Daylight

He'd never known much about outside world, only what he learnt from books that They let him read. He didn't know who They were, but he guessed that they were his parents, although he looked nothing like them. He had just finished reading a book when he heard them coming. They walked through the dull grey wall in front of him. They both looked the same; tall, white skinned, big black eyes and grey robes that were the same colour as the walls so they looked like they were a pair of floating heads. They were humanoid in shape, and could even be mistaken for humans if you saw them from a distance, but once you got closer, you'd notice the spikes running down their spines, the hollow eye sockets, skeletal limbs, black lips and lastly, their mouths full of sharp, jagged teeth. "Time for bed sweety." The one on the left (his mother) said as a bed appeared out of the wall behind the boy and he hopped in.

"Hey mum?"

"Yes dear?"

"What's daylight?" The boy had been in this small room his whole life, knowing only the grey walls, fluorescent lights and books. His mum laughed.

"Daylight? That's just a myth sweetie. These are the only lights in this world," she pointed to the ceiling with a talon like finger, "and they're going out now. Goodnight my sweet."

"Goodnight mum, goodnight dad."

"Goodnight son," his dad added. He knew that it couldn't be a myth, if only he could find the door to his freedom and see the world outside. He lay there on his bed and fell asleep, dreaming of vast green fields, clear blue skies, large forests thick with trees and the great oceans of the world.

He woke up the next morning and looked around the boring, grey room, then down at the hot breakfast of French toast that his parents had left on a small table for him. He knew that he wasn't like them. He had fur on his head, small balls in the holes in his head and something between his skin and his bones. He had tried to draw himself once by touching his face with one hand, while drawing with the other. He wasn't allowed a mirror for some reason. This particular morning he looked at his metal fork after wiping it on his clothes. He could see himself in colour. His fur, or maybe it was called hair, was long and black, the balls in his head, which he had thought were called eyes, were a bright, clear blue, the colour he imagined the sky would look like. The skin he had was soft, smooth and a pale like the pages in his book. He picked up a book and looked at it. "The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas". He looked over as his mother as she came in to get his empty plate. "Mum, what am I?" She paused for a second.

"You're human sweetie."

"Then, what are you? I'm not like you am I"

"You'll find out when you're older."

"Am I a prisoner?" She paused again.

"You've been reading too many books." She growled as she snatched the book from his hands.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Some questions are better left off unanswered." She stormed out of the room, disappearing through the wall without a trace. He got up and tried to follow her, only to find that he couldn't walk through the walls. He walked around his room, walking into the walls before collapsing in the middle of the room. He closed his eyes and imagined the world in his books. It was a cruel world, but it was filled with things beyond what this grey prison allowed him to imagine. he imagined the smell of flowers, the sound of gunfire, fire, earth and wind. He imagined the wind blowing through his hair like it had done to some many of the people in his books. He imagined what it felt like, what it smelt like, how cool it was flowing over his head. He lifted his hand up and felt it flow between his fingers.. He felt it. He wasn't imagining it! But where was it coming from? He crawled through the wind trying to find where it was coming from. He reached the far wall and put his fingers up to where it connected to the floor. They slid right under. He pulled them back in shock. He looked closer at where his fingers had gone and noticed a thin line. He followed it and noticed that it was only a metre or so long. He stood up, put his hand on the wall and pushed, but it didn't budge. He tried and tried again, but with still no luck. he sat infront of what he hoped was a door and just stared. He put his fingers under the door and pulled. It swung open, almost hitting him in the face. He stepped out of the room and into a long corridor that was just as dull and grey as his room. Along the hall there were hundreds of doors, all numbered. He turned around and saw a number on his door.  He ran through the hall, turning a corner, then another, and another. He turned another corner and ran into a full-length mirror. He looked at himself and at his collar. It was black with white writing on it. What it said made his heart drop. "Subject #5672". He was right, he was a prisoner. Was this like in his stories? Were his "parents" going to eat him? Was this a concentration camp? He ran as fast as he could, turning every possible corner, hoping desperately to find a way out. He ran around a corner and bumped into one of those monsters that were keeping him there. "You! What are you doing out?!" The boy turned and ran away from the beast. He ran until he couldn't breathe and then he ran some more. As he bolted around yet another turn in the path, he crashed into a wall. It was a dead end. He stood up and jumped back as, all of a sudden, the wall hissed. It slid backwards and up. The boy instinctively closed his eyes as daylight poured fire into his blue eyes, burning away the grey that slept within his mind and suffocated his imagination. As he opened his eyes and stepped outside he saw all that he had imagined. Grass stretched out in front of him and seemed to go for miles. He could make out a forest to his right, and running water to his left. They told him it wasn't real, that it was just a myth, and yet here it was, all around him. Daylight.

He lay in a clearing in the forest. While in what used to be his home, he had read several survival guides and knew which plants and berries were poisonous, how to catch and cook animals, and everything else he needed to survive. It was lucky that he had a near perfect memory. He was staring at the clear blue sky, the exact same colour as his eyes. The boy had grown since he left that strange place he was raised in. Nearly two years had gone by since his escape and the boy, now a man, had grown big and strong. His eyes were more blue than ever, his hair was long and messy and he was beginning to grow a beard. As he returned to the cave he had been living in, he decided that it was time to move on and begin a nomadic life. He gathered a supply of food, water and leathers he had used to repair the clothes he had been wearing since his escape, and left the forest.

