The Boy opened his eyes and found himself within a cave. He stood and reached his hand out. He could see almost nothing. Though it was not completely pitch black, there was no evidence of a light source from anywhere.
“It is so dark in here,” the Boy whispered to himself. “It is so dark and cold in here.”
It was hard for the Boy to determine what the cave was made from. It certainly wasn’t rock. The walls and floors had a damp quality to them. They were almost mushy, as if made of a fleshy material. A humidity hung in the air, and there was a stench of something unknown, foul, and rotten.
“Hello?” The Boy called out into the cave.
No answer was returned.
“Hello?” The Boy called out louder as he fidgeted with his hands.
“Hello,” a cracked and harsh whisper said. “You are awake?”
“Where are you? I cannot see you!” The Boy turned frantically back-and-forth in the cave.
“You don’t remember who I am?” The voice asked. “Do you remember where you are? Do you remember who any of us are?”
A collective chorus of cackles howled through the dank cavern. They came from every which way, and the Boy saw pairs of eyes open all around him. They glowed with varying hues of yellow and red light. The eyes grew bigger and bigger and the figures that carried these eyes stepped close enough for the Boy to see them. Monsters… Terrible creatures! Some were sickly and pathetic things of bone and sinew that crawled with little energy across the floor. Others had a massive stature and were covered with hair or feathers. Abominations. The Boy squealed at the sight of the beasts.
“What do you want with me?” The Boy cried.
“You really don’t remember who we are?” The largest monster asked. He had three horns on each side of his head that fractured and rejoined with one another. The brows of the monster were wrangled and manged, and its teeth all had a uniquely grotesque shape. With the legs of a massive bull and the body and face of a man, it towered over the Boy.
“No! No! I don’t!” The Boy crawled backward away from the monster.
“You never were the best with that memory of yours,” the monster laughed. “We are your humble servants!”
The monster crouched lower and placed its hands on its knees. The other monsters also came closer.
“Do not step closer!” The Boy screamed.
“You have been asleep for a very, very long time. I was starting to think you would never wake up!” The monster said.
“I don’t even remember falling asleep!” The Boy started to panic. “Stay away from me! I don’t like this place! Why am I here? Stay away from me!”
The monsters all laughed again, and the Boy cowered at their viciousness.
“You don’t like this place?” The monster asked and started reaching for the Boy.
The Boy smacked the monster’s hand away and it hardly moved.
“Please don’t hurt me!” The Boy shrieked.
“Hurt you?” The monster stood again. “You think we want to hurt you?”
“You scare me!”
“Boy, you slept for a very, very long time! We are not here to hurt you! We are here to protect you!”
The Boy was silent. He looked around at the terrifying beings that surrounded him. They had furious eyes and tormented features.
“Protect me from what?”
“From what is outside of this cave.”
“What could be outside of this cave that is more horrifying than you?”
“Terrible things! Terrible things!” All the monsters answered together.
“Outside of this cave there are many dangers,” said the largest monster.
“Things that bring pain! Things that bring terrible, terrible pain!” A lizard headed monster hissed. “Things that will never understand you! Things that don’t want to understand you! The world is full of people! People! Do you not remember?”
“People like me?” The Boy asked.
“No! Oh, no! Not people like you! Not people like you at all! Those people out there are terrible people! Is there anything as terrible as those people?” A bat with eight tails said as it hung from the wet ceiling of the soft cave.
“Why do they want to hurt me?” The Boy asked.
“Because that is what all people do! All people want to hurt! That is just what they are! They are not to be trusted!” The hideous bird spoke again.
“But you are a special person,” The large bull-legged monster said to the Boy. “You are the most special boy of them all. You would never hurt people like that. Never!”
“I don’t want to hurt people,” the Boy said. “Why do others want to hurt people?”
“Because they are different from you! Because they don’t understand what you understand.”
“And what would happen if I left this cave?” The Boy asked.
“It would be your doom! When they see your face, they will punish you for what you are. The world hates what you are. Do not leave this cave, Boy! If you leave this cave, we cannot protect you. You must never ever show your face outside of this cave. That is the only way in which you can stay safe.”
“I have to stay in this cave forever?” The Boy started to tear up.
