The Days Of Hellfire

Chapter One.

Augusta, Maine
Present day.

An old Maiden's tale about how I came into existence.
-K. D

THERE ONCE was nothing but darkness.

There was no earth to live on. No humans to wander the lands, no animals to graze the fields or swim in abundance in the waters, and no Gods to conquer the skies. There lived no stars, no planets, and no galaxies. Only the Darkness. The Darkness and the Silence.

The two beings have only ever known eachother. For millions upon million of years, they shared an affair that nothing else could ever phantom. The darkness mingled lovingly with the silence, keeping it cloaked and swaddled in its everpresent nothingness. In return, the silence would leave the darkness with a sense of security. Because if all was quiet, all was well. If all remained muted, everything remained okay.

This was the way of things for a very long time. The galaxy continued to be vast and infinite and silent. It was dark and often lonely, but more than anything, it was lovely. The Darkness and the silence never tired of each other and their bond never once faltered.

Until one faithful day...

ALONE IN her room, Winter Reynolds suddenly jolts awake mid snooze. She blinks her eyes rapidly and pushes her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose. Laying limply on the bed by her left hand, a pen; in her right, she holds the spine of the large book she was reading. Or was trying to read. Dozing off mid-sentence seemed to put a pause on that.

She sighed loudly and sweeped her hand roughly across her face. She did not know what time it was, or how long she'd been up before her slight relapse into sleep, but she did know that she had been trying to busy herself with things to do to survive the rest of the night for quite a while now. And she was aware that fully going back to sleep wasn't really an option.

Winter had experienced a terrible nightmare.

She didn't exactly remember what the nightmare had been about, but what she did remember clearly was the very prominent feeling of fear. A very... profound sense of fear that ate her from the inside out and left her feeling weak. It had chased her awake with a scream that had been barely contained in her throat. The feeling clung to her even now, hours after she was last asleep. It served as a reminder of what was to come if she decided to slip into her conscious again.

When she woke the first time around, she could feel her anxiety come alive within her. Hot sweat was practically poring out of every pore in her body like a faucet. Her chest ached so badly that it'd hurt to take breaths, like a hundred hands were pressing down on her from above, trying to see how much she could take before her ribs shattered and her organs went splat.

So, after doing some light sketching, painting her finger and toe nails an eccentric color of blue, a therapeutic crying session, and binge eating a whole bag of sour gummy worms to distract herself, she decided to read.

And what a lovely book it was so far, the point of view made to be centered around the beginning of time, before the creation of anything. She scored it from the local bookshop she often went to last weekend, but never got the chance to read it. The lady who owned the shop, Mrs. Kyson, had insisted that she take the book for free.

"The book has been sitting on that shelf for God knows how long now. No one has tried to purchase it. Just take it, child, free of charge," she had said after Winter tried to pay for it. The book keepers eyes seemed distant for a moment, as if she was recalling how many times shes attempted to unload the book on someone.

"Please, take it. I insist. I will not accept your money, Winter."

So she reluctantly accepted the book. She grabbed it from Mrs. Kyson's ashy hands, came home, and put it on her bookshelf, where it has been for over a week now until today. She was only one page in, and even though she momentarily dozed off, she found that she loved the book already. Her veins tingled with excitement as she turned the thick page.