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Darkness calles her. She dreams of black forests, deep glittery peridot rivers, meandering footpaths. She wakes up, and the darkness is still (again) there, seeping from the walls. She thinks she can make out the drip-drip sound.
There are yells. People (creatures?) yelling in such voices she thinks she can see them writhing on the floor of the black forest, or on the bank of the peridot river. She dreams, and when she wakes up, sometimes she keeps hearing the yells seeping through the walls on the slithery back of the darkness.
Time passes, though how long it's hard to tell. Days, certainly. Months, probably. Years ... she doesn't want to think about years. It's still dark.
Once in a long while (days? months? years?), there's a horrible, blinding, pleasegoawayithurtshurtshurts flash of orange light. She thinks it's light, anyway. It's been a long time, here in the darkness. Long enough to forget what light looks like. It goes away quickly, anyway, and she's happy it's dark once more. Sometimes, she thinks it's wrong to think that, but she doesn't really care.
She gets used to the darkness. It's almost like a friend, always there, in daydreams and in realdreams, and anytime in between. There are still occasional yells, but she learns to ignore them. Once, in a moment of rare lucidity, she thinks her throat hurts, and therefore it might be her that's doing the yelling, but she wishes that logic to be flawed, and after a while, it is. It's better that way.
After some more undefined time passes, she wakes up from her daydream of swimming in the peridot river only to hear the yelling. There's more this time, though, strange sounds which she thinks should sound familiar. There's more noise, closer this time, and she squeezes into the corner, burrows into the wall, wishing the darkness to shroud her and keep her hidden. More sharp banging noise, some sounds that resemble fireworks explosions (she thinks it was in color, the fireworks, but she has trouble remembering what color looks like), and then there's that horrible flash again, but it's gone quickly. Yesyesthankyouthankyou, but there's another smaller flash next to her, and it hurtshurtshurts and she squeezes her eyes (eyes, yes, that's what they're called) tightly shut. Hands are on her now, not her own, and she doesn't like it at first, but there's a movement on the top of her head, a gentle touch moving around her scalp, and it's pleasant, and it's been a while (days? months? years?) since she experienced something pleasant, so she stills and makes soft sounds herself.
Her mind collects all these new data, computes and tells her that darkness - the bad, ugly darkness - is gone now, and she wishes that logic to be true.
(And it is).