Chapter 1, Hanger

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Darkness isn't bad.

It gets blamed for a lot of bad things, gets used to describe bad people. But the thing is, darkness has nothing to do with what people do, or think. It has nothing to do with what happens within it. There is no such thing as complete darkness. Dark is just a word to describe the absence of light, but light is always there, even when we cant see it.

 For so long, I lived in the dark. For so long that I could see perfectly in the dark. I didn’t know how I could see in the dark. I thought it was like that for every one. I suppose someone watched out for me, taught me to speak and stuff like that, you know, like nurturing, but I don’t remember it. I can only guess at my age, and the only name I have is ones that some kids gave me, when I went more towards the front of the castle. They had been snooping around, and word spread that there was a creepy kid in the castle, always hanging around.

I suppose that’s the way it went. Anyways, my supposed name is Hanger. I don’t know when I was born, or where I was born, and I have no memories before the age of six. But I do know one thing. There is someone keeping tabs on me. How do I know? Because every year or so, I’ll find something, somewhere in the castle. Like a little package. It always contains clothes, and then there are always a couple other trinkets. Usually a book or magazine. I rarely spoke, because there was no one to speak to.  I taught myself how to read and write with one of the books I got probably around the time I was eight or so. I never kept track of what day it was, because I never knew in the first place.

And I can tell you another thing. There were…things in the castle. I knew they were there. I rarely saw them. If I went to close to a door that led to the outside I was…warned. I had been attacked a couple times for what I thought was for no reason. My castle was my home, and for a long time I loved it. The stones had a dank, musty sense to them, and I never saw light. I had an image in my head of what it might be like, but only from books. I wanted to see it so badly, but if I even made real plans, one of the monsters would attack. I didn’t know how many there were in the castle, but I saw quite a few.

The first was a big, hulking green one that made a weird nose in the back of his throat. He was gooey and sticky, and left a trail of grotesque slime behind him. He had no eyes, as far as I could tell, and he sort of dragged his body along the stones, slowly. I had seen many others, much more frightening. The last one that attacked me was more of a where wolf than anything else, except it had human eyes, and it was ten times bigger than you would expect, with gross brown fur and dripping jowls. He had left me barely able to move. I still had scars from him, and a shiver went down my spine thinking about him. 

It was a curse. Literally, a curse. I remember the women distinctly. One of the most gorgeous women I have ever seen, and I was only six. She had soft blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and gentle hands that protected me for months at a time. She cursed me, when I tried to leave her. I was looking for the light, for a real home. It drove her mad, and she cursed me, then stuck me in the castle and wiped out most of memory, except that one.

I had never seen myself, as the castle had no mirrors, but I had a rough idea of what I looked like. The only way I kept track of how long I had been there was by the traditional scrapes on the wall sort of thing. I could count, but not very far. I was what you would call street smart. Except the fact that there were no streets in the castle. However, the castle was massive. There were small, dank rooms that frightened me, and tight corridors that smelled of death, and the blackness often over whelmed me in places like that, and it terrified me. There were long spiraling stair cases. So long, that there were times when, just to finish them, I would have to take several breaks. That, in a nutshell, was my life. The thing about darkness though, is that eventually, light breaks in.

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