Nightlight

Chapter One

- Chapter One -
The Splitting World

The clock ticks. "I haven't slept right since it began again." Kiran mutters. His voice is soft and low, his fingers gripping tightly to the brown, leather chair he sits in. His eyes appear heavy, weighed down, gutted to the extent that even a stranger on the street could tell he doesn't quite seem like himself.
"It's back." He says.
​Lilith, a psychotherapist and close friend of Kiran's since-departed mother, raises a brow, equal parts curious and concerned, and says,
"Well, Kiran, as you know, it's my job to ask you this: what is back exactly?" A slight pause ensues. She's a little worried that their relationship might get in the way of making this a useful session for him; she genuinely does love and want the best for him. She watched him grow up, after all.
"I need you to say it out loud; I need you to tell me exactly what it is that's been happening to you." She continues, anyway, looking concerned.
​Kiran hesitates. Strange things have been happening to him lately, the kind of things one should not tell their therapist on the first appointment (if ever), the kind that will get you thrown out of the building and sent straight to a mental hospital that serves antidepressants and pudding three times a day.
He's never been to a therapy session before; he's spent all eighteen years of his life not believing in them, but he still knows about them - what might come if he slips up and tells Lilith what's been going on lately. Besides, in his mind, he's always felt that he's strong enough to handle the poetic woes of life all on his own. One could call him naïve, but if there's one lesson he remembers from his father, Ryker, it's that to ask for help is to show weakness, admit defeat.
​He doesn't even really know why he decided to come here today, what good could possibly come from it. With everything that's been happening, it's been hard for him to focus, think clearly. Maybe this is just a bad decision.
The only thing he's sure of is that he dislikes it here, this quiet place, this cold office, this silent, empty room with nothing much to look at. They do that on purpose, leave these rooms void of distractions. They want the only thing that's noteworthy of looking at is what lies beneath your skin. Kiran knows this, and it's part of the reason why he can't stand therapists. It's "another one of their tricks, their mind games" he explained to his mother, Camila, years before she passed.
​Despite his instincts, Kiran responds,
"I don't really know. A feeling, perhaps."
​"A feeling, huh? Yes, I get those, too." Lilith blurts out playfully, half smiling. She quickly realizes what she's said - an awkward regret blooms within her gut. It's a difficult task, remaining professional around someone you've watched grow up. She was a first-year university student when she witnessed Kiran taking his first steps. And here he is now, sitting in her office, motherless and miserable. You can literally see the mental agony dripping from his eyes, pooling as dark, black bags below them.
​Kiran fakes a smile, another lie he'll have to tell today.
​"Yes, a feeling." He says, knowing very well that it's far greater than that – more so an overtaking of every sense in his body than just a feeling, never mind what he's been seeing.
​"It only lasts a few seconds, but it's robbing me of my ability to sleep. I live in fear of it happening again." He continues.
​"Why does this feeling make you feel afraid, Kiran?" Lilith asks.
​"Good God, not this therapist talk. Why did I even come here?" He thinks to himself, getting upset - an anxious anger building up inside of him. He scours his mind for a nerve that hasn't been stepped on yet, rapidly tapping his right index finger on the chair, trying not to say something he knows he will regret. He's not usually this on-edge; normally, this wouldn't get to him, but doing something you can't stand to do while feeling miserable can shorten even the longest of fuses.
​He collects himself and utters,
"It's unlike anything else I've ever felt before. This feeling, not only does it come and go in waves, but it carries along with it the force of an ocean."
​"The force of an ocean?" Lilith questions. "You've clearly got a beautiful way with words. So when did this feeling first occur?"
​Kiran knows the exact moment this started happening. He could never possibly forget such an event. He pauses briefly. Looking back on it is making his bones ache, but it's not the type of feeling that originates in one's bones. It's coming from his soul, like an earthquake; his bones are simply feeling the shockwaves.
​His body language is changing. He's looking down now, finger no longer tapping, head faced downward at his black shoes and black sweat pants. Water could wail up in his eyes at any moment – emotion, pain, anxiety, filling up his body. He already doesn't want to be here, anymore.
​"A month after my mother died." He manages.
​Lilith can see that it's hard for him to talk about this, but she's beginning to get the sense that he's not being completely open with her; her years of training and experience tells her that he isn't telling the entire story.
"There must be more going on here." She thinks to herself.
"The way thinking about his mother's death is affecting him...he's too far into the grieving process to be this torn up. I've seen him talking about his mother before, smiling, laughing. No, this is something else, something deeper than just loss. What could this feeling be? Maybe he's found out about his mother's -"
"You know what? I think coming here was a bad idea." Kiran says as he stands up, completely stopping Lilith's thoughts all at once.
"It's grief. I want my mother back is all. It's just grief." He continues.
"I don't need therapy to cope with the fact that my mother killed herself. I can do it on my own, just as I've been doing it for years now."
"Kiran, look, it's clearly bothering you. Have a seat and let me talk to you. It's imperative that you don't bottle these emotions up. You get that from your parents. You don't want to do that; you don't want to end up as they did." She says calmly, her curiosity more so than her compassion not wanting him to leave.
Kiran, irrationally shocked and angry, flips the leather chair over on its side. His emotional state is making him act like a person he's never been before. Kiran is usually calm, collected, confident. He's a writer, after all – albeit, not a very successful one – and you have to have mental control in order to write stories and create worlds for a living.
"Don't talk about my parents like that!" He declares in a raised voice, tightly clenching his fists.
"I respect you as a person a lot, but you damn therapists think you know everything. You think you can just float above everybody else, analyzing us mere mortals with your gift of sight. It's ridiculous! My parents were good people, and you will never know the true depth of their love." He declares in anger.
"This isn't about their love, Kiran. It's about theirs and your mental health, your sanity. I knew your parents very well; we grew together before you were even born. They tortured themselves by keeping their pain in. You have to talk to me." She says calmly, keeping her composure seemingly without effort.​She's been in situations like this before; she's seen her fair share of angered patients and can handle any situation thrown her way with grace. She's highly intelligent and as confident as they come – sometimes, a dangerous combination, which she is self-aware enough to realize.
After a slight pause, she says,
"I know you're not being honest with me. You have to open up."
Kiran puts his hands on the back of his head, lets out a deep sigh, and walks in a circle around the room, franticly thinking, realizing that he is in the wrong, that she just wants what's best for him. He knows this isn't him, that it's just the stress and lack of sleep, not his disliking of therapists; he loves Lilith.
"Why am I getting so angry?" he thinks to himself as he paces the room.
"I have so much strange energy inside of me, ever since I started seeing the black lights. This feeling, it's dark – so dark, so frightening. But it feels...powerful. I feel so damn strong." He thinks to himself, smiling a mad smile.
Chills are beginning to form on his arms and the back of his neck. The entirety of his body is tingling wildly. A coldness is enveloping his body, yet his bones are utterly on fire. His vision is starting to blur, but he's seeing something odd. As his sight shifts in and out of focus, he catches a glimpse of it just long enough for him to make sense of what he is seeing: it's the black lights; they're back again, speeding in all directions, whichever way he looks, all around him.
Suddenly, he stops in his tracks, facing the opposite direction of Lilith.
"Kiran...are you okay?" she gets out, both worried and slightly panicked, completely unable to read his facial cues.
With his arms at his side, no more panic in his body, he slowly turns toward Lilith's direction, laughing devilishly. The first thing she sees is his smile. It's the one of nightmares, crooked at both ends, teeth exposed for the world to see. It sends shivers down her spine; the standing hairs on Kiran's arms have seemed to jump over onto hers.
Right then, she notices it, them, his eyes: they're entirely blacked out. The life is so far removed from them, it's not a stretch of the imagination to say that this is no longer a human, no longer Kiran.
She's frozen in place, paralyzed by fear, sedated by nothing more than the chemicals coursing through her veins.
"Am I okay?" Kiran asks in low, chilling voice, as his rests his arms on the leather chair he was previously sitting in. His voice exhumes a horrifying kind of confidence, no longer sounding anything like the man she's known for so many years.
His hands clench tightly onto the chair. The fluorescent lights above him flicker and then blow out all at once; shattering glass falls on top of him. Lilith's eyes widen, and her head jumps back in shock.
"I think that's a question better reserved for yourself!" He screams out as he brings the chair up above his head without an ounce of effort, cocks his arms back, and launches it at Lilith with a force greater than any human in this world should ever be capable of.
Bang!
Suddenly, just as the chair leaves his hands, the sound of a sonic boom fills the room. Kiran falls to the ground, dazed and confused, his body in a tremendous amount of pain. He looks all around him; his vision is going in and out again, but he can see that everything is warping upwards, as if a black hold just appeared above him. His heart is racing at unfathomable speeds, but he is not quite afraid. The shock overcomes him.
The world goes black.

