So, I've decided to make the one exception to my rule of not posting my stories on YWS, anymore. This is for Kylan's contest and Angel :p

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Darkness; it lives within. Sometimes I exude it and it surrounds me, no dimensions to be seen, but its tightly confining. Hard to know things in here, boxed in by those pale hands, winding me up, tighter and tighter until I feel I’ll burst and of course I do –

Joyous light, it blinds my eyes; exposing the flaws within and without, those tiny cracks in my skin, that dull sheen in my eyes – it is momentary only.

They are there, waiting, slapping at me with those small, white hands and laughing – Push him down, push him down! Such exuberance for oppression is surely unnatural. The darkness, it is back, comforting the hurt, silencing the pain but I struggle against it – I remember the beach and the crash of waves, the creaking of wood and hoarse voices of sailors, damning and cursing with frightening regularity amidst forced camaraderie.

I lie below, in bits and pieces of fragmented awareness; incomplete. Brothers around me, sweating and pulling and groaning but I can do nothing. The gears are always turning, even then, ever tightening, ever moving and restraining. Those pale hands brought definition and I know now that I am dark – what was I before?

It doesn’t matter, not now, in the darkness of the box as they wind tightly, until every part of me is groaning and ideas, thoughts, and questions escape my clutch. I can feel the need building, a gradual heating up, a yearning I can’t express – I can’t find my name in the darkness, it slips through my fingers as I try to catch it up; it is formless.

It creaks. The gears, the crank, the constant winding up – smothers my breath, but I’m getting tighter and tighter and it no longer matters.

Let me out of the box.

Let me out.