Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

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Do you have a dark side?

Or, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so,  join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.

Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday

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Share your dark side?

I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.

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dark | side | thursday | two

The end.

The end, he had encountered in a crudely covered hole in the ground.

The beginning.

The beginning, well, that took place beneath the fading light of a long gone time. Years before he had first opened his eyes.

The light of an unusually warm spring evening. Shadows scored by the setting sun surrounded them. As they walked together. Hope then in their hearts. Still.

Dandelion clocks marked the path like lanterns.

Clocks marking the passage of time as the gentle breeze bent their slender stems and the soft seed heads dispersed. And time was all they had. Nothing more.

That day, they were free. Free from what would come. Free from fear.

Free from it.

Of course, he knew none of this, not then. Not on the day he stumbled across the hole. No, that knowledge would come much later. His discovery of that rudely abandoned hole in the ground. The end of one story, their story, had become the beginning of another story. His story.

Back in the light. In that time of hope. They walked on. Looking around them with joy in their hearts.

And yet.

And yet, in the spaces in between, those spaces where the sun was absent, in those spaces, it stirred. It had not yet taken shape.

At least not its final, terrible, shape.

Would they have seen the way the light seemed to bend, behind them, as they walked along the path. Had they paused, stopped, turned, would it have made any difference? Would they have seen it then? If they had, would they have recognised it for what it was and what it would become? Would their end then have been any different? Would his?

All this he learned later.

When it would also be too late for him. So very late.

He looked across the desk, at the chaotic piles of papers, books, and that box. Always that damned box.

It seemed so long ago now. All of it.

His hand, aching, his fingers bent out of shape, swollen, gently picked up the pen, and he once more began to write. He had to write, tell his story, and theirs. Yes, their story, he must tell it, before it all began again. And it would. It always does.

For them, on that warm spring evening, time had stopped, or so they felt. For them, this moment was all they wanted, for it never to end.

But, of course, it would. It always does.

They had sat down, on the grass to the side of the path. The air heavy with pollen. Their fingers touched.

As he pushed his pen across the paper, he felt the room grow cold. As that evening long ago, they too felt it. The cold. He stood, his back sore and bent, he walked to the window and looked at the dark clouds, large oozing drops of rain smeared against the panes.

And remembered.

How he found that hole in the ground.

And had seen.

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The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.

two | fiftytwo