Edited 1/09

The Lost One
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Part One: Sounds

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My small cell is all I can ever remember. It's got thick, perfectly flat blue-white walls, floor, and ceiling, with nothing but two tiny windows along one wall to break the monotony. There is never any sound that enters into my prison – everything is perfectly, eerily silent.

I pace from one wall to the other, mumbling softly to myself to try to break the total stillness. One, two, four, five… Silver chains connect my wrists and ankles to the back wall of the cell, but they don't make a sound as they brush against each other or when they drag on the floor. It's almost like they don't really exist. I knew they do, though; I have spent uncountable days sitting in the corner of the cell, brushing my fingers over the cold, hard metal.

Normally I'm content to sit in the corner and wait for something to happen. Today… today something's different. My stomach's twisting on itself and my heart's beating faster than normal; my feet are restless and my eyes keep flickering around the cell like I'm expecting something new to be there.

The problem is that I can't remember ever seeing anything 'new'. In all of my existence, all there has ever been are the blue-white walls and the silver chains and the two incredibly small windows that show nothing but an endless abyss beyond my cell. The idea of there being something out there that I don't know about – things that I have never experienced in my tiny world – sets all my nerves on end.

The idea of something new coming into my small room is… terrifying.

My endless pacing hesitates for a moment and I slip over to the windows, gazing out into the complete blackness. A shiver runs down my spine at the sight of the nothingness, a tiny thread of fear streaking through my stomach. Nothing.

I turn away abruptly, rubbing my arms and letting my mind drift into the soothing pattern I'd discovered years earlier. One, two, four, five, three, two… As much as I fear the idea of there being something new and undiscovered out there, I dread the emptiness even more. It's a constant worry in the back of my mind. I can't drag myself away from wondering what will happen if the thick walls of my cell disappear, leaving me to exist in the pure nothing beyond.

I know what it's like to live without anything – nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to smell – but the idea of being forced to exist in that abyss never fails to make all the hairs on my arms stand up. At least my cell is something.

I drop into a crouch and press my back against the wall, listening to my breath rasp loudly in my throat, wondering what this thing is that I can feel coming. My eyes scan the cell, flickering over the soothing blue-white walls, my breath suddenly catching in my throat, my heart beating quickly in my chest.

But there isn't anything there. There's never anything there.

I'm all alone.

Breathing out harshly, I force myself to relax and settle into a more comfortable position on the wall. Nothing's going to come. My cell isn't going to fall apart and leave me to the blackness. I have all of eternity to sit in my cell and nothing will ever change.

For a few moments I hold perfectly still, my eyes closed, my thoughts silent. The idea that nothing is ever going to change is very soothing; my nerves slowly start to calm down. When my breathing finally falls into a trance-like, slow pattern, I let my eyes open and push my worries into the back of my mind. They're still there – but they're muted for the time being.

One, two, four, five, three, two, one, four… In the worry-free moment, my fingers start tapping gently against my leg and I glance down at them, watching them dance out an incredibly complex pattern. As the pattern unfolds, I start to hum softly and rock back and forth, enjoying the sensations of touch and sound. In my little world there's nothing to touch but the walls and the chains; in my little world there aren't any sounds unless I create them myself.

Sometimes – especially when I'm lost in this pattern – I wonder if I'm crazy. Would a normal person sit in a corner and hum to themselves and memorize an almost endless pattern of numbers? I never know. I've asked myself if I'm crazy a million and one times by this point and I've yet to come up with an answer. I've never met another person; I have no concept of what 'normal' means. Perhaps, if there even are other people in their own tiny rooms somewhere in the abyss, they all do exactly what I do.

I just don't know. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm normal. Maybe…

The room suddenly seems to shiver and I jump to my feet, my eyes wide, my breath catching painfully in my throat. My world has never done this before and my heart starts to beat wildly. Trembling, I search my cell for anything – anything – dreading what I'd see, terrified that something would be happening.

For a moment I see nothing; everything is normal. Then I spot it: a tiny, miniscule crack in my smooth prison walls, scarcely an inch long.

Hesitatingly, I walk over to the small crack and run my fingers over the tiny bump, my heart slowly settling back into a normal pace. I can't tear my eyes off the almost unnoticeable crack, swallowing heavily. This is something new, something unexplainable… something to be feared. Licking my lips, I take a small step backwards, never letting my eyes leave the tiniest of defects in my wall.

Is this the first sign that my prison is finally falling to the nothing? Will the small crack grow and widen until my whole cell falls apart and I'm thrown into the endless blackness? Is this what will doom me to forever exist in an eternal abyss?