It was a month after he had left the forest when it happened. The soft grass had given way to restless sand and hot rock. Trees were miles apart and water was scarce. Heat had always been anathema to the man, but he had gradually become accustomed to it. He knew that this was one of the deserts that so many people had died in, but he seemed to be doing well, after all, he had lasted a week in this place already, but it was beginning to take it's toll. He noticed that there was a great canyon ahead of him with a not-so-stable-looking bridge leading across it. As he walked towards the bridge. he noticed that, on the other side, was an oasis. The man stepped onto the bridge, carefully analysing each step before making it. When he was half way across the bridge, it was only half the size it was when he had first stepped onto it, but even though it creaked and crumbled, he made it across to the other side. He walked along the edge of the cliff towards the oasis. He was too thirsty to feel that the ground around his feet had become softer. As he aproached the oasis, he took one step too close to the edge. The edge of the cliff where he was standing crumbled away and he began the long descent into the darkness, and towards his death. Sand, rocks and water fell with him, some pushing down on him, making him fall faster. He pushed those ones on top of him off as he continued to fall into the darkness of the abyss. He could barely see the sun now, the daylight. Just as he was certain that his fall was going to last forever, like it had in some of his stories, it came to an abrupt, tragic end.

But it was not the end.

He couldn't move, he could only look up. He was sure that he should have felt some pain when he hit the ground, but there was none, not even the slightest discomfort. In fact, he was completely at peace, maybe the reason he couldn't move was because he didn't want too. It was only then that he noticed him. There was a man standing over him. There was only just enough light to see by, but he knew who this stranger was. He wasn't like they described him in the stories. He was wearing a black pin-stripe suit and black gloves. His face and head were surrounded in shadows and were impossible to see. The new man stretched out an arm towards him. "I can't move." He said, but the stranger just stood there, hand outstretched. "I-I told you, I-" 

"Try." He tried to lift up his arm and soon found his hand in the hand of this new man.

"So, are you who I think you are?" He asked.

"Yes."

"I knew that I'd meet you eventually." The man said to the stranger as they began walking. "I'm not afraid of you, Reaper."

"You have no need to be afraid. Fear is a response to evil, and I am neither good, nor evil."

"When I met you, I was expecting a big robe and a scythe, not this."

"Alas, I had to change my appearance. A man carrying a scythe around a city is a bit suspicious, don't you think?"

"Yea, I guess you're right. You don't seem very..."

"Grim?" The Reaper finished for him.

"Yea. Grim."

"Well, in times long past, in England I believe, a king once taught his people to fear death so that they would come to him in search of long life, and what's scarier than a grumpy old skeleton carrying a sharp blade on a long stick?"

"So you're.. not grumpy?""No, not at all."

"Are you going to keep me here forever?"

"My boy, do you even know what a Reaper is?" The man stopped to think for a minute before deciding on an answer.

"Well, a Reaper is a being that takes away your soul after you die and guides you to the afterlife." They kept on walking in silence for hours without a break in the walls appearing.

"You're wrong you know." The Reaper said.

"About what?'

"Reapers."

"Explain?"

"We don't actually 'reap', we simply... inform." 

"I still don't get it."

"I've been with you for every second of your life. I know all that there is to know about you. I can go wherever you've been, wherever you've ever wanted to go, everywhere that you've ever dreamed, as long as it's connected to you. I know everything, and now that your time has come, it's my job to share all that  I know with you."

"Wow, so you know everything?" The man said with wonder in his voice.

"Yes. Now, take a seat, I'm going to show you how to play a game," he said as a small table with two chairs appeared in front of them. On the table was a board. It was decorated in equal amounts of black and white squares. At two ends of the board, opposite each other, there were two rows of game pieces, forming two teams. One was black while the other team was white. "This game is called Chess," the Reaper said as he took a seat.

They played for what must have been years. The dead man and his Reaper. Each time they played, it was the mand that lost, but each time he did, the shadows around his Reaper's head became thinner and thinner and the boy felt lighter and lighter. The game board was almost empty, with only a few possible moves left, the boy moved his knight into place. "Checkmate." The Reaper smiled as the shadows vanished from around his face. His hair was long and black, his eyes were the blue of a clear, sunny sky. 

"Congratulations. You're ready now. come with me." They stood up and continued their walk. All of a sudden, the rock walls that had been on either side of them up to this point, parted, giving way to a magnificent burst of daylight. The boy felt his mind explode with knowledge as he learnt everything there was to know in this world. The boy couldn't see, the light was too bright. He heard the Reaper speak. "You owe your freedom to yourself. It was you that fed a breeze through the bottom of the door. When the time comes, you'll know." Then, the light faded.

He was in a dull, grey room, fluorescent lights cast an empty light upon the room. A baby was sitting in a crib in the middle of the room, happily gurgling at the two monsters standing above it. The boy was fascinated. He couldn't look away. He knew what he had to do, and he remembered. His Reaper wasn't a reaper at all, but a guardian, a friend. He remembered seeing things as a boy, things that would move at night, and he realised that it was him that was watching himself. He was the guardian, the "Reaper". He watched every second of his life unfold before his eyes, he didn't even notice that his other self had passed on, or that he had changed clothes. He never stopped watching his former self, and when he felt that it was the right time, he stood outside of his door, and blew a wind through the crack at the bottom. He led himself to freedom, led himself to safe food to eat while he was in the forest, led himself to the oasis, and finally, led himself to his death. He played chess with himself too, and felt proud as he was beaten. As they walked and the walls faded away around them, he felt himself drift away within the one thing that had filled him with pure happiness and caused his soul to soar. He faded away, flying to heaven in the purest thing that life had to offer. Daylight.