Demon's Gate 2009 Winner

FictionalIrony's entry -

Demons of the Mind

She sat in the dark hole, her body beaten, bruised, and broken. Her body wretched with silent sobs as the rain fell from the small opening at the beginning of the damp cylindrical prison. It was so dark that it was impossible to see anything. If she had held up a hand to check and see if the bugs had eaten away at the raw sores on her fingers she would have only been able to see the image in her mind, the one left over from when she could still see.
She was blind. Blinded by the darkness, the pain, the numbness… whatever it was. Pain, numbness, at least, where the numb was had been pain. She opened her mouth, taking her sore covered fingers to brush stray bits of hair from her face. The rain tasted funny as it trickled from her forehead to her now open mouth, falling in. She closed her mouth, swallowing and frowning. The taste was familiar and strangely powerful.
She placed her fingers to her forehead, the rain felt sticky as it gathered in her matted locks. She ran a hand through the damp strings of black hanging from her head, feeling some of it parting with her scalp as she did so. The strings stuck to her fingers as she limply attempted to shake them off, but just like the rest of her, the hair refused to budge.
Resigned, she slowly lowered her hand into a puddle of the liquid. She knew what it was, how it tasted, how it felt… it was all too familiar.
Blood. It was raining blood in her personal hell.
'Of course' was the only thought that bothered to move through her traditionally stationary brain. God had to be punishing her. This was more than what she could ever have bargained for.
Blood instead of water, sores… the only positive thing about the prison was the numbness that had long since taken over her heart, clutching the very strings of the horrible beating thing with its icy claws until it no longer beat to the tune it once had. Instead, it only kept her going for pure torture.
Long gone were the days when she could see the sun, see the joy that so many people had tried to point out to her. Oh, she had tried, how she had tried. But indeed the pain was far too immense and she had been swallowed by the dark earth, stolen in the middle of the night by Lucifer and his Angels.
Angels. The thought brought a stench to her nostrils and they flared, it smelled worse than the blood ever could… it was the stench of the demons and their awful laughter, breath killing anything in sight. She felt her lungs clutch up as the air thickened, blood piling higher and higher beside her limp form. It was not her own, unlike those many hours she had spent in the bathroom with the razor. This blood instead belonged to others.
Screams filled her ears and she fidgeted in the cold, gloomy, sickly, clammy, space....
She fell. Fell onto the cold wood floor of her bedroom. She opened her eyes , staring at the blank white walls that had once been covered by images of smiling people and loved ones. The screams continued, floating up from below. The arguments never ceased. But for a moment, they were dulled by a quiet laughter from behind. She felt a slight breeze on her bare neck and as she turned to look heard the voices of the horrible demons that tormented her.
“Welcome home.”