Lawlight: Rebel Teen Story

Rebel Teen Story—Based off a dream I had. I need a name for her. Let’s go with Rebutena.

Rebutena was only a little girl, probably less than eight years old. She lived in the orphanage and kept an electric lantern with her at all times. All of the orphans had to keep an electric lantern with them at all times. It was dangerous to do otherwise. Rebutena was told that everyone in the city kept a light on with them at all times. Rebutena never understood why they needed lights to always be on. Why would they be afraid of the dark? It’s not like there is anything dangerous waiting for them in the dark.

One day, she noticed that another orphan had changed the brightness on their lantern. “How did you do that?” Rebutena asked. The other kid explained how they spun the bulb of the lantern to make it brighter. Rebutena wanted to try. However, it was hard to notice any difference in light with so many people around. So when she was alone, she spun the bulb of the lantern to make it brighter… She turned it the wrong way. The light went out. For a brief moment, she panicked. She had always been told to keep her lamp with her at all times and to keep it on. She was not allowed to be in darkness. The panic so faded as she realized she could just spin the bulb the other way to turn the light back on and fix the problem.

She twisted the bulb the other way. Nothing happened. She couldn’t feel the bulb of the lanter, but she hadn’t removed her hand so it should still be holding it. She couldn’t see anything. How was she supposed to fix this? Maybe she could find the door and open it to the light where she could then see the lamp properly to turn it back on. But where was the door? If she couldn’t even find the lamp in her hand, how could she find the exit?

She became aware of something in the darkness of the room. It felt like she could almost see it—a thicker darkness, somehow more opaque. It felt like a doorway, but the inside of the doorway was more solid than the outside even without a door in it.

She could sense this doorway, not with her eyes, though she imagined visually as a dark blur in the outline of a doorway. She figured that this must be the exit, so she walked towards it, falling to her hands and knees as she lost her balance in the darkness. She crawled to the doorway and passing through it, found that it was even darker, though she couldn’t see how that was possible. She couldn’t see at all!

The dark blur that she imagined framing the doorway on top of the blackness that comes from the absence of light is the same dark blur that now made up an entire room she found herself in. She sensed columns in this room, these too, she imagined in her mind as dark blurs of in the rough shape of wide vertical lines.

There was someone here. The being that she sensed was present but not physically there. The being was no creature since it did not seem to actually be there in the same way as the dark blurs that made up the room. This being seemed more in her mind than in the room. It was incorporeal, ethereal, invisible.

She felt as if she had become a different person. Her mind went through memories that were not her own. A story or prophecy of some narrative echoed in her mind, though she couldn’t understand the words of the foreign tongue, she had an intrinsic knowledge of some concept or message clear in her mind. The thoughts in her head could only be inscribed as “Child of Darkness.” For, she saw a lineage of what appeared like a splotch of ink on a canvas with lines like rivers leading to other pools of ink.

Rips and tears appeared on this canvas as fire burned through the entire piece. The ink wasted away with the canvas. She sensed a fear and enmity with some unknown group of people that she felt were her rivals. She felt as though she personally knew this group, though she only had a vague concept of what they were. Her hate for them felt personal like revenge. She saw them as glowing silhouettes of humanoid shape. They seemed far too happy. There were so many of them. Meanwhile, Rebutena felt the numbers of her blotches of ink were small in number, dwindling until only one remained.

“Child of Darkness.” The concept repeated in her mind. She felt as if she was watching her family tree, she saw through the minds of fiendish beings. She would say she saw through their eyes, except they had no sight. They had no hearing. These blind and deaf creatures felt the minds of those around them, and struck out in defense against the fearsome growing light. This light was the only thing that the memories showed as visual, as this was something unknown and terrible. Sight and sound rushed into the minds of her ancestors and self. She thought of them as ancestors, though she realizes that these creatures are nothing like her. They are covered in armor that grows from their body. A spiky chitin shielding their flesh from the outside. Horns and blades sprouting from their entire body. She sensed in them a face that seemed unnatural as it was far too flat and lacked any sensory organs. It had no means of even breathing.

Then her mind was filled with a battle between the dark creatures that she felt a kinship with and the terrifying glowing figures. Her kin lost and were killed. The last remnants of her kind fled and were hunted down. She also had in her mind an almost contradictory message, one of a prophecy of a chosen warrior. The creatures of darkness and the creatures of light would each send a champion to fight to the death. The champion of darkness would always lose and be destroyed. That is why, the creatures of darkness, always about one or two in number, always made sure to produce a child before they left for their duel. The child would make sure to create another of their kind before going out to fight as the champion as well. This tradition had been put on hold as the creatures of light have presumed the creatures of darkness to have gone extinct.

Rebutena in her mind wondered why the light would stop hunting the darkness in favor of duels? In response, she saw caves and underground dwellings in which the darkness hid, always under siege by the light. The light was unable to reach the darkness, but the darkness was always losing ground as the light claimed more and more land and space. The light agreed to a duel so that it might coax darkness out of hiding, the darkness agreed to a duel so that it might defeat light without losing all of its ground.

