SHORT STORY

A once-comforting bed. A once-comforting embrace. A once-comforting voice assuring me that I wanted it. But I never did. And it had been so painful, so terrifying, that as my mind tried to flee my defiled body, it twisted itself and trapped my conscience in this dark, endless tunnel.

I have no real body in this tunnel and yet I can feel the stains—handprints, mostly—like spots of defilement that eat away at my flesh. This darkness seeps into me until my skin becomes a straightjacket and all I want is to claw it off, but alas, in this tunnel I can do nothing but bear it.

I must walk forward. There is no path behind me, and if I linger in one area for too long, a monster creeps up on me, though maybe it’s no more a monster than I am because it has a soothing voice and a loving smile. It asks in a gentle whisper if I am okay, and if so why am I so quiet and depressed?

And I cannot meet its earnest eyes, for how do you make anyone understand the amount of pain they put you through? Especially one who genuinely cared up until that moment simply because my mind and body reacted separately. I said no. I said that it hurt—yelled, in fact, but no one would hear me.

Even as days slip into weeks, and weeks into months, I cannot escape this tunnel. At this point, I am practically dragging myself across the uneven floor. My lungs burn from exhaustion. And even though my real body is already listless on a bed, I want to collapse.

But there are voices. Voices that surround me. They reveal—in trembling, guttural breaths—that I was not the only one. It was not my fault. There is a whole world of people who have been hurt by it, and it gives me strength.

One by one they tell their story: a lost soul in a tunnel like mine, kicking and screaming at the concrete walls that turned its eyes away. And it wasn’t pity that gave them strength, or the hours of therapy—no, it was the strength from the inside. A burning ember only they—only we—could find, which grew into a great blazing flame, burning the way through the tunnel. Burning until they could stand proud, lift their chin. Beautiful. Fearless.

And if they can stand and proudly expose their tainted bodies, so can I. If they can smile and genuinely heal, so can I.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I gain the strength to run. And as I run, the tunnel’s foundation cracks. Splinters. Crumbles away beneath my triumphant footsteps. My lungs heave, and my legs burn, but on and on I run because I know there is a life better than this.

The run nearly kills me and it takes all my energy. But now I have hope, and that fuels me in ways I have never felt before. And that hope swells as the tunnel starts to collapse, and I know: one day I will reach the end. And one day, I will return to the light.