Falling To Darkness

• Jennifer Steel, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2015

Disconnection from the real world.

The preliminary stage of insanity. The preamble where all who had gained a loathing fear of death awaited their unavoidable fate. Back to the irreversible immersion into a timeless loss of unconsciousness.

It wasn't first time she had traipsed herself to an irredeemable state of mind.

Overloaded. She was stuck in an unexplainable state of euphoria. It felt like a light-headed and worriless version of being feverish.

The thoughts were always found within her. It always bounced and echoed from invisible walls, proving that this young girl wasn't as free as she originally thought. She was still imprisoned, but just couldn't see the limits anymore. That realisation was what had kept her from going further and losing herself completely, losing to her mind.

At that moment she only had one vague impression of reality. But she clung to that feeling of hope. The one memory that kept her sane, replaying in her mind like a broken record.

That one mundane memory, felt so distant. It felt like it wasn't even hers.


She was standing in the rain. The cool water that she could barely see was there, pouring down like bullets, but she failed to feel it anymore against her pale, almost ivory like skin. It was as if she had been cast out of her own body, shrouded by a congenial numbness.

Her head despondently titled up, watching immersed to the void of darkness which surrounded her like a comforting embrace. Almost child like, her dull optics glimmered with consternation at the word around her, all colour she once knew had bled from across the barren derelict land, leaving only the shades of death. The world above was a twisted shade of grey and the sullen clouds flinched away from the ghostly shadow of the moon. Its pale, immortal sheen cast a melancholy gleam to all it touched and indeed, there was nothing beyond its reach.


It had been so foolish of her, so frighteningly out of place that it made her desperate. A pretence of a beautiful golden glow avid to lie to itself. Yet a single extraneous glance could pull her out of her self indulged madness.


And almost like a delusion, an alternative sense of reality, her eyes lay fixed upon the incandescent ball of hydrogen that almost seemed to shyly peek out from its hiding place of the overshadowed murky abyss.


It bloomed like a beautiful pretentious crimson rose, a delectable sight to see like no other. The sun peered our beyond the darkness, beyond all pain, like a sunflower opening its golden petals to show the world in all it's glory. Almost in a blink of a nonexistent eye it was as if the bleak and negligent land she had once known had disappeared and was replaced by a luxurious, felicitous realm. A sinuous grin formed on her chapped lips. This was what she was desperately waiting for...

Hope.