LJ Idol Week 22: Turn Back Or Forge Ahead?
Darkness surrounded him from every direction, every possible step just as bad as another possible step.
He thought he could hear crying from one way, screaming from another. His eyes played tricks on him. He imagined glimpses of light bouncing off shadows of long slithering beasts, off sharp pointed talons, off giant hairy monsters.
He had no idea where to go, which way to turn, if there was a way that even led out. Maybe he was going to be stuck here, in this awful hopeless place, forever, looking for an escape and never finding one.
He sunk to the ground, too terrified to move. What if he went the wrong way and made things worse than they were now? Worse yet, what if he ran into Him?
•••
It would have been better if he could have remembered how he got there.
He had always been a happy, cheerful boy, no matter how hard his father had tried to beat it out of him.
“Someday you will realize who you are!” his father had said when he was seven, just before walking out of them and never coming back. That hadn’t drained any of his spirit. He had dried his mama’s tears, promised her she would find someone better and told her all the jokes he could remember in an effort to make her smile.
When he was twelve and he had finally grown into his own skin, the bullies at school had loved to pick on him because he didn’t look like anyone else, but he had learned how to run from them and was content to hide away in his room, doing magic to entertain his baby brother.
The girls in his year laughed at him when he tried to ask them out, but he just smiled and hung out with his few friends instead.
He didn’t know exactly when it changed, when the insults and the teasing began to chip away at his outer armor. Maybe it was when he lost his job, even though he was great at it, just because someone had discovered who his father was. Or maybe it was the day he gave into his true nature, just for a few minutes, and stole the piece of bread from the child who clearly needed it more than him.
But all he knew was that one day he had been that happy, cheerful boy and then the next he had looked in the mirror to discover a miserable man. And then the day after that he had gone to bed in his shabby one-room apartment and woken up in a place where no sunlight had ever seen.
•••
He was huddled on the ground, arms wrapped around his knees. He had thought his eyes might adjust to the darkness, but they hadn’t. He could still barely make out a shadow or two for a second at a time - monsters with fangs, with scales, with mouths so wide they could eat him whole.
It was hot, too. He could feel the sweat dripping down his body, gluing his clothes to his back, his arms, his legs. Sweat dripped like a waterfall from his forehead, but yet he didn’t move, not even to wipe it off.
Instead he shut his eyes against the shadows, tried not to listen to the echoes of screams and cries all around him and wished for all this to disappear, to just end.
•••
He would never know how long he had sat there, huddled in the darkness. How many minutes had passed, how many hours, weeks, months. Maybe even years.
But just when he was beginning to contemplate calling for the monsters, letting them finish him off, he heard a voice. It was soft, high-pitched. A little girl.
“You must go,” the little girl said. She sounded close to him. He lifted an arm, felt around for her, but all he touched was the emptiness of air.
“Go,” the little girl said. “You know the way.”
As she spoke, he began to fill something stir inside him. Hope, perhaps. He pushed himself to his feet.
“Will you come with me?” he said. “I’m not sure I can do it by myself.”
But there was no answer. He took a few steps, felt around, but there was nothing, no one.
“Come back!” he called as loud as he dared into the darkness, for he knew ears were probably listening everywhere, but the little girl did not answer.
Instead, in the distance, he saw a flicker of light, as though it were beckoning to him.
He had to chance it. He couldn’t just let himself get trapped here without even trying.
He took a step toward the light, then another, then another, hoping with each step that he was heading in at least the somewhat right direction.
•••
He woke up on the couch in his apartment with no knowledge of how he had gotten back there.
He knew from first glance that time had passed. Cobwebs hung on his walls, plants that had once been thriving hung dead and limp. He lifted his hands and studied the new wrinkles he saw there, caught sight of a gray hair on his clothes that he instinctively knew was his.
He stood up. His body ached, his joints stiff, like he hadn’t used his muscles in days, but he felt better than he had in a long time.
Sun was pouring through a window and he had a desperate desire to go out into it.
Before he could make it to his door, it swung open as if on its own. His brother stood silhouetted against the sky outside.
“Where were you?” his brother cried, racing forward to pull him into an embrace.
He told him all about the dark, hot place and the horrors he had seen.
“But how are you here?” his brother asked. “No one ever escapes from Hell!”
“You know what Mama always told us,” he said. “If you’re going through Hell, you just have to keep going. That’s what I did.”
His brother still looked horrified. “But Father will find you!” he cried. “And bring you back!”
“No, he won’t,” he answered. “If he couldn’t find me there when I was with him, he will never find me here,” and he walked past his brother out into the sun.
Thank you for reading! This was written for Week 22 of therealljidol. I decided to mix things up a little this time with a bit of fiction. You can read more stories inspired by the topics here. Voting is here if you are so inclined to vote for me or anyone else!