They flickered twice, his eyes, slowly growing accustomed to the suffocating darkness. Somewhere in the distance, the moonlight peeked from behind a curtain of storm; its dull beams mixing with the crimson glow of street lamps to cast shadows, like frenzied dancers, on his outstretched arm. But he noticed them only out of the corner of his consciousness.

He did not care for them. Not tonight.

His focus knew only the ceiling overhead, and his stare bore a hole through its cheap plaster. As if mesmerized by the intricate designs, his hand followed the web of cracks through the air, tracing each grotesque curve and groove in the dim light. Some time during his trance, his voice slipped out, almost as an afterthought. A whisper, pleading with the brooding silence and growing with intensity with each passing breath. It rumbled out from some recess of his soul, borne of an unbridled desire to rid himself of some unnamed demon that he did not know and could not understand. The anguish of it all tore at his being - at the night itself - threatening the otherwise catatonic room with a sinking despondency that seemed to consume it.

He could not escape it. He doubted he ever would.

There was a flurry of wind outside a few feet away; a draft that rustled the fallen and rotted autumn as it passed wildly on the other side of the glass. He was ignorant to its presence as well. Like the shadow, it could not save him from the nagging despair or the growing emptiness eating away at his mind. And as time drew itself into oblivion, it too slipped through the crooks of his fingers. A tether, slipping, falling, one irreversible inch at a time.

Soon, all that was left was that small voice; his pitiful whimpering groan. And though, even the clock’s tick tick tick disappeared into the incomprehensible void, swallowed up by that hellish darkness, that voice remained, crying out the same ten words over and over and over again until the dawn finally broke and his torment was lifted.

    Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

                          what...
                                            ...have
                                    I...

                                                                ...done?