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.

    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. My lungs burn nearly as badly as my skin, and my curly black hair is clinging to my greased head. “Help! Someone help me!” My voice is unrecognizable. My voice is not really there.

    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.

    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, if he was bad. 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?”

    “No, darling. The child isn’t here. Only I.” 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.

    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.

    “You have brilliant green eyes,” the woman says. “And black hair that curls so wildly yet beautifully. You look… youthful. And impossible to tame.” She stops for a moment, letting herself rest before bending the semi-physical part of the void again. “Your skin glows, and your lips are slightly chapped. What do I look like?”

    I explain her appearance, and she beams at it. Then I ask, “What am I?”

    “You don’t look like the boy over there.” She nods over to Horns. “More… like me. Perhaps we are the same thing? I’m not sure. Our description is similar, is it not?” Giving the bending void a break, she droops into the same helpless position as I had.

    How wonder how we can bend the void if there is nothing to bend. Then, I wonder if there really is an opposite to this. Is there a universe without eternal nothingness, without death and cages, without imaginary chains and where people know themselves? The more pressing question shoots into me, and my heart sinks. If there is another place like that. Will they come save us? Why would they? I’m sure who I was before wouldn’t have done it.

    “Is there death here?” I ask.

    “I don’t know,” answers a little girl. “Is there time here?”

    “I don’t know.”

    I close my eyes. The void… The Void… The Dark… I beam at myself for creating a new title for the horrid world, questioning what dark is. I know that I am not going to leave The Dark anytime soon, whatever concept of time lied beyond this cage. I have nothing from before to hold onto and give me hope. The thing is, they won't let me die. If I attempted to end my life -whatever that was - they won’t let me. I begin crawling around, lost, only practicing to bend the semi-physical fraction of the void. I have the feeling the rest of The Dark is more complicated than this.

    The man named Salt comes to the cage. He is clear and unblurred, unlike the rest of us. His white hair reaches just below his behind, and his black eyes glitter with loathing. “I think we have found the Minium,” he announces in more of a gesture than a voice.

    All of the captives freeze, and each pair of eyes lands on me. I am the Minium. And I don’t know what they want with me in the least.

***

    My head shot up from the desktop, and I let out a strangled gasp. Everyone’s eyes were unblinking as they settled on me, narrowed in malice. A couple of the students began giggling, and I sank back down again, returning the glares.

    Gary Bluethorne cleared his throat and called, “Sleeping during class, Emma Whitestone? Perhaps you’d like to stay after and catch up?”

    I was shivering, even with the hood on. Rubbing heat back onto my skin, I met his coalish eyes with fear. I could give a crap less about this lesson… I think I just saw from Mary’s eyes… A subtle sigh escaped my lips as the goosebumps eased, and my cold blood began warming up again. “N-No…” I croaked. A bead of sweat rolled down my forehead, and my eyes welled up with the threat of tears. The bit of my stomach boiled.

    “She’s gonna blow chunks,” a girl with dark skin stated matter-of-factly. “Can I take her to the nurse, Mr. Bluethorne?”

    Gary sighed. “Nah. Looks like she had a nightmare.” He bared his teeth the slightest bit. “That wouldn’t have happened had you been paying attention, huh? Just sit back, Emma Whitestone.” When I sank back in my chair under the weight of my classmates’ eyes, he stole the attention from me to the lesson. “Anyways, the value of x goes on top of the fraction…”

    I clutched my stomach, biting my thin lower lip. I did feel sick, knowing that Mary was somewhere so close to all those horrible monsters who called themselves demons. My eyes met back to Oliver, who was still looking at me worriedly. Gary knows, too. Gary knows what’s going on with Mary. He was part of what happened to her. I gulped.

    After class, I’m going to kill Gary Bluethorne.

***

    Gary had gone somewhere, and so I was alone in the room surrounded by disarrayed chairs and multiplication charts. I pulled out my cell phone, elated to find that Fango had texted me during class.

    “Finally got into Mary’s room yesterday. Couldn’t text cause my phone died… There was a white hair. I identify it as Salt’s. Be careful of Bluethorne.”

    I stiffened at the message, remembering the dream I had during class. Salt’s ugly sneer… Mary in the cage… I wanted to rip that grin right off of his face. It was hard to imagine he was the same guy that Ebony had tenderly loved eons upon eons ago. “I’m going to kill him… after I am done with Gary.”

