"The Beyond" by Emma-Jane C. Smith

Then, your vivid imagination runs away with you and you suddenly find yourself…

With eyelids leadening, your eyes ache and become sensitive to light. A headache sets in and your mind is about to explode. The whole world dulls into depressing shades of grey. Forcing your eyes open is excruciatingly painful. All you want is to put your head back and sleep.

Every noise around you seems louder, not helping your cause to rid yourself of the headache. Thoughts drip and you can only faintly recognise what you are being taught. You want to be hand-fed the knowledge and forget about everything.

As your rouse yourself to complete the task, bursts of clarity are randomly pelted at you as you hurry to finish that section of work. Magic meant to come from within you and write itself upon the page. Wanting time to skip work for bed you ache to sleep, to rest unconscious. The main thought swirling endlessly around in your head is “why am I really here?” only to realize this is the only way you will find a place in the world, this world of magic and technology.

With a cough and a splutter you groan. Your muscles are knotted tense yet they go sloppy and refuse to work. You feel as though you could holler and rant but no one would care to help you. No one would take off your heavy burden.

The world turns into a misty haze. Lights, metallically dimmed, dance in your vision. The heat searing your flesh has a drug effect as you slip closer to sleep. Hanging on to the cliff with your fingernails, something holds you back.

Worries come to mind as you remember what you have to accomplish before you can sleep. The drug of consciousness has kicked in and you slowly gather the energy to get away from the edge. You struggle to complete the set task but completion seems so far away.

To sleep, perchance to dream. To sleep and not care if dreams come or not. To only seek sleep to relax you, reenergize your body. To rest it from the torments of life.

And yet you have to wait, to hold off for the sake of some petty rules and future aims. The world filled with these regulations, these awful traditions. Some good and just, but just there; hidden in the dark lurks the ones that harm and hinder you at every turn. They refuse to give up their hold. In your weariness you are unable to stop it. To end it forever.

And as your head sinks to the table, you feel that something has been lost. Probably never to be found again. You feel that you are searching in the dark with no light to show you the way. Your breathing becomes laboured as you push yourself to the limit. Your mind and body stretch out for help but can’t reach far enough. Your hope dwindles as you slowly give into waking up.

The bell rings loudly in your ears. Your body perks up in one last effort to be free of its prison. As you get up and walk from the class your mind slows. It groggily stays in slow motion, unable to get another kick-start. All seems lost as you try to focus your eyes on the next task.

You feel as though you are being damned for all life. And yet you still clutch the end of the cliff. You feel hands over your hands, sinking their nails into your flesh, desperate to bring you back. Biting so deep into your flesh that it will soon reach bone. There is a face that owns those hands, a face of darkness, of demons.

You try to struggle to take the final plunge into the depths of insanity, finally to find peace in sleep. The hands holding you slip and you are left with only two choices: one, to drag your weary body back onto the solid ground, your fingers clutch, or two, to let them slip and to slide ecstatically into the unknown where you may find the only peace you can.

If you slip, you face the unknown. It could lead to a torment but what could be more tormenting than the life you were trying to escape as you slipped into the limbo? The place between asleep and awake.

You remind yourself of where you are. You heave and pull yourself up the cliff knowing this is what must happen for the sake of the future and everything in it. No matter what torments you may face, no matter how you may despise it.

But you ponder this for what seems like an endless moment. You are trapped within its grasp. And when you return to the torment of being awake, reality kicks in. You struggle to free yourself from its grasp. You yearn to be on your own and at peace, and yet, you want loving arms to embrace you.

Tears may rise then as you feel that there is no one on this earth who would cherish you. And as the other students annoy you in the crowded room, you struggle with more fear and desperation. You feel like you are drowning. Your head is being pushed under the waves as turmoil hits the ocean.

Off in the distance you see someone else struggling as you are. And in one terrifying glimpse you see them pulled under for the last time and they do not resurface. Then, a demon of terror, whispers in your ear of the future and your final doom. You try desperately to block them out but they speak straight into your mind like a piercing scream.

Is hope lost? You wonder but you receive no answer. No answer will ever come. Why would it? For if torture is their intention then why would you receive any kind of resolution?

And then the whispers in your ear fade and you realize you are all alone, fighting to save yourself on a treacherous ocean. Whatever you call or however loudly you call it, no one can hear, no one is listening to your cries.

You struggle to keep afloat for what seems like hours. Each breath becomes more laboured. At last, you cannot struggle any longer and you slip silently between the waves as the ocean calls for you. From beneath the water you look up as the light slowly fades and darkness closes in to suffocate you as surely as the water.

The pressure pulls at you, drags you further and further down into the depths of the abyss. Time slows, and one second is an eternity as you open your mouth and take your first breath of the black water. Your lungs fill with the fluid and you drift onward, downward. The light of your life dimming as you go.

And in an instant you wake, as if from a dream. The light sears your eyes and they water instinctively. You finally make out shapes. The door is in front of you. Your hand instinctively goes to the handle. You open it and there lies paradise.

Your own home of welcome and rest. You fall to the floor but when sleep comes this time, so do dreams of such a sweet nature that you take an eternity to sleep, rest your weary bones, and dwell no more on the nightmares that once haunted you. The nightmares that once tormented you.

Then suddenly you find yourself awake in the classroom, everyone staring at you. You look down at the paper you had been writing on. Words look back at you with a creeping horror.

To go into the darkness alone


To come out once more into the light


You have seen the two-tone


And have saved yourself from the plight

The teacher walks over to your desk, her eyes wide with surprise.


        “You are back from the beyond.” she whispers, tears pricking her eyes. "You are the first to have come back… the only one."

Then your eyelids leaden and you find yourself once more in the realms of evil. This is where demons abound, comes a whisper into your mind.