“Do not cry,” the massive beast wiped a tear from the Boy’s eye. “While you may not be able to leave this cave, you will always have us. This is the only place you are really safe to be you! Unlike that world outside of this cave, this world is yours.”
“But I feel so alone in here!” The Boy said. “Would it really be so bad if I just peaked out of this cave? Maybe things have changed out there! Maybe it isn’t as bad as we think outside!”
“Oh, no, no, no, no!” A giant spider crawled over the other monsters. “We have seen out there! We keep watch, and we do that for you. Trust us. It has not changed out there. If anything, it has gotten worse. We see it everyday! Trust us, Boy. Trust us! You cannot even risk looking out.”
“What is it that you have seen, though?” The Boy asked.
“Death! Violence! People die on the roads and they don’t seem to care. Fire rains from the sky due to the evil devices of humans! They lie and cheat each other! The good of heart are torn down. There is a danger around every corner,” the spider said.
The Boy’s fear spiked.
“I don’t want to see that!” The Boy said. “Is there anyone out there that is good?”
“Not that we have seen! The world is rotten!” The monsters all hissed.
“Well then I must stay here!” The Boy declared.
The Boy remained in the cave with a host of monsters. Though they all had much to say, the Boy never felt like he had any company with them. They seemed to have an endless string of complaints about the world and compliments about the Boy. While a compliment is always nice, the Boy grew tired of these compliments. They offered nothing of value to him because he felt like he had done nothing to deserve them from these monsters. Their constant praise of him and hatred of the world began to feel like heavy shackles around the ankles of the Boy. It was a boring, dark, and empty existence.
But one day, though the light of day could not be seen in this cave, the Boy found himself away from the monsters. So he decided to sneak towards the direction of where he thought the cave entrance was. There was a small warm light that got larger as he silently walked across the mushy and wet floor of the cave. Excitement overcame him and he started running toward the cave entrance, but something grabbed his foot. He fell on his face.
“Where are you going?” Howled a monster with the body of a woman, the head of a wasp, and twenty tentacles coming from her back. It had two of its tentacles around the Boys feet and raised him off the floor. The other monsters came.
“Stupid Boy! Stupid, stupid By!” the large bull-legged monster scolded. “You almost got to a place where we can no longer protect you!”
“But I just want to see,” the Boy said.
“Don’t you get it, foolish Boy! There is nothing to see! Do you not remember what happened when you were outside of the cave before?”
“No! Now put me down!” The Boy commanded.
The monster threw the Boy to the wall of the cave. The Boy was breathless from the impact and could barely move.
“Those people will hurt you!” The large monster said.
“You have hurt me!” The Boy said.
“It was for your own good! We are here to protect you!”
“I don’t believe you! I do not even know where you came from.”
The monsters all gasped in shock, and the fury in their eyes grew immensely.
“You don’t know where we have come from?”
“It doesn’t matter!” The Boy coughed. “I want to leave this place and you are keeping me trapped here.”
“Stupid Boy! Don’t you understand that you created this cave?” The lizard headed monster hissed.
“What do you mean?” The Boy’s eyes grew.
“This cave! Us! We are your creation! You created us to protect you! You created us because you did not like what was outside of this cave! You were hurt by what was outside of this cave!”
“How could I have created all this?” The Boy asked. “I don’t understand why I would have created all of this!”
“No more talking!” The tentacled wasp monster said. “It seems that even you have become a danger to yourself! Maybe you really are just like all the other people! Maybe you are dangerous!”
“Take him deeper into the cave!” The bull-legged monster with six horns ordered the other monsters.
“I wish to see the light outside of the cave!” The Boy cried as he was dragged away.
“There is no light! The light is a lie! How do you not understand that? The light is there to lure you to your destruction!” The bull-legged monster said.
“But what if it is you that doesn’t understand!” The Boy tried to wrestle himself free from the tentacles of the monster.
“We understand. We have seen. It is only us that understands.”
The Boy was taken further into the cave, and was brought to a darker corner than he had ever seen. The Boy’s darkest and deepest despair was found here surrounded by monsters of his making. He was filled with both fear of these monsters and fear of what lay beyond the cave. But with fear in every direction he moved or did not move, why not move? He pondered the words of the monsters. What did it mean that he was their creator? How could he have had the power to create such things? It must not have been him that created things that spewed such poison! How could he have done such a thing? He pondered, and he pondered. There was nothing else to do within the blackness of this cave. The monsters surrounding him still poured their callous remarks out of their mouth, but now their tone had changed towards him. They seemed to hate him as much as they hated the world. The Boy could not escape this. He was their prisoner. Sitting, lonely, within the jail of his supposed own creation. He pondered and pondered.
