Above me seem to be prisms of glass. Around me are shards of glass, protruding in a jagged-like fashion. Sure to be dangerous if I ever get near them.
My hand unfurls, revealing the key I had - apparently - held onto for dear life. The embossed surface had pressed deep into my skin, leaving a very annoying itchy pain. I scratched, wondering why everything had a slight blue-ish hue. But I, in my monochrome color scheme - as far as I could see - was unaffected by the blue. I'd imagine me similar to a newspaper cutout on a blue piece of construction paper...
"Who are you?"
"Why am I here?"
"Why is all I am able to feel is pain?"
I was at the mercy of the mysterious pain in my chest.
"Who am I? I am you."
"Another you, created by you. But I am not you."
"I'm someone else entirely. I am who you could've been."
A searing pain only felt from the inside - a burning, a deep deep pressure - a reverse branding (if you will). The air is being knocked out of me. I can't breathe.
"I am the you who opened the Box."
"I am the you who isn't hurt all the time."
"I am the you - the only one - with true wings."
I utter a sharp cry, some remark against the voice - my voice - that I haven't heard for a long time. I was rendered unable to make coherent sentences.
I made myself the embodiment of my confusion, my anger and my illusionary - if not half - dramatized pain.
- - -
Is this real?
- - -
The last thing I saw was the crystalline ceiling before it faded... I closed my eyes once again.
- - -
It was box. An ordinary box. It was the box I put my heart in, my colors. So now I have no heart.
I had my heart in a jar.
I had my mind in a jar.
I dug needles into every pore, every cell. It convulsed for a short time but it stopped eventually.
Soon enough it was numb to the outside world.
After all, they were in jars. A mere vessel for a bigger more dumber host.
This is an experiment (or it was).
Now it's out of control.
And all I see is the deceiving monster in the mirror. I created it. It created me, which came first...?
- - -
Blackness. The Void. A spotlight shines down upon me, alerting me awake. I took a sharp breath, wincing, unaware that the pain was gone. I peered down saw the tatters that were this shirt, saw the faux valentine heart over where the real one should be - just like a brand or tattoo. It was being pierced by needles, like Cupid's arrow.
I sit up, finding an object in my pocket. Reluctantly, I took the blocky object out into the light. It was a box, a tiny palm-sized one, the decorations similar to the key... Which suddenly I removed from my other pocket.
"Sing a song, a song of light --"
"-- Make the demons scurry home into the depths of delusion --"
"In order to gain reprieve, from your restless dreams."
Easily enough, the key was for the box. It opened, revealing another. I had to use the same key. It too revealed another box. I used the key for it too. And begun a chain of three to four boxes, a box inside another box, the same key for everything till... I reached the possibly last box, where the key was too big.
The box was at least half a thimble in size and was unlike the other boxes, all pretty and decorated. It was a solid dark red color, lined with fine threads of gold. I examined the thing up and down, side to side and found a gold word... But it disappeared before I could make sense of it (since it was very small after all).
Just then, the box opened and out of it I took a scroll of paper.
It was blank but, given a few seconds, words came, as if being written and erased in real time.
"This is a story."
"That is a gift."
"Shelter not the soul --"
"...in your imaginings."
"But give unto thee, what others have given already."
"Otherwise...you shall remain --"
"...among the wingless."
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