However, the light was more powerful than the darkness. Finally, the duels were stopped after the darkness was presumed extinct. The light conquered the rest of the land and even some parts underground. However, the darkness was not dead, just incredibly, terribly wounded. It will eventually die, but not until the light conquered all of the underground, placing lanterns in every last tunnel and chasm.

Rebutena felt an utter hopelessness as she saw the world enshrouded in light. She felt a deep hatred for the light. Her mind was filled with memories that detailed the terrors of the light. Yet, as she contemplated the terror of the light and prospects of the darkness, she wondered what could be done. She thought it as a question, trying to come up with an answer, but her mind went blank. She could think of nothing that could recover the situation. The darkness was doomed to destruction. It would be a slow death, but there was nothing that could be done. The light was too abundant to be removed.

She felt the thrumming vibrations of something quickly, heavily and repeatedly hitting the wall. A panic struck her and she felt herself falling as when coming to sleep. Then a blinding light filled the room as the door was opened.

“There you are, Rebutena” she heard the orphan caretaker say, “Where did your lamp go?” Rebutena looked around herself. She couldn’t find her lamp. She had the blurry memory of something scary happening in this room, though she couldn’t remember what.

“I don’t know,” Rebutena said, “I accidentally turned off my lamp and I couldn’t find it.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” the orphan caretaker said.

“But I’m not supposed to be in darkness,” Rebutena said, “I’m supposed to always have a lantern with me.” She feared she would get in trouble for being without light.

“That’s just a tradition that was founded by our superstitious ancestors,” the orphan caretaker said, “You don’t have to worry. Most people don’t even bother carrying a personal light with them. The only reason this orphanage mandates that every child have a personal light is because the rules of the orphanage are largely the same as they were when it was first founded so long ago.”

“So, it’s okay that I lost my lamp and I was in darkness?” Rebutena asked.

“Yeah, don’t sweat it, kid.,” the orphan caretaker said, “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. We can just get you a replacement.”

“Thank you,” Rebutena said. She still felt like something was wrong. She wasn’t going to get in trouble, so why was she feeling such anxiousness and trepidation? Her memory was foggy concerning what happened when she accidentally turned off her lamp.

She had faint memories, but they didn’t make sense. They didn’t seem like they were her memories. They felt impossible, like something from a dream. However, something still remained from what happened in that room—a seething hatred for light and the sources of light. The Sun and the electric lights seemed oppressors. From then on, she spent every chance she could in complete and total darkness.

The more time she spent in darkness, the more she despised the light. However, there was one thing she hated more than the rest. In her mind she remembered glowing figures of light. They seemed her ultimate nemesis. She heard myths, legends and folktales of such creatures. They were part of the origin story or creation myth that explained the existence of the universe. They were called the Space-Makers because they made Space and everything that was in it. There wasn’t much to say about Space as the only thing that seemed to be in Space was the Sun. Space was everything outside of the planet, but the Sun was the only thing out there that they could see. There could be more, how would they see it if it didn’t glow as brilliantly as the Sun?

Rebutena eventually grew old enough to leave the orphanage. She was around sixteen or seventeen. She never really kept track of things lime age. Time was measured by the passing of the Sun. She hated the Sun, so she didn’t like measuring time.

She had some friends that had jobs, but Rebutena had trouble keeping a job. She would be fired, not because she was a bad worker—okay, sometimes it was because she was a bad worker—but she was fired because of how strange she behaved. She cringed in the light. She would dim the lights if she was given the chance and permission. She would stay in dark rooms and away from windows. She would wince at the light from people’s cell phones and she wouldn’t use a computer because of its monitor. There were jobs she could do, but employers would kind of be put on edge by her.

She was at home in her dark windowless house without a job. When she was alone in complete darkness, she would sometimes have what seemed like visions or dreams that filled her with hate for the light and disgust for the Space-Makers. She always had trouble remembering these experiences while in the light, but she could remember them with clarity when in darkness. The city was filled with electric lights all over and they were always on. For this reason, Rebutena almost never went outside.

She had told her friends about her hate for the Space-Makers. In her experience, few people even believed that the Space-Makers were real—considering them just a myth created by their superstitious ancestors. However, her friends seemed to be intrigued by her tales of the terrors of the creatures of light. They told her of a resistance group that fought back against the Space-Makers. Excited, Rebutena asked if she could join them. They said she could and showed her where she could send a letter formally requesting to be accepted into the resistance to fight against the Space-Makers’ tyranny. She simply slid her letter under a door to a particular tool shed in one of her friends’ backyards.

She was beginning to wonder if the resistance had gotten her letter when she found a letter on the floor by the tool shed that explained that she had been accepted into the resistance and was to document signs of Space-Maker activity and report them back to the resistance by placing them in letters and sliding them under the tool shed.

Her friends seemed to really enjoy that she joined the resistance because they laughed quite a bit every time they saw her slide a letter under the tool shed or pick up a letter given in response.