Blinding White and The Taste of Chocolate Cake

Blinding white, like the corners of an eye.

I've forgotten what this even looks like.

I wake every dawn with a throbbing headache as though I've had one too many drinks. Why the taste and the burn of liquor still lingers in my throat, I may never know.

Calculating the correct number of fingers on my hands, I curl my fists into a ball and pretend that what is left of my limbs are stubs.

Hair falling into my eyes frightens me but I feel a sudden compulsion to count each and every strand until my mind becomes a puddle of putty.

I hear her again.

Her words always seem to float around me, familiar yet an unplaced recognition in the fog of her voice. She always joins me during the day when it is the most convenient for her, and I am sick of it. 83...84...86...92…

"You must be crazy".

The lids of my eyes widen; how dare she insult me with such a level of disdain.

Bending backwards I attempt to grasp at the rocks beneath me with the ends of my limbs and throw it at the empty wall in front of me and before I know it, she is gone.

Only then did I realize there was never even a rock for me to weaponize. I had simply grasped a ball of air, believing it could produce the same amount of damage when thrown at a target. Although, I'd prefer one that I can aim at.

Then, much like before, but not the same, I see the bright white. Not a white I can see, like the world around me I've come to know. But a white that appears only as my body shakes with a painful energy as though I was being zapped by lightning. Could someone remind me, what is lightning?

The shock leaves me laying face down on the white plush underneath me and I giggle imagining that I am floating on a cloud.

I go to flap my arms like the wings of a bird but then I look down and my wrists are bound.

The compressed air between the thick white walls and the world beyond release to create a chasm that allows for this slender creature in a black suit to enter my presence. I refuse to look at him.

He approaches me slowly, but with purpose, and I remain frozen in my spot that I've become so accustomed to.

In front of me he places a white plate, and on it is something that smells so sweet yet causes my throat to close. I gag at the scent because it fills me with an immobilizing sensation of pain that is triggered by none other than a memory that I can't seem to remember.

He steps back as I frantically claw at the walls and a voice that is not my own abruptly escapes me and forms the vowels of a howl and a screech combined.

Then again,

a flash of white and I take falling to the floor. An image is then triggered of a chair covered in leather straps, and the memory of a man I do not know. He who's malicious laughter leaves my cheeks burning with a rage much like a controlled fire. Then suddenly I see a swirl of vibrant colors sucked into the vacuum of my thoughts and my mind is consumed with the flavor still lingering on my taste buds. Taking a breath, a tear gently crawls down my cheek, and I look up at the slender man in black.

He tells me to eat,

"No",

"No?" He responds in question. Perhaps he hadn't heard me?

"No." I repeat.

At the click of a button and the world around me is blinding white. The pain has become so familiar that it almost seems to tickle and leaves me giggling on the floor.

But what is the floor anymore, every wall around me looks identical. There may as well be no up or down; to me it is all the same.

Curling into a ball and grasping at the toes on my feet I begin to recite the words they used a branding iron to engrain in my mind. The sound on my tongue scratches in repetition like my grandpa's old broken record player… But then I forget, can someone tell me what a grandpa is? Or a record player…

I chant in a rhythm:

"The past is gone, and the present no longer exists. Forget everything she was and everything she is. I am dead, I am dead, no one will remember a word that she said. She is erased from existence, I am the witness and I thank the mistress for this delicious gift. I sit and dismiss every thought or idea to exist."

Chocolate.

I taste a piece of Heaven and Hell as I bite into the creamy slice of chocolate cake I am fed every single day.

And then everything is left behind me.

And it seems a piece of me dies within every bite. It is a drug that I crave more and more and more, even as it burns holes in my head.

Then again,

A blinding flash of white, but it is different this time.

There is a bright blue in the mix, and the voices I always hear are replaced with screams and shouts and a ringing in my ear.

Debris crumbles around me as I look up through the hole and think to myself that I couldn't have ever seen a color so bright.

I screech in fear as though I may fall into it, a sea of blue. Then through it a hand reaches down toward me and I grasp it tightly.

"I'm getting you out of here, Athena"

The voice is familiar but distant, like meeting a loved one from a past life. They seem to be speaking to me yet I am still left wondering who they might be addressing. The hand lifts me out, leaving behind the white walls of my world to meet its' connecting face. A face I know so well but could never place.

"Here, quickly drink this"

The hand holds out a black bottle and I grasp it tightly to drink. The liquid lacks in flavor but it is crisp when it hits the tip of my tongue.

Then everything that was a blur slowly becomes as clear as the day that I had no longer believed existed.

A world I thought was gone is now being built before my very eyes.

The ghost they made me forget is resurrecting inside of me.

I realize all of this as the taste of chocolate cake fades from my lips.