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

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 | twelve

It began to speak.

Words, shrouded, strangled, in dust, and darkness, unintelligible, grating, spilled into the tiled room, cold damp air spreading, from tile to tile.

Its featureless face, unmoving, unyielding, held their gaze as the words, dark, meaningless, toxic, words poured out. Its hands, palms turned open, extended toward them, inviting, offered no comfort, no hope, nothing. Only sorrow. Terror. Mindless terror.

She turned away, recoiling from that blank hopeless empty face. Recoiling from her perceived horror of words, unintelligible, yet seething with morbid meaning. Squirming and oozing meaning, miserable, mindless. Black, terrible meaning. Meaning with no hope. She held her belly, tears dripping down her face.

His arm tightened around her. Its words splintering in his mind, grating words that scarred and seared, burned and blackened his soul. Or what passed for it. His soul. His soul that had burned in hell. Back then.

Something struggled to the surface of his mind. The smell of burning flesh. A woman’s cry. A child’s terror. The anger. It broke wind in his mind, toxic and stale, the cries, the black terror, the flames.

Its blank face exploded. A dark terrible black bloom of barbarity. Blasting across the room. Bilious clouds of desperation smeared across the cracked tiled floor.

Dust blew across the tiles of that confined cell, as the face, the body, its body, blew into a million pieces of detritus, the white tiled walls blasted and smeared with decay, death, despair.

Its out-turned palms, blackened, erupted, sprayed across the room.

He held her tight, arms wrapped around her, so hard. He felt her body quiver, felt her tears on his chest. Felt her body pressed into his. Perversely, as its face exploded, covering them in the dust of hell, he wanted her. Wanted to pin her down on that metal cot, wanted to fill her belly, wanted her, to take her. Again.

She felt his need. Felt his grip on her tighten. The emptiness in her belly unfolding inside her. She pulled him hard against her. Wanting. Longing. Needing. Hoping. Remembering, him.

His arms tightened around her. Pressed against her, hard. Wanting her. Pushing away the darkness, the flames, pushing it all away.

Wanting him, needing him, she took him. Enveloped. Encircled. Enclosed him. The emptiness inside her aching to be filled. Yearning to be fulfilled. Pushing back the flames, the smoke, the horror. Tightening. She cried. And then, screamed and screamed.

The darkness devoured him as he lost himself. Fabric of the room ripping out of shape, her screaming flooding his mind, dust his eyes, darkness his soul.

He felt her meet him. Tenebrous, billowing and exploding. He felt her body against his. Fingers digging into his flesh. Tearing him, as did he into her. His body convulsing, mind racing.

Nothingness. The void.

She saw the door opening slowly. Her eyes opened wide, breath caught in her throat.

He shivered, reached out to the door, turned, and slowly, with trepidation, pushed.

His desk waited, the box, open.

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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.

twelve | fiftytwo