Chapter Text
The meaning of insanity is different for many but...the creation of it is all the same. It starts with the lack of light, the warmth of the sun as it glows warm and bright, tanning your skin and leaving you sleepy and content. The light brings with it noise, something many of us are content with hearing, or sometimes the lack of, and with the noise comes others, people standing around you laughing and smiling, bottles clinking, the sound of children as they play with the dog. With others comes freedom, the ability to do or say as one pleases. When the light fades to darkness, the warmth leaves a cold sinking feeling, and the noise fades to a single repeating sound.
Drip, drip, drip
You can't escape the noise because the dark encompasses you, it's stealing your warmth and leaving you cold. The stone walls that trap you in place leave you alone from the screaming voices on the other side of the stone wall. Your panicking because you can't escape and they can't get you out. The drip of water hitting the stone begins to overpower the sound of your friends, of a dog barking, it's all you can hear now and you can't escape it.
You claw at the walls, nails breaking, flaying skin open as the jagged stone digs into abused flesh. You screaming for them now, your friends, your saviors, anyone who can hear you. There's something else about the dark that makes you panic even more, how long have you been trapped beneath the earth, how long have you been hearing the never-ending drip..drip..drip.. how long has it been since you've been abandoned, left to DIE!
No..no, that can't be the truth, your friends, and your family would never leave you to die. Their long-gone voices must have just vanished to get more help that's it, that has to be it. They know where you are they just need help getting you out. That's all...right?
Right?
drip...drip...drip...
It fades into a constant, and slowly you realize there is water around your hips now as your eyes adjust to the darkness you see a small hole in the wall. Your legs and feet long numb you stumble over and look through, it's more darkness but you call out into it. Names of family abandoned, of friends, of anyone! What you met with is the face of someone long dead, flesh melting off the bone as they reach through the grab you. You stumble back, in a panic, as burned flesh flys around your tomb and attempts to grab you. The voice long heard begins screaming your name and how their death is your fault.
You scream back how sorry you are, begging them to leave you alone, to forgive you.
.......what's that noise? You look up to see a faint light falling through a hole in the rubble that is to be your tomb. Soon the hole is big enough that it hurts your eyes but you can reach up and grasp a hand that was reaching for you. The friend long dead disappears and, without even realizing it you start sobbing, gripping that hand as if it's your lifeline- it is. You can hear their voices and your crying grows stronger but you feel sane now. It takes an hour for the hole to grow wider and it's not long before another hand it gripping your wrist.
The water is now at chest and level and you're begging them to hurry because you don't want to die...you don't wanna die alone, in the dark, when help is gripping your numb fingers so tightly if they were ice, they'd have broken. Before you realize it, many hands are digging into your clothing, your arms are yanked above your head and your shoulder slides from it's socket. The pain is absolute but it's nothing compared to the sudden light, the sudden warmth that hits your frozen skin.
Nothing compared to the eyes that meet yours and the faces that fill your vision. The cold, wet, nose of your dog as it licks..blood from your face. You will never remember how you got hurt, how you ended up in the hole. Just the faces that met yours, the warmth of the sun on your skin...and the hug of your best friend as he craddled you against him.