. On the right side, the room on the other side is the only entrance. It appeared to lock from the outside.

“This isn’t helpful. I should find a way out, or at least find a way to see outside.” I thought to myself. “Maybe the window.” As I got up, my legs trembled, then fell over from exhaustion. I hear metal chains clashing against the freezing floor. I look back at my chains to see my hair?

“Ok? Why is my hair black and long? Where is my white hair?” Something is wrong, but it feels like my body, which is strange. “All of this thinking made me tired.” My head pounds like a painful headache. It feels like I am being crushed, like an empty can.

“Why... does it feel like my body is on steroids?” I wobble and stutter, my thoughts coming and going. I didn’t know what was going on or why. Except that I feel like a mangled mess of flesh and bones. A flood of emotions and feelings rushing like a tsunami.

A surge of numbing pain comes from my legs, which calms down after touching the cold floors, but the rest of my body is shivering. I huddled up in a ball to keep warm, but that wasn’t the worst to come. I hear what seemed to be an ugly orchestra of many metals slamming and screeching. It felt like my ears were going to explode. I cover my ears to dampen the noise. There is nothing I could do but smash my head into the ground over and over to change where the pain was coming from. “Shut up! Shut up! SHUT up! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!!” Tears pour out of me like a waterfall. I want it to stop.

The smell of my cell was nauseating, causing me to feel very sick. It was like nobody cleaned for weeks. As I was smashing my skull into the steel, my stomach started raging like rapids. I could feel it rising and an overflow of heat running up my throat, burning like spicy hot sauce. I reach my head up and smash my head back down. A stream of clear liquid spews from my mouth. “Make it stop! Please-” my puking cut me off. It felt like it went on for what seemed like forever, crying, puking, and pain down my legs. “Please… sniff… Make it… stop.”

After my endless torcher stopped, I couldn’t get up. I was too busy crying, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. I want my mommy.” I cried weakly, laying in my filth. As I lie there in pain, I feel something warm going down my legs. I feel super weak and hungry, like I haven’t eaten for days. I struggle to keep my weary eyes open, “I don’t wanna go. Where is mommy? I am afraid of the dark,” but my body had other ideas.

******

“Hello there.” A shadow said. The surroundings were all black and grey. It was like an anti-city, void of life, color, left in a decrepit state.

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“Who are you? Where are we?” I ask, looking around me. “Why does it look like Godzilla made love with the place?”

The shadow stares in surprise, then continues to stab into the dirt. “So... You’re awake? Tell me, why would I bother telling someone who’s just going to forget?”

“It’s kind?” I naively respond.

“Hehehe... Haha hahaha!!! You’re so adorable! Is killing a child out of mercy kind?” The shadow pinched my cheeks. The sound of a classical piano plays. “So you really want to know?” The sound of drums and bases begins. Its eye sockets glowing blood red, his voice going static. “You want to hear the gospel!?” His voice changes from high pitch to low. “Careful what you wish for!!!” A rhythmic snapping plays as voices of angels and demons sing sinisterly.

“Alright, boys!! Let’s get ThIs sHoW StArTiNg!!!” Mechanical humanoid corpses rose from the ground. “We may be MoNsTeRs, but we OnLy bIt!! It’s time to come back–” The shadow stops. “STOP!!!” The mechanical, rotted corpse stopped moving and fell. The singers die down into screams of agony and dismay. The music breaks into an unsettling tone. Its tone felt very robotic, something unnatural. I recognize it from a music class I did; it has something to do with cereal.

The shadow appeared behind me. “Let’s change the subject. Talk about you. What do you want? What do you desire?”

I felt compelled to answer the demon. “I–I–I–”

“Come on, say it. Your darkest desire, I see it. Make it into a reality!!”

“I–I–I want to go home,” I stuttered.

“No! No! No! You’re doing it wrong!! I can’t do that! I have limits of limitless!! Tell me? What do you desire? What do you dream? What do you want? Money? Power?”

I couldn’t ignore him. “I... I want to wake up. I want my mommy. I wanna go home.”

“What if I told you there was a way? A way around the maze! I can help you wake up.”

His offer is tempting. It was like a devil was whispering in my ear. “No, I don’t trust you,” I said.

“... Suit yourself... You’ll be back.”

“Ha!! You said I am going to forget!!” I brazenly said.

“We’ll see...” The shadow went back to poking the dirt, “you can’t deny what you are becoming... or became.”

“And that is?” I questioned.

He pointed towards an area under my chin. “Stab here.”

A knife appeared in my hands out of thin air. “Alright.” I get ready to stab but pause, dropping the knife.

“Here, I’ll help.” The knife went right into my chin, causing me to fall to my knees. I saw someone. No, something else in the mirror.

Its eyes were pitch black, with glowing beady red eyes. “Down here, you have no power.” The mouth conjoined together with its teeth like a Dunkleosteus. “Where sanity is reality, and nothingness is!!” On its back were four gigantic wings that looked like pure fire. Four tentacle arms that looked like spines sprouted from behind its back. “Four arms of fury, four arms of the wind. Bend it to your knees and build it back up.” Each segment of the arm was a glowing orb, and at the very end is an enormous singular pincer. It ran towards me and sank its teeth into me. “The rabbit is a lie, don’t trust it. Follow it if you must, but never trust his lies.”

“AAAHHH!” I awoke from sleep, covered in sweat. “Where am I...?” I look around to see that I am still in a cage, still chained up. The sun had died, and the night was spreading. Sighing, I curl up in the corner of my cell and cry, “I want my mommy. I want my mommy. I want to go home.” That night I ended up crying myself to sleep.

“I have four arms to guide, and four hands to lie. My throne is duplicity; the web has spun. Now I sit and lie. All who enter will be enlightened. The tangled truth is full of fallacies. No, you’ve misunderstood. Or perhaps you can never understand. Maybe we’re just not in the same reality.”

----------------------------------------

"Silently I will hold your hands tight

Through the endless nights and the darkest of days."