Darkness For Eternity

• Zachary Pitts, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2014

The deepest darkest, most distraught feeling lingered in the pit of my stomach. My eyes slowly peeled open and the pitch black darkness filled the cavities of my mind. The slightest glimpse of light shone upon my face. I rose to my feet from the hardened surface I lay upon. I reached for the light and could feel myself subsiding further and further into the abyss below, as if the walls were rising taller around me and the ground was bottoming out beneath my very feet. I lay my head against the icy ground beneath me, closing my eyes, about to give up faith and subside into the murky shadows. A familiar voice called my name, echoing throughout the perilous depths. A bright light pierced through my eyes, disturbing the darkness that clouded my mind and swallowed my soul. A cold padding of ice rested upon my face and I slowly rose from the depths of my pain and suffering. The glacial surface of a smooth-edged object ever so slightly pressed upon my bounding chest, I shot up releasing an exorbitant exhale of relief and worry.
An ear-splitting roar bounded outwards from the focal point of my larynx. A roar of pain so loud and boisterous that it could not be contained by the clenching of my teeth and tensing of my muscles. It bellowed across the room, drawing every set of eyes in the vicinity towards me as if my shout was a hefty magnet attracting metal shards from every direction. A razorblade impaled my abdomen, slicing through the flesh as if it was a knife cutting through warm butter. I flinched and attempted to rip my body away from the knife. A man as thin as a rake grabbed hold of my arms, pinning them to the sides of my body. He was a man of average stature and his grip was firm. He was dressed in heavenly blue scrubs, covered with blood splotches across his torso. Firmly repositioning my hands from the side to my chest, he aggressively insisted that I apply pressure to the wound to stall the bleeding. As I clenched my hands together on the seeping wound a sickening image appeared in my head. I slowly started remembering what had happened and why I was here.
Flash backs spun through my head as the lights in the room started to dim, softer and softer. The bright light that was earlier blaring to the stage of blindness was starting to fade away. The noisy chatter and instruments in the room started getting softer until the only remaining sounds were that of my heart slowly succumbing as I gasp for my last breathes of air and the annoying, coarse beeping of the machine beside me. A cold shiver ran down my spine and into my toes forcing them to wriggle about uncontrollably. What felt like years passed as I laid there cold, lifeless on the table. The machine had finally rung out, leaving behind the coldest, darkest long flat line of monotone signifying the final beat of a now resting heart.
An intense jolt of electricity surged throughout my body. I shot upright like a Jack in the Box after the final crank. The silence departed and the darkness descended back into the shadows as the blaring lights obscured my vision again. I laid back down anxiously as my whole body continued to shake. I could feel the scorching burn marks from the defibrillators that were pressed against my chest. The doctor told me that I was in a stable condition and that I had nothing more to worry about. The deep wound that seeped from my abdomen would heal over time. It was a disturbing experience for those few seconds that my heart stopped beating. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. Nor was there a golden gate to heaven floating in the clouds. There was nothing to embrace in the afterlife. It was cold. It was dark. It was miserable. I felt almost as if I was trapped inside a large room with no windows and no doors. Only an everlasting darkness for eternity. The doctor asked me what it was like travelling to the other side. I told him “You could say it was like having the deepest darkest, most distraught feeling lingering in the pit of your stomach. Except, the feeling was never going to disappear and no matter what you tried, there would be no escape from that feeling.”