Once upon a time... no, that's not quite right, for that gives the notion of many years ago when this is not so. Let's try again. Once, there was darkness. Not the sort of darkness a candle, flashlight, or even lamp could permeate, cut through and destroy no this was a darkness as thick as honey and solid as stone. This darkness coated everything, leaving not even a single ray of light and hope to pierce through upon the world's singular inhabitant. It muffled sound, tarnished taste, and dulled scents leaving the lowly creature encompassed in it to crawl uselessly about the floor and bite blindly at unseen hands that tried to feed it. Not on the whole a very bright idea, but well you can't expect something that caged up to know any better. For over a decade it sat in this sightless hell until after fourteen years the darkness on the wall nearest it began to curl and peel like aged wallpaper, letting in a dusky light that struck the creature's face, revealing it not to be the demon of nothing it was thought to be, but a young girl who though physically unscathed, housed a bruised and purple soul and a paralyzed spirit and will for life. Through this light reached a hand and instinctively she bit and shoved it through the opening, repairing the hole.

Whatever had tried reaching her, though perhaps holding a different intention, created a floodgate that soon burst and tore down all four walls of her world, the chaos of the light, sound, and lack of sanctuary and familiarity seeping into her. She could see, but nothing was distinctive nor made any sense and she continued to bite, to bleed, and to cause bleeding. From one level of purgatory to another, lower one she sank and slowly stopped responding when fingers pried open her mouth to insert round objects the size of pebbles and turned her hands palm down to slip glinting needles into her tiny veins to suction out her blood for whatever they told her it was needed for. In the dark she had been nothing, in the light she was less than nothing and there was no thing like her to sympathize and give her reason to go on, yet every day she crawled lifelessly around her new-found cage and could only be consoled at night when there was just a fraction of her beloved darkness sprinkled above with twinkling objects.

Another decade had come by now, leaving the wretch at 20 and still adrift in the ocean of her mind that had become her only shelter, her only place to cry "sanctuary" and know the demons could be staved off enough for her to find the confessional and hide away. But again she was not entirely safe and tucked away as she wished to be. This time the hand of long ago reached out to her once more, but this time firmly planted itself on her shoulder, fingers digging just enough into her flesh to let her know shrugging it away was not possible. Fear had long ago fled her and so she wearily looked to the hand, up the strong arm it was attached to, and finally the face of the one who had tried getting at her first. What she saw was not the foreign eyes of the people she watched pass her by every day but those of a familiar, a second of her kind. In all these years she had foolishly avoided the one hand that could both destroy and save her, but he had at last caught her and she did not fight. There was no need to fight anymore.

In the most un-ideal package came the secondary demon, the enemy and only true friend to the first. She knows her place, she knows her role, just where on the chess board she may move, and cannot stray too far from her superior and yet equal. The leash she may hold to the collar, but he holds her heart which ticks in time with an unseen grandfather clock whose hands have not moved from the time of 4 o'clock for some time and never will move again.

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Sorry I got a bit writer-happy. I'm a sucker for putting stuff poetically.