• Pianist
    Light. We need light. It keeps our plants healthy which, by extension, keeps us healthy. It provides solar power and makes dark seem a bit less scary. It’s also normal. Sun comes up, sun goes down. It’s a way of life. But what if there were no light? What if the Earth were to lose that light? What if it became a place where no light penetrated the inescapable darkness that enveloped its surface? What would humanity do? Simple. It would adapt. Learn to love the darkness. Learn to support a whole world with only darkness. Begin to hate the light for abandoning the world and love the darkness for accepting it with open arms. If humanity were to adapt to this dark and dismal life then everything would go back to normal, right? Wrong. Loving the darkness is just one of many ways to taint the heart. If every single one of the humans on Earth started to love the darkness then we would become nothing more than a race of barbaric, darkness loving beasts. But a few humans keep us from becoming that. There are a small handful of humans that have not yet let the Darkness touch their hearts. One of those humans is Madeline Forge.

    Chapter 1
    A sharp slap suddenly jolted Madeline awake.
    She looked up to see Mrs. Franks glaring down at her disapprovingly.
    “Falling asleep in class, Ms. Forge? That will be detention for you,” Mrs. Franks said in her low gravelly voice. Madeline cringed. This was her second detention this week. How was she supposed to explain to her aunt that she couldn’t make dinner tonight?
    “I apologize Mrs. Frank. It won’t happen again,” Madeline replied in the sweetest and most innocent voice she could muster up. Mrs. Frank just sniffed in disgust and walked back to the front of the room to continue her lecture.
    None of the students or teachers at Knight High School liked her very much, and she had no idea why. She knew that she as different from them; anyone would, seeing her fair blonde hair and light blue eyes that stood out so much in the grays and blacks that surrounded her every day of her life. She fingered a lock of the golden hair between her fingers and wondered, for the millionth time, what had made her different. Was she born this way or had someone made her into this? She sighed and shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to think of these things. She filed away her questions and tried to focus on the lesson.

    On the way detention Madeline got the glares and looks of displeasure that she always got while walking anywhere in the town of Knight. She hunched her shoulders and gripped her books a bit tighter until she finally reached room B32. She pushed open the door and in the same second her mouth twisted into a frown.
    All the people who were meanest to her happened to be in this room. Great, she thought. Another reason to love detention. She walked up to the bored looking teacher sitting at the front desk and gave him her pink slip. He nodded absently and Madeline went to the back of the room to find a seat.
    She could feel the menacing glares set on her and she couldn’t help but whimper in fear. She quickened her pace until she finally got to the back of the room; her almost-safe haven. She took her spot and settled into the chair, ready for the torture that was detention.

    As she stepped out of the schoolroom she expected warmth from Sol* to wash over her but then the cold realization that Sol didn’t exist anymore hit her. Since it had been destroyed the world had been subdued in darkness, turning everyone and everything on it into a kind of irritable, shriveled up version of what it had been like before.
    Everyone in the world knows about Sol and its destruction. It’s mandatory that teachers teach kids about the sun even if they hate it. Madeline loved this lesson herself; no surprise there, Madeline always loved what everyone else hated. She would always imagine herself sitting outside soaking up the Vitamin D that had radiated of Sol’s surface. How the warmth would spread through her body like a loving and beautiful disease. How she could lie on the damp soggy grass and have it be dry and soft.
    Someone shoving by her snapped her back to reality and she realized that she better hurry home before aunt got too angry.










    *Sol: Spanish word for sun
    Chapter 2
    “Where on Earth were you?!”
    “I was in detention. I’m sorry,” Madeline said, irritation leaking into her voice. She’d had this conversation with her Aunt Reah so many times that she knew sometimes found herself saying her aunt’s lines for her. Of course that only brought on another round of scolding.
    “Why were you in detention? What did you do you filthy rotten child?” her aunt screeched.
    “I fell asleep in class because I stayed up to do house work,” Madeline mumbled. “You told me to.”
    “Oh so now you’re blaming it on me?! You are the most incompetent 15-year-old I’ve ever met. You need to learn your place young lady.” Reah scolded menacingly.
    “No…” Madeline seethed with hatred for her aunt. She had always been abusive and mean to Madeline but she couldn’t take it anymore. “I don’t need to find my place. You do.”
    Her aunt looked baffled but suddenly the baffled look turned to hate and with one swift movement of her wrist she slapped Madeline across the face.
    Madeline’s eyes stung and she suddenly had the urge to run. To run away from this house to run away from this hateful town and everyone in it. She wanted to leave them all behind and go to a place where the sun shined and no one would hate her or make fun of her ever again. She felt childish just dreaming about it but she didn’t care. She wanted to run, so that’s what she did. She ran. Ran out of the house and into the surrounding woods. She ran from everything that hurt her and ran until she couldn’t run anymore.
    By the time her legs gave out she was far away from Knight—she thought the name with disgust—and everyone in it. No one would miss her. No one would come after her. She was alone. Alone, but free.
    She sat there panting while her clothes got slowly saturated by the mud and runoff. Her lips twitched in sudden amusement as she remembered the look on her aunt’s face when she told her off. How shocked she looked. Could she really be shocked? Wouldn’t she know that someday Madeline would get tired of her bull and run away? And if she did, did she want Madeline to leave? So many questions, but no one could answer them now.
    But then her strange jittery high ran out and the realization hit her hard. Where was she going to go? Nobody was going to take care of her. What if she got hurt? Who would help her? Questions rolled through her mind and she couldn’t answer any of them. A sudden wave of nausea washed over her and the last thing she could feel was the cool mud against her face.

    Madeline awoke in a small cot with multiple blankets over her.
    She sat up on her elbow and looked around the room.