The Darkness
A thousand times the dark consumes me. Black. Clear like a blank canvas waiting to be filled with the pictures of my dreams, or my nightmares. The dark is hungry for the fear it can bring with it – the fear of what can stay hidden under its eerie cloak. However tonight, like a thousand nights, I am safe. A knife is not hidden by night's deceiving hands, a gleam of light, a reflection is what exposes every terror.
The sphere of light keeps the fear at bay. It hangs in the heavens out of the grasp of the shadows that lurk in every corner on the ground; they hide, terrified of the moon's bright halo. These are the thousands of good nights. When the shadows burn in the glare and the night goes hungry. But…
The shadows creep from the ground then the moon's beam vanishes – covered in the night's cloak.
A thousand more times the darkness consumes me. BLACK.
Then the picture begins.
A single withered hand emerged from the darkness. Rigidly, it beckoned for me, at least that was what I had thought. Now I know. It was wafting my scent towards its skin, letting my smell sink into its grey, icy flesh. Smiling like a human appraising a good wine before they nod in approval. However my customer did not nod – no – instead his pupils widened. His eyes were so endlessly dark they made me think he was just one of the shadows, a simple figure in my picture.
However the black in his eyes was not just a blot on the canvas, they were real, and they were boring straight into me. Looking inside to ponder greedily over my contents. I had a feeling this 'customer' would not pay me; I would be the one paying this time. When the meal ended he would hand me the bill with two words written on the paper as white as the moon had been: 'your blood'.
He advanced and I was overcome with a wave of frosted air. He launched at me and the fever spread like flames chasing fuel. Pain seared from my neck to my toes, never stopping and not once giving me anything else to see but the dark pits in his head, focused in a thirsty glare.
The bill of my life was on his skin, dripping with ruby red – the biggest price I have ever had to pay.
That was when my picture was full. No white light left on the canvas of my life. The paint brush lifted and began the new picture of my after life, soaked with the colour red.
I no longer fear the dark. My soul is the colour that his eyes were, the colour of the shadows, loneliness, fear and darkness. My heart is as cold as that colour to. That was the last night the darkness consumed me, because I have never found my way out into the light. BLACK.
This picture never ends.