Confliction: Chapter 5

         He had never known such darkness.  No eyes adjusted to the darkness down here; and there was no meagre light to mark your way around.  It could be enough to drive a man to insanity.  The difference between being awake and being asleep would fade away to guesswork, and upon waking, all direction was lost.  Was he still in this room, or had he been moved?  Was he facing the door, or the wall?  He could get up to feel his way around if he wanted, but he had felt every inch of the cell within reach.
         “Behind the door,” the whispers came again. 
         He had caught a brief glimpse of the room when they had shut him in here.  All concrete stained black and completely featureless. The door was a dark grey, studded metal, with no handle on the inside.  As it had closed on him, he noted that it looked air tight.  That was the last thing he had seen.  It can't have been air tight, or he would be dead by now.
         “The roof, your air.”
         Once a day, he would hear a clanging of metal on metal from where his food and water were deposited and he would gain a sense of direction.  He hadn't noticed it when he had come in, but there was a small alcove in the corner where a metal tray would land.  He didn't know whether it came twice a day, once a day, or every two days, but in any scenario, it meant he had been here for many weeks.
         “Four months tomorrow,” they whispered in his ear.
         Sleep was a difficult ordeal, not because it couldn't come, but because it came too often.  Closing his eyes meant little, and drifting off to sleep would happen sporadically, and he had no way of telling how long he had been out.  Sometimes he knew a long sleep because he would wake up hungry or stiff from the ground.  Other times he had just dozed because he had woken up while sitting and leaning against a wall.  To make matters worse, he dreamed of darkness; of stumbling around helpless and feeling his way through old places he remembered in childhood; his old house on the riverside of the Voo.  He clamoured his way through a city, people knocking him down and no one helping him up.  It wasn't until he had heard the squeal of break from a car with no headlights that he realized that it wasn't dark out.
         “Look into us, and you will see again.  Don't you want to see?”  They sounded like they were in the room that time.
         They hadn't stopped, and had in actuality gotten much worse since he had been locked in here.  It was all there was.  He would train himself to stop them; to shut them out of his mind and keep him out of theirs.  It hadn't gone well.  They seemed to recognize his discomfort, and tried to help him.  He felt them enter his mind at will.  Some just looked around, felt bored and left.  Others stayed for a while and tried to find what was going on.  More often than not, these ones returned in a day or two to see if he had made any progress.  They would try to help him, whispering encouragement or advice in one ear, and words of hate for his captors in another.  He wondered if these whispers would be out searching for him.  They had probed his thoughts and memories, looking for knowledge about who had put him in here or who or where he was.  None of this he knew.  Perhaps this was a good thing.  Perhaps not.  He had avoided his memory for as long as he had been in here, scared that any realization he may come to would be shared by whatever hundreds had been in and out of his mind over the months.  He didn't know how much longer he could do that.  His will to live was taking over for everything else and maybe if he knew where he was or what he was doing here, he could find a way out.

         “Wake up, Terrin,”  a voice, louder than the others spoke to him from inside the very core of his mind.
         Terrin, his name.  He hadn't thought of that in weeks. This was different.  He pushed himself off the ground and dragged himself to the side of his cell, leaning against the wall.  The voices were loud now, and numerous.  Stop him.  Don't let him.  He needs us,” some said. “Do it. You need it.  This is why you are here,” said others.  Some were laughing, and a few, he thought may be crying.  He clutched his head in his hands and tried to tune them out to no avail.  He couldn't tell the voices apart.  Maybe there were a hundred, and maybe a thousand.  They all blurred into one another, shouting their differing opinions on a dilemma he did not understand.  Every presence he had felt in his mind since he had been in his cell was foreground today, all standing on a pedestal, trying to be heard above the rest; just a forest of voices, drowning out all thoughts.
         A loud clang of metal on metal rang behind him making him jump and all the voices stopped all at once.  He turned behind him and pulled the metal tray off of the dispenser and held it on his lap.  It was light today.  His hands groped about for the usual plastic plate, but only found a cold wooden utensil in the middle.  He picked it up, and turned it around in his hands feeling the wood, the icy cold of the metal, and the sharp point of the blade.
         “A knife,” came about a hundred voices at once, all sounding shocked and scared, making him almost drop it.  He was confused.  Every day there was food on that tray.  Why was today different?  He turned it over in his hands while the voices yammered in the background, feeling the cold against his skin, and the sharpness against his thigh.
         All at once, it came to him.  Something he had heard months before, maybe.  Or maybe a whisper in his ear.
         “No!” A thousand voices screamed into his ear.  Protests, begging, pleading.  All thoughts ran from him, and all sense of feeling faded away.  What was he doing here?  Who was keeping him here?  Four months of perpetual darkness had taken a permanent toll on him.  He took the knife with his right hand and before thinking to deaden his own nerves, pressed the blade deep and hard into his left palm parallel to his thumb.  Blinding pain shot through his arm and blood streamed down his arm as he pulled a layer of skin off, and the blade stopped on bone.  He filled the room with screams and tears stung his eyes.  He pushed the blade around the base of his thumb until it was nothing but bone all around.  Voices screamed and yelled, sending orders into his mind, demanding he stop now while he still could. Then gripping his slippery bloody thumb tight with his right hand, pulled hard and snapped the bone.
         He looked to the darkness, and the voices got quieter.  A few still, not as many.  They had given up and left him.  Their voices blurred and echoed as if heard through a tin can, and for a moment, he could think again.  He turned off the pain.  Nothing in his left arm, just static where there should be slick blood and cold stone.  He looked right, where he knew his right hand to be, still clutching the bloody blade.  With what was left of his left hand, he moved to a crouch and, placed the sharp end of the blade against his thumb.  All at once he stomped down on the blade with his foot until he heard the crack of bone and felt the warm blood against his ankles.  No pain in his right either; and no more voices.
         He lay down.  His head swimming.  He would be losing blood fast.  He felt the pool expanding across his neck and soaking his ragged shirt clinging to his back.  He knew now, he could think safely, no intrusion.
         The light came on, blinding him painfully.  Even with his eyes closed, he couldn't stand to look towards the roof.  He rolled to his side, soaking his sleeve in his blood and stared at the blackened floor.  The metal creak of the door opening filled the room, murdering the silence.  Footsteps came towards him and seized him.  A separate person each arm and quickly tied bandages around his wrists before lifting him up to face the door.
         A silhouette was standing in the door, blackened by the sudden influx of light.  He couldn't keep his eyes open or his head up to look the man in the face.
         “Well done, Mister Terrin,”  the man said.  “Now we can begin.”