A tiny, terrified chuckle slips out of my mouth and I jump, startled at the sound of my own voice, retreating to the far corner of my cell. Unable to wrench my eyes away from the crack in my wall, my fingers start to tap against my leg, the movements tense and quick. One, two, four, five, three, two, one, four…

Nothing seems to help fight against the panic that is edging into me. My arms and legs are shaking uncontrollably and I have to pull them tightly against me to try to keep them still. My heart is pounding in my chest and my breathing is harsh and rapid. One, two, four, five…

It's not helping. The world starts to go black at the edges of my vision as I keep my eyes trained on the almost invisible crack. The thick, sturdy walls of my prison are crumbling.

I have no doubt that I'm about to die.

The room shivers again and a whispered scream of terror leaks out of my throat, my eyes slamming closed. I don't want to see any more. I don't need to look, I already know that the tiniest of cracks has just grown wider – the blackness is eating its way into my cell. Pressing my head against my knees hard enough to make stars sparkle behind my eyelids, I can't imagine anything more terrifying than what's happening to me right now. The end of the world as I know it is coming.

This is what I've been feeling all day, the thing I've known was coming. This has to be it.

Please make it stop, please make it never come again. I whimper a little, curled up in my ball, my whole body on edge as I wait for another one of the tremors to slip through my cell. This isn't what I want – I want it to stop. Please, someone… anyone… make it stop…

It doesn't. Another shiver slides through the room. Then another. And another. They're spaced out at almost perfect intervals and I start to anticipate them coming before they arrive, my body tensing and my breath catching inside of me. Each time the small quiver passes through the room I fear that it's the end… but the odd shivers never seem to affect me.

Finally, after dozens of these terrifying moments, I pull my head away from my knees and open my eyes, instantly searching out the crack in the opposite wall. In my mind I can see it – grown into a gaping hole that would swallow me and throw me into the nothingness where I would never be able to see or hear or feel every again.

But I can't find it. The shock makes the terror that had been sinking its teeth into me lose its grip. I blink and get to my feet, squinting as I carefully study the opposite wall, fearful of what I'd see but no longer lost to the panic I'd been feeling. A tiny shiver slides through the room but I barely notice it this time – I'm too intent on finding the crack that I'd convinced myself was growing.

My feet move, slowly carrying me across my cell, hesitating after each step to scan the wall and try to find the impossibly small defect in my perfect walls. It's not until my silver chains are almost stretched tight, my body most of the way across my cell, that I am finally close enough to see the crack.

It has grown. It is now nearly the length of my finger… but still so thin that not even one of the hairs from my head would fit through it. One of my hands comes up to softly trace over the fracture as another tremor passes through my cell. I tense a little, but relax almost immediately after it's over. My eyes never leave the tiny crack – it didn't even grow in that last shiver.

What is this thing that has entered into my life? These shivers and this small crack… what does it mean? My heart is still beating too fast; my nerves are still standing on end. I don't like this – I don't like this at all.

One, two, four, five… my fingers tap against the wall as I think, trying to figure out what is going on around me. For all of my existence this had been all I'd ever known. Now though…

What was that?

I freeze, my heart stopping in my chest. Slowly, almost painfully, I tip my head to the side, my messy white hair dropping into my narrowed eyes, waiting. I thought… I thought… had I heard something?

Just as another shiver races through my tiny cell, I hear it again. It's the softest of noises, almost unable to be heard, gone almost as quickly as it has come. But it's loud in my ears after an eternity of listening to nothing but my own heartbeat. The first sound to ever venture into my prison.

My eyes lock on the crack in my wall, my heart still refusing to beat, my lungs not breathing – I know instantly that the sound is coming through the crack. It is coming from the abyss… coming from the blackness…

I hear the sound for a third time and it finally shakes me out of my frozen state. I backpedal, tripping over the silver chains, and scramble away from the crack and the sounds coming through them. When my back slams into the opposite wall I'm forced to stop, my ears aching as they try to hear the terrifying sounds, my stomach churning.

The shivers… the sounds… it's all too much. This is my prison, my cell… my whole world. It's falling down around me, changing…

Unable to catch my breath, unable to slow my racing heart, petrified at the way my cell is changing around me, I lose myself to the panic that is clawing at my mind. The world becomes fuzzy and then slips to black. Deep in the back of my mind I can feel the pattern running around in circles.

One, two, four, five, three, two, one, four…

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