Tales of Light

LOST!

Part IV

Lydia's gasps came out in short spurts. It felt like she was being drowned in fire, if a phenomenon of such exists.

The air was choking, smelling of sulphur and ash and over-aged soot.

The walls, which seemed more and more to cave in, had a slimy, gratty feel when she touched it.

Actually, touching it was like a dream.
The wall was more or less alive, and it squeezed her, taunting her, letting her know there was no means of escape.

She couldn't reach out to touch anything; her hands were chained in the most uncomfortable angle to her feet.

When it stopped, she didn't sigh in relief.
Lydia knew what was to come next. The pulling of her soul further down into a greater degree of darkness.

As it happened yesterday, and the day before, and the two days before.

Lydia grimaced, gnashing at her teeth. How long had she been stuck here in this, this abyss?
She had lost a sense of time and direction. All she felt were the growing pain and the growing darkness. Time did not exist in this frame.

She let out a soul-wrenching sob.

"It's too late! I sold myself to the devil. I collected the mark! How did I become so foolish?"

"Yes, you did. And now there's no going back!" that sly voice, that sounded awfully similar to Jez's, whispered into her fast-ebbing mind.

Echoes of disembodied laughter bounced back and forth on the walls like a rubber ball, thriving on her pain.

She would have blocked her ears if she could. But no, she was still chained, slipping down fast into the darker void beneath.

As she fell, she remembered the time when everything was good, when their father was still alive, when she had believed and trusted in God.

It was too painful to recall, but it was a means of temporal escape from her present hell into her past paradise.

~~~

"See those stars?" His burly, hairy right hand peeked from behind his head where it had been tucked as a cushion.

"Yes, Papa!" she said.

"They tell of God's faithfulness."

Her six-year old self looked up to stare at the stars that seemed to twinkle the more, to validate her father's statement.

They had gone camping. It was what they always did every year.
Mother and teenage Alexia were in the makeshift tent that was perched between a cluster of lofty Flame-of-the-forest trees.

"These fireflies too..." Her dad had said, tickling her nose when he touched one adventurous firefly that had lighted its glow on the tip of her nose.

She giggled.

Then, his warm, fatherly eyes stared into hers. She turned to her side and cuddled into her father's arms.

"Jesus loves you, Lydia," he said. "I hope you grow to love him too."

Fast forward to years later, she had grown. She explored the world. She sought love in the wrong places, forgetting the words of her dad. She had been very subtle about it.

Her father's death broke the last bit of restraint in her. She despised God, although secretly so as not to increase the hurt of their grieving mother.

Now, she was here. In the abyss.

~~~

Alexia woke up with a small yelp of alarm in her throat.