Confessions of a Madman

Chapter Two: Introductions

When your physical self is exiled to an uncertain darkness for what seems like an eternity, your sight begins to cave into itself, forcing your gaze away from the enveloping darkness and deep into yourself.

That is what I felt for hours on end in that dark room. My own stare, falling back into itself, looking into my mind. I felt the room around me glare and wonder as I turned away, like a million glowing eyes burning holes into the back of my head, closing instantaneously as I whip about to face them. A military tactic, no doubt, breaking a maniac's mind by forcing him to contemplate upon either himself, or his enveloping shadow. 

At first, it was easy. Light shone in through the bars on the iron door. Yet as time strode on by, less and less light would shine in. Another tactic. My gaze was instinctively set upon the only significant hope of escape, and as that was slowly taken away from me, my eyes began frantically searching, finding nothing in the dark, until I could no longer recall where I was looking in the first place.

I was alone, finally. Left to impatiently wait in a dark cell, given over to darkness and madness, so that the two may break my spirits for the ease of my captors. And I had all but forgotten the stinging pain in my gut from where was pulled not too long ago a steel dagger.

At one point, I simply shut my eyes, at least reassuring myself with the fact that I was looking at my eyelids, and nothing more. Yet it did not help with the fact that I could see the colors and faces swirling around in my head, my mind frantically searching for something to focus on in the dark, something to see, and something to process. But it couldn't. And so my mind stumbled backwards, falling into itself over and over again overburdened by darkness and forced to flee to respite. Yet what it found was something else. 

It found the moving image of a young boy. The boy was dressed in dull rags, his knees and elbows scraped, his skin covered in streaks of caked mud and dirt. He gazed through me, standing perfectly still, vacantly staring off into the world as it moved about him. His feet, blackened and weary, were partially submerged within a puddle of murky black water on the paved street. Houses stood tall and establishments rose along the paved walkways and men in black coats with black hats walked alongside women in grey and blue dresses, their pale faces aflush in conversation, or bleak in contemplation. Officers rode their horses through the streets, rushing past the crowds, shoving women, men and children aside in a hurry. Behind them, a creaking siren announced the passage of a motorized cart, and every man, woman and child hurried to move off the streets, pushing past each other to make way for the machine. Everyone, except the boy. My view was fixed, frozen. I could neither move nor call out, yet I saw what was coming, long before it came. Inlayed in the uneven road were steel tracks, and moving on those tracks was an iron cart, unmanned and slow. I tried to call, but no words would come. Out of the corner of my eyes, people stood frozen, unable, no, unwilling to help. The boy looked on.

He turned, but it was too late. The siren blared into the crowd, deafeningly and threateningly, as it rolled over the boy, mowing him down. Gasps and mumbling overcame the crowd as they looked on, yet no one dared move towards the cart, or speak out in protest. The iron cage moved on, painting the tracks behind itself while leaving the puddle in which the boy stood a deep dark red. A ringing noise filled my ears, drowning out the crowd as it moved back onto the street to continue on its way. My gaze was forced upwards, towards the sky, were a solitary seagull soared and plunged its way through the salty, heavy wind. Then, as if from far away, a mother’s scream of terror ended the memory, leaving me with no image, and no sound.

I opened my eyes, but nothing changed. I was still in darkness, still in silence. I listened and listened. Outside, no footsteps were to be heard, and no voices could be made out. I listened harder, until I heard my heart beating in my chest. The beating grew louder, and louder, as I grew weary, and tiresome.