Safrine sat on the cold floor of a dark room. Normally, on any given day, the light would filter from the sky, through the gaps in the walls and allow the room to serve a purpose far grander than the prison that it was this day.
She sat against a tiled wall, her legs pulled to her chest tightly, her hands cupped and gripping her knees as the cold damp air slithered underneath her clothes and tickled at her skin. She shook in brief shiver as the cold ran from the base of her spine to her neck, standing her hairs on end and tickling at the nape of her neck.
She hadn’t moved an inch since she was taken here. An aboding figure had sent her gently in the pitch black and ushered her to remain quiet. It had kindly asked that she not move for in time it would return to collect her.
When the figure vanished from sight, Safrine sank into a state of At Alone. Fear sang to her consciousness and her imagination danced to its melody; inventing the indescribable, and placing it in the pockets of darkness all about her.
There were seven slimy snakes slithering slowly by her side; there were two taunting tarantulas teeming somewhere out of sight; there were a million mangy maggots making messes in her mind and a dozen deadly devils dancing dangerously behind. There were a hundred hellish hounds that were hungry for a feast; beckoned by a boorish bellow of a blackened baneful beast; there were countless ghouls and ghosts and spectres, all of whom were dead and they were all within the shadows lurking deep inside her head.
Safrine squealed loudly into the dark. Rocking back and forth, she wished to herself that someone would turn on the lights or at least, that all the monsters who were most certainly there, would stop this excitement and just eat her right now.
She remembered a song she heard an old lady sing. It was not something she remembered on will, but some instinct that came into call the moment her fear overbore her. She repeated the words over and over.
“When I am alone and At Being with fear, I will my delusion away. For the night that is here, will soon disappear, and return me to being At Day.”