Taint

So.

Much.

Pain.

I am not so weighed down by some things, it's true. I feel more free than before, yes. But I am not freed from everything.

A girl's voice calling my name. I pause, and listen again, but she has faded away. I search for the person calling, going to the front room and the kitchen, but it does no good, so I return to my room.

The darkness gathering in the hallway, waiting to attack. I hear it first, because it shakes the door, and then I see it, as the light flickers, and then I see the eyes in the darkness, normal except for the menacing and hostile look in them.

Pain.

I cast out the darkness, the girl's voice calling me. They leave reluctantly but I can feel that they've gone, and I can no longer hear them or see them in the hallway or anywhere around me.

But inside of me...

I am tainted by this darkness.

Still I can feel it eating at me. The darkness is poison. I fear it will destroy me completely, and I fear how this is to be done. Will it overpower me and take over my body, make me do horrible things? I would prefer a different method than that. But I know my opinion on my destruction doesn't really matter.

There is never an option other than pain. There hasn't been a different option for a considerable length of time. Get rid of one pain and another immediately takes its place, or if it does not, it lets me feel free for a while and then the suffocating feeling of more pain crushes my spirit and the essence of who I am or might become one day, lower into the abyss of my silence and solitude.