Until he stopped pondering. When he stopped pondering, he stood. The monsters all fell silent and looked at the Boy.
“I will be leaving this place,” the Boy said through teary eyes.
“We will not let you,” the bull-legged monster responded.
“No… You will,” the Boy said
“No! We won’t!” The monsters hissed and laughed.
“You say you are here to protect me!” The Boy yelled at the monsters. “You say that I am your creator! You say that I created this cave! Well I say no more! I don’t wish to be in this cave! I don’t wish to be surrounded by monsters! I wish to see the light outside of the cave.”
“You are believing in a delusion,” the bull-legged monster scowled.
“No! There is no delusion. You are what I created! And now it is time for you to meet my new creations! For I have been devising my escape from this cave! I have been thinking about your words, and now, my time of freedom has come!”
“What? What are you talking about?”
And at that, a burst of light came from the end of the cave. The monsters scowled and hissed at the warmth entering the cave. Silhouettes of spread wings could be seen breaking up the almost blinding white light from the end of the cave. The monsters began to cower and run deeper into the cave.
“It is too late,” the Boy decreed.
As the bird-like creatures flew with immense speed down the dark corridor, it could be seen that they were men and women with beautiful golden armor and immense brown eagle wings. They all bore spears.
“You have betrayed us,” the bull-legged monster cried.
The winged people overtook the monsters and began to slay them one-by-one. Spears would pierce the monsters’ black hearts and they would let out foul screams of hopelessness. And then one of the winged men stopped before the Boy and looked down to him.
“You called for us, my lord?” The winged man smiled, picked up the Boy, and flew him to the entrance of the cave.
The light was blindingly white for the Boy as he had not seen this light for a long, long time. But as his vision returned, there was a massive world before him. A world of large billowing clouds and bright flowers. It was a world with a refreshing breeze, thunderstorms in the distance, and pollen suspended in sun beams. He finally remembered the world from which he fled from. Waiting for him on the outside of the cave was a man. He did not have wings and wore blue armor.
“I saw you in my dreams,” the man in blue armor said. He had a bare face and looked remarkably like the Boy. “I had almost forgotten you. And of all the places I expected to find you, it was not here in this cave of fear. But here you are. I was told there was nothing but monsters here, but I now see there was someone much more here. The person I was looking for.”
“Have we met before?” The Boy asked.
“It isn’t exactly true to say that we have ever met. You and I don’t need to meet. You have never seen me, but I have seen you. I used to see you everyday once upon a time.”
“I don’t understand,” the Boy said. “ But thank you for saving me!”
“No,” the blue armored man said. “You saved yourself. That is why I am here. The visions and dreams you sent me from this cave. I should say thank you! I hid you away a long time ago because I didn’t want you hurt. And then I forgot that you were hidden. I left you behind, but then I saw that the further I got from you, the more wicked my life became. I left you behind, and my life darkened… And so did yours. We are each other’s home, and to be without your true home is wicked.”
“Your life is wicked?” The Boy asked. “Are you wicked?”
“Yes,” the blue armored man said. “I am one of the many wicked people of the world. That is why I am here to save you. You are the only chance I have at saving me from my own wickedness. If it can be done at all…”
“Were the monsters right? That the world is full of wickedness?” The Boy asked.
“Nothing is ever completely wrong, I suppose,” the blue armored man said. “However, there is so much more than the wickedness of this world. There is so much more to me than my own wickedness. The same could be said about all people. I wish for us to teach that to each other. I wish for us to journey with each other as we were always meant to.”
The winged men and women in golden armor returned to the cave entrance. They had completed their task.
“There can always be more of them,” one of the winged soldiers said as she pierced her spear into the ground. “As the road darkens, it is hard to say what will breed.”
“Together, nothing can stop us,” the blue armored man smiled down at the Boy. “Let the world come.”
The Boy smiled. And then… There was only one of them. The blue armored man walked away from the cave in his solitude.