Last Remaining Light

It had always been in my knowledge that apes beat their chests when enraged or to show their strength and maybe impress the females in courtship. That primates picked up surrounding sticks, rocks and other items found lying around the jungle, and threw, smashed and banged them against anything to show rage and hierarchy. It was animals that acted in such blatantly animalistic ways to express themselves, and that was how it always had been.

But now that I'm here and have been here for... for, I couldn't even estimate the length of time I've been here. All I know is that I'll never leave. In being here, I learned that man, wizard, woman, witch... we're all animals inside. When driven to insanity there're no thresholds of dignity to uphold or a hierarchy of bloodlines to preserve and keep immaculate.

Here there is only insanity, and in it we act like animals, for we are caged as the ones in zoos.

The hooting, calling, moaning, screaming and banging usually occurs once there is rumour among cells that there is another new body for our captors to feast upon. Chains that hold down a rowdy cell dweller rattle and create such a classic wild sound for the ears to feast upon. Cage bars are shaken, though we know they are impossible to move, with thinning, bony hands. Prisoners jump around their cells and shout out obscenities and nonsense that many, even those who do the same at times, have learned to ignore or block out.

It is only our captors who cage us in our minds that can completely silence them, silence me.

Their presence, though well known, is never forgotten and cannot be grown accustomed to. The rattling of chains bears no competition to the rattling that resides with each breath deep within their chasm chest. The unsettling glide as they pass by deafens sound and silence alike.

The silence they cause can never, ever surpass the chill and body stiffening cold that seeps through every pore and into every membrane I feel during their rounds on my level. It is known in Wizarding kind that Dementors feed on happy memories and good thoughts. But what do they feed on when a human, such as me, has run out of anything remotely glad within themselves? I do not even have my health.

Happy memories resurface slowly. It is almost a long, yet temporary, amnesia. After eating the gruel and drinking the throat-tightening cold water, and during the night if you are lucky enough not to be on their thoughts, some may bubble up unexpectedly and you may laugh.

Laughter, however how loud it may be, only lasts short moments, before we can feel them coming again. There are always more than one when laughter is heard... it is almost a feast to gorge on. Maniacal laughter is usually and prominently loud and frightening to hear. I have done it numerous times, though the memory of how it feels to laugh has long left me... Until a memory long since past reappears in the back of my mind and the comfort of it drives me to such euphoria that I cannot help to laugh at its sudden placation.

Roll me on your frozen fields.

Break my bones to watch them heal.

Drown me in your thirsty veins

Where I watch and I wait

And pray for the rain...

And when they come, oh when they come and take it from you like a child that was once lost beyond memory and recollection and taken so quickly after reunion... Oh that is when the worst sort of depression can hit. After it is gone and you're left with the itching, burning desire for happiness once more... You become an addict for more, searching your mind for more happiness that you know has to be locked in there; and you rock, rock, rock... And you rock back and forth because maybe it will come back if you're quiet...

But you're rarely quiet. I know it has to be true. Humans, by nature, cannot stay quiet. No matter what anyone says, they cannot sway me otherwise. I have seen it and more over, I have heard it. In a cell when they think no one can hear them, they mutter. They mumble and stutter and cry and wail and all the while rocking and rocking and rocking and no I can't see them, but oh I've been there and I've done that. Yes even that, though maybe, no, not that yet...

And the shame that is first felt within the beginning months or weeks, however long it takes per soul, disappears. Everyone here is just like you. We're all guilty, in some way, if only indirectly...

Guilty by association, guilty by the act, guilty for belief and what that belief may have led you to do...

It is when you're down after that joyful memory was taken that they mock you; Dementors, yes, though they never speak to the caged humans. The ill-caged and ill-minded beasts down the beaten down stone tunnels, situated in grooves in the walls: cells. Cages.

It is when their mockery and hooting and shouting and banging and oh my yelling and screeching and yes - Yes! Another has gotten a memory back! They will come for her! Oh how she laughs now... how she must love the company of her laughter. They will come! They will come! Yes! Aha! Hahaha! And you won't remember it; you may never remember it again!

The banging and whooping dies down as their presence is felt, growing, growing, growing... and the spindles of nightmares and self-hate curve through the brain and the tears can flow so easily now because there is no shame within the walls, though the building was built of it...

Curl like smoke

And breathe again.

Down your throat,

Inside your ribs,

And through your spine,

And every nerve,

Where I watch and I wait

And yield to the herd.

And now we're quiet and we're silent and I can't believe the silence and it hurts and the throbbing in my head is the only sound that I can hear and the tension in my back is nothing compared to the hollow sound of loneliness in my head...

We are all silent. Dishes are not banged between bars or dragged across them while their current owner jumps and howls in delight of another being robbed of their happiness... Another being brought down to their level and being succumbed to slow, agonizing torture.

And I know that we will not have them visit tonight because of our abundance of laughter breakouts within the past while... they have fed on us and we have unwillingly given to them and silently we each know that they will not come tonight and silently we each weep.

Sounds in the night do not bode well in a place built of shame.

In the night it is dark, as it is during the day... but the dark is much more tangible and much more real and when it holds you close and tucks you in its velvety arms of sleep on the cold stone floor and it is much welcomed. Every prisoner, like I, started with an old mattress and sheet, no matter the punishment or evil deed, and slowly every prisoner, like I, lost it to insanity, soiling and just plain cruelty. I know I will get it back one night... and it is that I night I currently pray for.

