I feel like a space of darkness within my brightly lit room, my music creating an aura of sound around me, feeling the lightning inside my heart and the thunder of its pounding pulse in my ears, unescapable. I’ve sat in this same spot for hours, flesh creeping into tiny bumps as my unmoving body has grown colder, the thoughts I’d avoided forever finally clawing their heavy, inexhaustible way into my brain and settling there, some slow weighty beast of legend coming to rest and breed, threatening destruction. Vaguely, I hear the noises outside (people, continuing life without knowledge or care, a painful mockery of my own quiet existence), and something in my head suggests that the hour is late and I should stir my structure from its aching permanence of position. My body almost registers this; a slight shifting movement, quickly stilled by the monster in my mind raising an eyelid and glaring me. I am filled with a desire to escape this, though I could no more run from it than slay it. A crawling agony of terror spills over the grey cells operating my corpse-like tranquility, quelled by rushing anger at my own static immobility. Standing suddenly, I face it with empty rage, my despair and inner turmoil inflicting self-ravishment as it rises to its awful height in one surprisingly lithe moment, the emotions raping my heart granted swift solace in nothingness as I feel my shadow, my music, even the light around me, torn and shredded, sucked down its gaping throat.