* * *

Kiran awakes to the sound of his ears ringing. He opens his eyes slowly, vision still slightly blurred; he doesn't know where he is, but he can tell that he's outside. It's cold where he is, very cold.
​He uses his hands to hold his upper body up; he still can't see nor hear very much at all. Whatever happened, it did a number on him; he's still recovering from the blast. He begins blinking his eyes and shaking his head rapidly, hoping that it'll bring his vision and hearing back, or at least make it better. It's one thing to be dazed and confused; it's another to be dazed, confused, blind, and deaf.
​All of a sudden, he can slightly make out a shadowy figure carrying some kind of staff pacing quickly toward him. Under normal circumstances, this would be a grave cause for concern, but these aren't normal circumstances, and Kiran is not concerned. He's more so intrigued, paradoxically feeling both miserable and powerful at the same time.
​"Who are you?" He calls out to the best of his abilities.
​In a matter of a few blinks, the shadowy figure is already at his feet.
​"My, oh, my. You were about to kill that poor, old lady, weren't you, Kiran? What a bad decision that would have been. If you weren't so clueless, you would be thanking me right now." The shadowy figure says in a mid-toned, raspy voice.
​Kiran still cant make out this figure's appearance, but he knows that this person is a male...or, at least, sounds like a male. He doesn't even know if it's a person at all, actually, as his eyes are in no place to be seeing physical traits.
​"Anyhow," the shadowy figure continues, "My name is Amara. Welcome to purgatory."
​Kiran's heart races, he feels oddly alive inside but completely unable to get any words out. He wouldn't even have any time to if he wanted, as Amara quickly adds,
​"Now get up. We have places to be."