Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) by Rae Nikki

Author:Rae, Nikki [Rae, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Learning How to Crawl

“There is nothing in the world that we can count on. Even that we will wake up is an assumption.”–The Dresden Dolls

It’s dark when I open my eyes but I already know I’m not awake.

I can’t see too well in this dark, but I can feel. The walls are cold, damp, and crumble at my touch. It’s dirt, I realize. The smell fills my nostrils.

I can hear my own breathing, coming out in hot, wet bursts. “Please,” I say. But my voice doesn’t belong to me. It’s the voice of a young boy. I also recognize the word is in some language I’ve never heard before instead of English. One where the vowels stretch on too long and the consonants crash into one another. “Please let me go,” I say in the same strange language. I search the space I’m in again, turning around over and over, smacking the back of my head hard into the wall behind me.

A voice comes from above me. “Quiet down there,” it says. An adult. Mother. It’s my mother speaking. “You’re breaking my concentration, Micaiah.”

I can smell her. The familiar scent of long burned wood, rain, and sage. She is making something up there, in her room. I remember when she dug this hole in the bottom of our hut. It was a few nights passed.

She used her bare hands and made me sleep under the stars as she worked. When I asked what she was doing, she told me that it was a gift. A gift that was given to her that she was going to soon return. But she couldn’t reach the person the gift had come from. She had to have me return it. When she called me back inside, she pushed me down into the hole without any words between us. She dug it deep enough that I wouldn’t be able to dig out. She made it wide, so I could lie down, but it was so dark that I couldn’t see where she was. Where I was.

I don’t know how long I’ve been down here.

“Mother,” I cry. “Please let me out.”

“Hush now,” she says. “In time, you will thank me. Once I am finished and you are a man, you will rule over all.”

I’m confused. I don’t want to be this person she says I will be. I don’t know how she thinks this will be possible. “Mother–” I start again.

“Silence!” Her voice makes me jump.

I hear her footsteps fade away above me, and I wrap my arms around myself. It’s so cold here. I just want Mother to hold me. I won’t disobey her ever again if she just promises to hold me and make the cold go away.

It’s so quiet for the longest time except for a gust of wind outside once in a while. My hands begin to tingle. The darkness is coming.

Yes. It will be as dark as this hole inside me soon.

I don’t want it.

But I also do. More than anything.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.