The Demon Inheritance

EIGHT

 It's dark.

It always has been.

The sky is glossy obsidian to my misunderstanding, mortal eyes. The chains are hot. Sweat makes them slip around my body as they wrinkle together and clatter on the stones below. The place, I recognize isn't real. It's not what it looks like. I know in my heart that there is nothing there. In this place, there is no darkness, no light. No stones, no elements. No heat, no cold. The place simply doesn't exist. Not to anyone but me, and the other people held there. Our prison is made of chains, like our soul itself has been stitched to it. There is nothing here. But our small minds have been filled to see and feel something. Our brains can't comprehend the nothingness, so they create something, even though our minds do not exist. They create the shape of land. They see the looks of the other... prisoners.

I cry out in struggle, as I have done for a timeless amount of time. I miss someone. I don't remember who, but I crave them like a drug. My lungs burn nearly as badly as my skin, and my hair is clinging to my sweaty, greasy head. "Help! Someone help me!" My voice is unrecognizable. My voice is not really there. I'm only picturing it in a mind that does not even exist.

Screeches of pain rise up with my cry. They are the people, the other creatures, the aliens. They are held here with me, accused of being something none of us know - a Minium. The Minium, they say, as if there is only one. But some speak about it as if it is a race or group of people instead of a title. Some know more than others, but we all feel lost to the facts. We're all confused. I want to cry out, but I don't know who to scream out for. I forgot. I forgot their name, who I used to be.

Everything.

Someone - something - tells us to stop. They threaten us, and we all whimper down as one. I glance over to another captive. He has hair a color I've never seen before that is neither dark nor light, glistening eyes that remind me of fire, and bright ginger horns curling atop his head. I wonder what he was before. If he was good with a pinch of bad, if he was bad with a pinch of good. If he had friends and family. If he worked somewhere, if he's old enough to work, where he lives. Where he lived.

A woman beside me wipes her imaginary hand across her eyes - not that there is truly an imagination here. Her gaze is black, like the friend I can't remember. Her hair curls outwards at the bottom, beside her neck where it ends. Her skin is pale and fragile and flawless, like an eggshell. She looks pregnant.

"Ma'am," I whisper in a hoarse tone, careful not to be heard. "Ma'am, are you alright?" The notion of language does not exist here. She looks like she is from a country I cannot remember, but she can understand me. In the void, there is not speaking. There is something else. Not even thought occurs here, but our minds are too small to survive without stability. Still, she understands me. Like we're all just animals in the same cage, living only with notions. "Is the child alright here?"

"No, darling. You misunderstand. The child isn't here. Only me." The child had not been stolen from whatever place she'd come from, only her. I understood that, to some extent. "Thank you. What is your name?"

I can't remember, so I only look over to see how the boy with horns is doing. The woman understands my silence; none of us recognize titles like names and places. "Are you alright, boy?"

"Yes, Mistress. I want someone. I can't remember them..." The horned boy blinks at me in fear. His eyes are rich yellow. They glow, and the pupil is slit, like they belong on a cat. They are also too innocent to witness the void. I can only assume he is younger than I was. Not that I remember my age.

I try to bend the void so that he will see me smiling hopefully back at him, but I can't manipulate it as I have been doing. So, I duck my head in between my crossed arms, which are holding my knees together. "What do I look like?" I ask the woman. She can see me, at the very least. The void has been bent to give me a semi-physical form. That's why I can't escape. I am in the void now. I am part of it. Whatever I was before could only be spat out by the void, or saved by something completely different. Something the opposite of the void. The man who called himself 'Salt' had explained that to us. He is the only name any of us can recognize; the rest blurs.