    Said demon stepped into the room.

    My black eyes found him, narrowed. I snaked my phone back into the gaping hole in my desk, clenching my jaw.

           His eyes narrow at my hands, burrowed in the desk. “Was that your phone, Miss Whitestone?”

           “Maybe.” I push the phone even deeper into the hole, then retreat my hands back into my lap. “You aren't going to take it up, though. Let me guess?” My heart thundered inside of my body, calling out for me to leave. Any second now, I could forfeit my mission. I could turn back at any moment now, as long as I didn't continue My train of speech. Being either brave or disturbingly stupid, I went on in a cracking voice, “You wanna talk about my daydreaming?”

           Gary Bluethorne lifted a single eyebrow, crossing his arms. “Oh… Yes, actually.” He sauntered across the room towards me. After a moment, he took attempted to take the seat in front of me… Mary’s seat.

           “Don't even touch that,” I warned, hatred melting away at my common sense. His hand hovered above the back of Mary’s seat, frozen in place as he narrowed a glare at me. “Sit beside me, Gary Bluethorne.”

          Grudginly, the mathematics educator took Oliver’s seat. Then, he turned to me with a sour look on his face. “Let us make this quick, Emma Whitestone. Believe me when I say that your newfound maladaptive daydreaming could be caused by the… clique you joined. With Dillan Raking, Delta Waters, and Fango Mills, that clique. They are not, in the least bit, healthy. I would get rid of them if I were you.”

           I know what this is about… “Gary, I am not stupid. I…” One more sentence, and you have signed away your very existence! “I know why you want me to leave them. I know why you even care.”

          His dark, thin eyebrows lifted. “Oh?”

           I gulped, looking into my reflection in his black eyes. My curly golden locks stuck to my forehead with the sweat of apprehension, and my own dark eyes were frozen in a state between fear and anger. “You… You are a Dark General.”

           His head drooped, black hair falling in waves over his head. “I hoped that you didn't know that much, kid.”

           I slid my hand into my desk and began fingering a pair of scissors. “Too bad. I do. And I know you took Mary Clarkson.”

           “I suppose this means I must kill you… when there aren't any school cameras around?” he looked up again, grin curved into his thin lips. “I bet you are plotting to kill me too, aren't you? They left you in the dark enough to not be able to form your own opinion. They know that Mary is in the Dark Realm.”

           I didn't have to ask to know who “they” were - the Cromans, for sure.

            “They won't let you in. They won't even answer your questions of our realm, do they? They make up excuses. They'll know that if you entered our dimension, you would not get torn apart. After all, Extants can easily leap dimensions.”

           I stiffened at his words. “You took Mary, regardless of if the Cromans are lying to me or not.” My black gaze narrowed. “You can't turn me. I hate you too much. And one thing the Cromans can't lie to me about is my visions. That is my own special power. I have seen visions of you monsters…”

           “I can take you into the Dark Realm. You will have to shut up about it, but I can take you… And you may be able to save Mary there.”

       I leaned back a bit, absorbing his expression. I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. After all, being enemies, why would he do that? “I wouldn't have a way back. I can see right through your-”

           “I will supply that, too. The portal to and from.” By the grimacing he was quite obviously holding back, I could tell he regretted every bit he was saying. “Your call.”

           “Done.” My phone buzzed a line from “Enter Sandman”, but I ignored it. I had just made a deal with a devil, knowing it was probably the stupidest decision I had ever made. As if to seal it, I took Gary’s hand in mine, and he shook it. Our skin together felt like the worst kind of heat, like my hand was blistering but no pain was coming through. That must have been what happened when something as awful as a pact between the good and the bad was birthed. “What do I owe you?”

           “Nothing yet. Now get out of this classroom. You can visit my home tonight to cross over, and you should be back by morning.” Gary stood up and paced back to his seat.

           Meanwhile, I pulled out my phone as I stapled my bag back over my back. A text from Fango said, “Don't do anything foolish.”

Too late, I thought , and quickened my steps out of the classroom.

The picture is basically Oliver. Vote, comment, tell me what me what you think!

Any theories on why Bluethorne is helping her?