When I was 12, alone and stupid and careless, I fell down an abandoned well shaft. It took four days before they found me. Both legs were broken in the fall. Everyone said it was a miracle that I lived, keeping my head above water for so long, hallucinating from the pain.
I have many scars to remind me of that experience. The most noticed are the ones that circle my torso where the ropes they used to pull me up had cut into my skin. At least that's what I tell people when they ask about them. Nobody but me has ever seen how those marks glow green and yellow in the dark.
As I reached my mid-20s I had an increasingly strong feeling that I had to return to the well. My dreams of that place changed from dark and terrible to safe and peaceful. I often awoke aching with needs I couldn't satisfy no matter how much I tried. I also noticed that I was not interested in sex
with
anyone, man or woman. I self-diagnosed myself as asexual and tried not to worry about it, but over time began to realize it wasn't that I wasn't interested - it was more like obeying a command not to give myself to anyone.
By the time I was 30 years old I felt I was going crazy but I couldn't bring myself to talk to anyone about it. I was masturbating many times a day, at work and home, using anything and everything I could. The best orgasms came when I was frigging myself in water in the dark. My dreams were full of strange sounds and glowing eyes that pierced deep into my soul.