Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge? Are you open to sharing your dark side? Then read on.
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
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.
dark | side | thursday | three
He opened the box.
Again, as he always did when the time was right. Since he had first found it.
Pressing the concealed button, he slid open the lid with care, darkness seeming to slither out of the box.
He stood, walked to the window.
The rain continued to sluice down, the window smeared. His bones ached. His heart too. He sighed. He turned back to the box.
He took it out.
The key.
The key he had first found in the box, in the hole in the ground. He had crouched down at the edge of that hole, gazing into the darkness. Feeling, as he did again now, the cold, the uneasy shifting sensation deep inside. The fear, yes, always that fear.
He had spotted the simple wooden box, sitting in a niche in the dark walls of that terrible hole in the ground. A black painted wooden box. A box lined with smooth black metal, a box that seemed to reject the very idea of light. And, the box that contained the key.
The key, which, on that uncommonly warm spring evening so long ago, as their fingers touched, they had found on the grass as they sat there on the side of that path. And so it had begun.
And they had felt the cold, the same bone chilling cold he felt now.
How things might have been had they left that key lost amongst the grasses of that path.
He picked up the key.
A simple, not ornate, key. Black. Like his heavy heart. He turned it again in his fingers.
He held the key as he looked into the rain, the dark clouds. Thinking, again, of them. Of it. Always of it.
He turned back to his desk, placed the key back in the box, slid the lid closed tight. For now.
He sat again. Picked up once more the pen and continued to write.
They stood, she took the key from his hands, she intended to keep it safe. It was, they were not. The sun, that had warmed them as they walked had abandoned them.
They walked on. Still not wanting the moment to end. Even though the evening had grown cold. Had they looked back, would they have seen? Their fingers entwined, they looked up. The stars seemed different tonight. Shivering, she turned to him.
His hand aching, he stopped to write for a moment. His mind drifting back, to the moment he had decided. Decided to reach down into that terrible hole, to reach for that box.
He had lain on the dusty bricks, his face pressed against the filth at the edge of that terrible hole. Stretching he had been able to grasp the box. And he brought it out. Into the light.
At that moment, the air had grown chill. And, he felt it. For the first time. Its presence.
As she had felt it when, holding the key in her fingers, she looked into his eyes.
And saw.
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.
three | fiftytwo
And the box is opened!! Hurrah!! But what’s next? This is brilliant Andy, I’m having a great time reading this. You’ve really mastered the suspense but also kept your kind of ethereal style of writing. Bravo!
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Here’s mine. I remembered to add the link this time!
http://musingsofafrequentflyingscientist.com/2015/06/04/lifeless-dark-side-thursday/
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Oh dear God DJ, what a piece, this is so painful to read and so powerful…
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Thank you and my apologies for the pain. It was easy to write in terms of the words just flying out but it was tough because it did affect me at the same time. Thanks again for giving us an outlet for our darker, more emotional sides.
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Don’t apologise for a brilliant piece of writing. I am humbled that you feel this way…
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Humbled by these words DJ, I’m enjoying trying to write this story….already writing episode 4 and really enjoying getting to grips with the Scrivener app which I am using to help me develop the story…thank you again and also for your truly dark and moving contribution..
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Ooo a new a app! That’s cool. I will have a look. I’m totally at a loss as to how to develop a longer story. Do you know the ending? Am j allowed to ask about the process?? 😊
Thank you…
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I am on a real journey of discovery DY, I have always wanted to write and never thought I could or would. The app is very cool and certainly helps with the process in terms of organising ideas about plot, characters, locations etc
…and , thank YOU
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
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Ok great thanks for that. I will definitely check it out…
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Andy, you are the king of the cliffhanger! Is it a monster? I bet it’s a monster. lol
Here’s my first (published) failed contribution. https://snapshotssnippetsandscribbles.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/dark-side-thursday/
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Only time will tell…what it is….but thank you again and I just love your sideways swipe at the dark side! Thank you Amy…
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Hello:)
Here is my take on the dark | side | thursday…week 2 for me:)
https://myredpage.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/dark-corner/
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Hello Julia, great contribution to #darksidethursday !
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Thank you for your contribution to #darksidethursday !
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now i need to find the beginning of this, is there a link to the whole series so far? :d
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The dark | side | Thursday links should do that but I think I need to sharpen up this section …
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the link for dark side thursday on your page goes to a page not found or is it just me? x
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Oh that’s not good, which link? I will then check and I think will tidy up the intro sequence so that it is clearer how to read the whole story
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I was anxious to read it again but couldn’t last week. Had a hectic time but thought about this box! LOL. What is inside?
This dark side is fabulous and you’re writing with brilliance.
Chapeau.
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Thank you Lucile, part five was published today, six is already drafted and I’m bus trying to make sense of my own plotting! So glad you like it 🙂
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🙂
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