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Black Box Fears
An empty black room,
The darkness so thick
That light could never penetrate
A deafening silence
Cuts through like a knife
And cleaves your mind in two
Your mind,
Sliced in half
Has now shattered,
Slivers of it
Carving into your skull
All thoughts of yours
Vanish,
All feelings instantly
Dissipate
The silence has taken hold
Of your head and heart,
Leaving only pain in its wake
You are controlled by the darkness,
The shadows make you their puppet
Their movements are copied by you,
Spiders tying their silk
To your hands and feet
Wisps of fog trail past your ankles
And the cold begins to set
In to your bones
Shivers slide down your spine
And your hair stands on end,
The cold has made you numb
To the pain inside your head
Slowly, you lose the feeling
You had in your limbs,
The sensation you previously felt
Left with only faint tingling
And twitching fingers
Then the room becomes bone dry,
Electricity crackling in the air
A jolt spikes through your nerves
And you regain what you had lost,
Flexing your limbs at will
But then the shadows take hold again,
The spider silk reasserting its control,
You fight to make the darkness surrender
But your efforts bring you no avail
Slowly,
Quietly,
You make up your mind
And surrender control,
Knowing that the shadows,
Though taking your body,
Have not taken your mind
Your breath fogs in front of you,
Your eyes close
To the empty darkness of the room,
Your mind stops racing
And you devise a plan.
You stay there,
Suspended only by the silk
And as the air cools down,
The electricity begins to leave,
And your breathing becomes heavy,
Steady,
And calm
Allow the tension in your body to
Let go
And watch as everything
Begins to
Glow
The silence remains, but a softness,
A sweet feeling,
Fills the room
And a smooth light
Enters the space around you
The strings drop
And you are set free,
Your eyes opening
The light begins to dull,
Twinkling pinpricks
Encompassing your vision
A sliver of light shining
From a heavy crescent moon
Hanging above you
The room
Is no longer a room
You find yourself in a meadow,
Flowing grasses and wildflowers
Ripple in a slight breeze
A warmth encompasses you
And a slight contentedness
Settles into your heart
No longer trapped,
You feel as if you’re soaring,
The hills rolling beneath you,
Trees no more than dandelion puffs
Standing up
Amongst the darkened color
Of the flowers and grass
Slowly,
Though,
You near the edge
Of this reality,
Approaching a deep ravine,
A depthless pit of black
As you peer in,
A sound escapes you
A soft gasp,
The first thing you’ve heard
Since you awoke,
Suspended in the black darkness
Of that room
It is only then
That you realize,
Though you have felt
And seen
This world,
There has been
No coppery taste of blood
As your mind shattered,
No sound as you screamed,
Terrified,
And alone
In that room
No scent of dust within the room
Nor the smell of the flowers
Or the grass and trees
You wonder to yourself:
Where am I?
What is this place?
And softly,
As your voice bounces
Around the hills,
A voice from the pit answers:
Your mind.
But what does that mean?
How can you be in your mind
With your mind fully shattered
How can you feel the terror,
The pain and the dread,
Of being alone in the darkness,
The only other thing there monsters
And shadows
How can you see
The darkness
With your eyes wide open,
A darkness
That could never exist
In reality
How can any bit of this fever dream
Be summed up
Into something as simple as
A nightmare
How can such true feelings
Exist in a dreamscape
A place
That's not even remotely
Real
How?
It’s—
Well,
It’s hard to explain
The voice says
It’s a soft voice,
One of reason
And of thought
And kindness, too
Think of it as…
As you said,
A dream
It is a dream,
A hyper-realistic dream
A dream
So real
That it bleeds
Into reality
A dream
So true
That it seems
To exist outside of time
And to play
Against every rule of
Waking world
A dream
So fantastical
That it seems
To never have an end
Nor beginning
And only exists
Within a realm
Of your own crazed
Imagination.
Does that make sense?
You feel yourself standing
Amongst the grass again
As if reality
Has come crashing back down
Upon you
I…
Think so?
Your voice responds,
Not sure how to answer
Otherwise
This dream,
The voice continues,
Has become a reality
A world in of its own
Your head tilts in thought
Like a simulation?
There is a feeling,
A sort of sound—
Like laughter
Almost—
As the voice responds
Similar,
Yes.
You could think of it that way
Your mind begins spinning,
But the landscape doesn’t change
But why?
You wonder
Why is it
That reality grounded me
Both literally and figuratively
But I still am trapped
Within my mind
How is this reality
But also not?
How is it that my mind
Though shattered and broken
Can explain the questions I have
When I don’t know the answers
I can’t be the only one in this
Broken
Reality dreamscape
How would one answer that question
When,
In your mind,
You are always alone
How are you in your mind
With others to share it
The air shifts
And the voice sighs,
The mood of the meadow
Changing
It’s complicated
And more convoluted
Than a simple
Yes or no
The pit begins to shrink,
Forming a blob
Of the darkest black imaginable,
Slowly morphing
Into a humanoid shape
A person
Now stands in front of you,
Its form that of whomever you trust most
The voice continues to speak,
The person gesturing
As it does so
The answer
Is that no mind is entirely alone
There’s always someone else
Within you,
Whether or not you allow it to be
It’s like your conscience
But from a person you trust
The person you would listen to
For the right answer
To anything
And a version of them,
The version you see them as
Lives here,
In your brain
As me.
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