...PREFACE...

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It.

It was gripping.

It was ruthless.

It was torturous.

It was overmastering.

That it.

It was the darkness.

It took him, when he was unprepared for it, unbraced.

Defend me.

Deliver me.

Save me.

He sat up with a start in the dark room and opened his eyes.

Eyes?

Were they?

His eyes were the brightest of white, blinding, shining, terrifying. He shut them one more time and reopened them.

Why?

He meant why was it? Why was it tormenting him? It, the darkness and the voice in it.

Defend me.

Deliver me.

Save me.

He tried to shut it out of his head, that voice, pleading in desperation, touching and gut wrenching. But, he failed. He failed in flying colours. He lifted his legs out of bed and stood to his feet, completely able to see in the deep darkness of the bedroom, the kind that he was running from.

Defend me.

Deliver me.

Save me.

It came again, loud and clear, like a tormenting memory, leaving him in heart wrenching pain, a pain that shook the whole of his eight feet two inches being.

Please.

Please.

Do not leave me behind.

He shut his eyes tighter as the pain that followed the words echoed in his heart. Maybe, just maybe he was paying for the sins that he had committed in the time that he could not remember.

Little did he know that he was right.