She's full of mice, that girl. The mice that come from the maze, the maze she and you climb in dreams, but never remember. You never do remember dreaming on those bad nights. When you're sinking into the pit again, your eyes do not see anything but the ascending blackness. The numb do not remember dreaming. She is numb and full of writhing things.

She looks down as she stands on the ladder, and that is why she falls. And when she's down there, fighting, then the writhing comes to the skin. The fingers bend sharply, seem to twist to slow music. And the nails. And you stand before the mirror only half awake to the world and your fingers close on the handle of the razor.

She claws at her skin, spiders there, and she's afraid of spiders for this reason. She'll try to climb up again, but she'll give up. (And if she wakes from this she might sit in a corner rocking as she says the words: down came the rain and washed the spider out...) She will give up as the darkness seems to take the light further from her. And faithless she says she will never be in the light again, cannot remember what that felt like. You've been there, in the pit. And your twisted fingers have raked the tender flesh beneath the wrist as hers do. And the numbness didn't leave. Not even pain makes you feel alive.

And so the fingers clench the hurting-blade. There is death, there is always death. But this is desperation. We know it's desperation as much as all your other escapes, more so. And you hate the desperation and the empty souls that live day after day with plastic smiles, content and blind.

You see the darkness, but they do not see at all.

Dying is just another surrender they find acceptable. Die, get a job, have a happy family, and a beautiful day: all surrender.

She says she hates them all. But she does not. She only pities them. She pities the empty souls and cries because no one else will. And she screams and grasps the first rung. There is always a way out. Another way, a way fighting. The mice know. The mice come from the black maze.

The sick writhing inside her tells her she is alive and that she does not have to surrender. Smash the mirror! Smash everything. Bring the walls down and you won't have to climb them. Destroy the walls and stand straight with fists clenched in the wind that will come after.

Subvert. Be stronger than everything; be everything. And then laugh.

I can hear her laughing. In that room at the top: where everything is seen...and there is no darkness. Bring down their walls and you will see too. And she will rush to you across the rubble of the world and giggle at your ear. It is because they fear you that they cast you down, she says: the girl with the name like an angel. It is because you know what lies there in the dark that they fear you.

Call down the walls and let the darkness touch them all! And laugh at the top of the world.

And the scarred ones will come.

Together they cannot send us down, she says. And her fingers trace the lines on your flesh. And you will reach out. You will touch the flesh of another, touch the scars and know that you are not alone.

the end

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Edit 3/19/2016 I added media: a fan-made video for 'Fight' by The Cure, which is among the things that inspired this story.