But I know it will not be soon... There are flashes of memories, images of myself outside myself screaming and howling for the upcoming excitement and oh yes that is much treasured by the Dementors but not accepted by guards that do their monthly rounds... And in a few more months they may visit my floor once again, and if I behave, it will be returned to me.

But for now the soft texture of the darkness is enough to keep me and enough to caress my eyes closed and my senses to sleep...

And if you don't believe the sun will rise,

Stand alone and grieve the coming night

In the last remaining light.

So much activity, so much activity, so much activity!

One has completely lost it! He is gone! He is gone! He is gone! Ahaha! He cannot keep from mumbling and the Dementors have tried to suck from him whatever it is that drives his laughter and mumbling and incoherent words of death and resurrection and Christ and Heaven and they have gone - gone! - for what I can only hope for... The guards! Guards!

They come and the dwellers of this level of our building of shame silence except for the shuffled pacing and muttering and evil chuckles echoing deep in the nooks and corners of their dark sect. We are kept in hushed movements and voices except for the one they came to seek out, the one to be taken away and oh look at how good I am.

I am only trying to see what they are doing - stop to see me! Oh how I must get that mattress back and please, please come see me.

The prisoner's laughter turns to screams or horror, but I know he is not being touched by the guards or Dementors... The sounds he emits can only come at one point in a man's life...

He is taken by fever and has slipped into unrivalled madness and when he leaves us, he will not return and they will toss him, for there is no ground upon this rock to bury, and he will sink and go down, down, down and he will deteriorate in the icy waters and it will fill his lungs, though it need not matter because he will die soon. He will perish in here like so many have.

He will not last much longer and I wait for the time they take him and I only wish I could watch him sink and fall lower and lower and deeper and deeper... It will only be a few days now.

Seven moons and seven suns.

Heaven waits for those who run

Down your winter and underneath your waves

When you watch and you wait

And pray for the day...

And I know I will do the same and I will go in a similar manner and that I have been here much too long. He is gone and the silence now can be pierced by a chuckle or short mockery of what he had done and oh how crazy he had become! And we are not like him; no we are not, my cellmates not of my cell. There is never more than one to a cell, it is known. Pity, it seems can cause one to shorten the other's sentence and then one visits the skin biting cold depths of the waves of the ocean and they are taken too early and I may weep because justice, it seems, worked in their favour and why am I here still? Why? And help me please to get out - I've been good! Bed! I want my bed back and I want to go swimming, too, and please just let me get my forsaken bed back!

I can feel the dim light ebbing away and the darkness slowing creeping in my mind and I wonder if this is how he felt and what made him so happy before turning to unbelievably upset and frightened and the warmth of sun on my face...

A memory I barely remember...

I remember it! I can remember the sun and its warmth and oh how good it feels to bathe myself in it and how glorious the day is! I cannot help to laugh at the perfect chemistry between myself and the sun - oh it is a love affair and please, please let me feel it once more and no! No! No, no, no! It is disappearing and I can't seem to hold on to it enough and it is slipping away through my fingers and I reach, I reach but cannot grab hold and damn, but it's gone and the cold and the ice and the freezing enters and the rattling of deep cavernous lungs echoes and they are here, they're here! Scream the lot of you out there - keep screaming above my own!

Your beds! They'll take all your beds! The hard, numbing stone floor can assault your bodies as well and you can pray for the night and its soft touches and you can die here as well!

Swimming - I want to go swimming and maybe the light will touch me then and oh I will be happy and life will never have been so good as the cold water touching my skin and the weightlessness I feel now outside of my cage - goodbye cell, my dwelling for too long - and I know they are taking me though I have no recollection of how long my inane banters have gone on for.

Yes - yes! Join me in my screaming and my yelling and the pure insanity of this building of shame. How their hands feel on my wrists and bare shins and the cold, cold air and how the smell of salt is so much more pungent outside! It is dark outside and it wraps me warmly, though the damp air helps chill me and oh the salt tastes better out here than it ever did in the stone building of shame built in the rocky refugee far out in this body of water...

And if you don't believe the sun will rise,

Stand alone and greet the coming night

In the last remaining light.

And I cannot think, thought is amiss and my body no longer moves without outside help and I am thrown, tossed carelessly with a dead weight secured to my waist and though my mind works and my blood pumps loudly through my veins, I cannot communicate and I cannot articulate words and my eyes, oh they stay closed and my lips numb...

Light.

And the plunge is cold and it takes me down, but I do not fight. I am swimming and swimming and I know the sun will greet me again and I will feel its warmth and yes, yes I can feel it come and the numbness is leaving and oh yes...

Light.

And it swallows me as flashes of colours burst before my closed eyes and vibrations of heat enter through my cold fingers and toes and I plunge deeper and deeper and deeper still - my how far it goes! And now the sun has taken me in her warm arms and how did I ever deny its beauty in the night and succumb to its cold and dark hold on me? And how I've missed the warmth and how I will cherish my time with it and how we will dance and sing and swim under it in all its gloriousness and perfection...

And now to be free of the stone building of shame and deny the cages of animals inside that building and welcome the sunlight and still I plunge...

Light...