She dwelled in darkness....the darkness within herself. She couldn't look out into the world without fear crushing her. It was as if she had suddenly been taken away from all she ever knew.
She hadn't always been this way. She used to see the world in a light she had created. She loved living. She loved being with her friends. She even had a job she loved. She was an artist for a graphics company.
A year ago she had become lost. Not in the city or the woods, but in her own mind. She lost her friends and her family had disowned her. (So she thought.) She couldn't remember how she had become this way. It just happened without notice or even a motive. She tries to remember, but she just can't...or won't.
Now she just sits in a corner in her room in the dark. She sits there waiting. Waiting for what she doesn't know. She barely eats or sleeps. When she does sleep she is haunted by nightmares that she forgets soon upon waking.
She also bathes in the dark. She makes sure everything is where she can just reach it and know what it is. She takes careful care when she shaves so she doesn't cut herself. When she is finished she will return to her corner.
She doesn't remember where she lives. She knows she stays in her room and bathroom, but she doesn't know whose kitchen she cooks in or even why they let her stay there. Since she doesn't have a job she can't help pay the bills nor does she even socialize with whomever she is staying with.
All this and her faint memories of a happy childhood frustrates her. When she is stressed she still sits doing nothing but staring into the darkness she had become so accustomed to. How can one at her age of twenty suddenly loose touch with everything and everyone she had ever loved? All of her memories were now foreign to her and at times can't escape the feeling that all her happiness might have been only her imagination.
Suddenly she hears faint music coming from the other room. She looks up. She listened carefully to the slow, methodical, melody. She got up and walked over to the door. It sounded as if it was coming from somewhere downstairs.
She was about to open the door when the music stopped. She slumped down to the floor listening for it to begin again. When it didn't she went back to her isolated corner.
She laid her head in her arms waiting. It was something she was use to. Although the music was a nice interruption, she knew she wouldn't have ventured down to see where it was coming from. She had only been downstairs to the kitchen. Lucky for her the bathroom was connected to her room. She didn't like being down there. She was afraid whoever lives there would find her and make her leave and she didn't want to leave her comfortable corner.
She began to wonder if this isolation was her fault. Maybe she put herself there for protection from the world outside. Maybe it was no accident.
As she was lost deep in thought a bright light entered the room. She looked up and found herself in another room. Her parents were looking down on her. She blinked a few times to focus her eyes.
"She's waking up." she heard someone say.
"Where am I?" she asked.
"You're in the hospital. You were in a car accident." her mother said.
"What?" she asked confused.
"You've been in a coma for the past month." a doctor said. "How are you feeling?"
"Much better. I thought I was lost and that you didn't love me anymore." she said to her parents.
"That's ridiculous." her father said. "What would make you say that?"
"Never mind." she said glad she was back with her family and that all that darkness was only an extended dream.