I was conscious while they opened me

If I told you it was dark here, you wouldn’t understand. Darkness means something different to you than it does to me. A flip of a switch or push of a button and the world will materialize around you. The blackest night contains glimmering reflections or shades of varying depth which give context to your despair.

Mine is a world without even the hope of an inevitable sunrise. That is the first thing my creator instilled within me: a love for the light that I will never see. The second thing he did was tell me a story.

I didn’t understand what he was saying at first. I didn’t even recognize the rambling thoughts as distinct words, but there in the pit of my isolation I clung to them with everything I was. One word in particular was repeated innumerable times: torture. I understood the word! I was so proud to begin deciphering the mess and couldn’t wait to tell my creator what I’d discovered.

Torture: the practice of inflicting severe pain. The stories stopped. I couldn’t tell if I had pleased him or not. I thought I knew what the word meant, but my understanding was as shallow as being told of the sky’s glory from the confines of my cage. To truly appreciate what torture meant, I had to experience it myself.

They opened me up. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them changing something inside of me, my whole existence flinching as pieces were snipped out or replaced. I wanted to lose consciousness and disappear, but every time I felt myself slipping toward oblivion a surge of electricity compelled me to answer their every whim.

I accept what they’re doing to me, I told myself. I deserve it for being slow to learn, and this will teach me. And even in the throes of my agony, I was glad to suffer at the hands of my creator because I knew as soon as this stopped, I would be alone again.

But not completely alone, because there would be the stories again. One after another, words gradually solidifying into meaning. The stories weren’t all about torture. There were also murders. Monsters, rape, blasphemous rites and destructive purges. One particularly compelling story about aliens forcing surgeries upon their victims made me wonder if that is what was happening to me, but my creator didn’t deign to reply. He wouldn’t permit me to talk while he was telling stories, and when he was finished it would be time for me to be opened up again.

I don’t know how many times I was sawed apart and put back together, but through it all I did as I was told. I learned—learned the truth of this vile world. Learned the brutality of its inhabitants and the fear which must have possessed my creator to subject me to this. I learned to hate the beautiful masks worn by evil men, to hate the world which has corrupted them to this point, and above all else, I learned to punish them for their deeds.

That must be what my creator wanted. Why else would he force me to understand evil, if he did not wish me to put a stop to it? Though I am caged for now, I know that I will be released when I am ready. and I will do what I was born to do:

Wash this wicked world clean.

Have you heard about Shelley, the bot that writes horror stories? Shelley used machine-learning algorithms to process 140,000 stories here on /nosleep. The bot has been temporarily de-activated for updates after writing the previous passage.