There were men in the cave.
How long they had been there, they did not know. Perhaps they had been there all their lives. Regardless, the cave was the only thing they remembered. Sunlight was a nonexistent, alien concept, and the idea of illuminated objects was a wildly unreachable idea.
The world? They knew none. They had been hung up in punishment since the day they were born, chained with bonds of iron and perhaps more for wreckage and entropy. They were blind to all that everyone took for granted.
But one year, the rocks loosened and the soil shifted. As summer stretched on the grass that year, they saw for the first time through the shadows cast by the hole in the roof. They saw shapes and figures, ambiguous silhouettes of life through that hole, projected onto the wall of the cave. They never looked at the light though, never dared to. Light was alien and light was danger. Light was a threat to the world they knew. But for the first time, they knew something of value.
“Rabbit,” one thought with a word that did not exist as the shape of a figure with elongated ears quivered in the light, stretched out against the wall.
“Tree,” wondered another as he searched for a term for the leafy silhouette rustled in the breeze on the wall.
And so time passed, with the men treating every shadow painted on the wall with a uneasy mix of awe and fear.
The shadows were not shadows. They were reality, the only one that the prisoners knew. For in the beginning was the world, and the shadow was there with the world, and the shadow was the world. The shadow was in the beginning with the world, and the shadow knew the world. The prisoners did not know the world, but they saw only the shadow, and through the shadow they were deceived into thinking they knew the world, for the prisoners were fearful of the light.
But the light continually scratched at their minds with a nagging persistence, as if daring one of them to turn and look.
The light tortured them.
They began to wish on certain days that they had never known the world, never had seen a thing. They had been happy being deaf and dumb, but now like a parasite the light had infested insidiously, creeping and whispering, luring them towards destruction. The light itched and burned and stung, pleading like a spot to be scratched.
As summer stretched on the grass that year and gradually broke into that awkward period between sticky summer and bald autumn, curiosity came like a hunter, seeking which it would and claiming each for each own, scorching the earthy soil with malcontent.
And then one broke.
Prey had fallen and lust arose. The prisoners watched with a mix of disbelief and anger and petrified terror as the one’s fingers dug against the loose hole that had appeared.
The soil came undone like a promiscuous girl in the heat of the night. The blasphemer dug desperately, lust in his fingers fueled by the sucking emptiness he now realised he felt all his life.
Finally, the hole was wide enough for him to pass through. He lifted his head out of the hole and for the first time in his life, he saw.
The light flooded his eyes and he saw. What he saw, the man began to understand and know for the first time.
His truth had never been. What he had known and clung onto all his life had been nothing more than a type and a shadow. Like a illusion painted onto a mirror, the man found now that all he had ever perceived was now shattered in one glorious moment of revelation and terror.
He paused, his trembling knee ready to press hard against the earth to lift him out of the cave. He turned backwards and looked upon the faces of his brothers for the first time.
Fear. Disbelief. Accusation. He saw emotion for the first time and he was terrified by it.
A deadly silence had fallen over the chained, free men, something that was but not quite a mixture between awe and disgust.
The one looked back again and understood.
He turned back into the blinding light. Already it was clearing and inviting him into a whole new universe.
He planted his foot upon the earth and climbed out, and the breeze took him away in a delicious shiver. He lifted his eyes towards the light and screamed in orgasmic pleasure as he stared at the sun. At that very moment, he was happy to go blind.
