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 | thirtyfour

Reality.

He saw her reality. But not her. She was not there. Perhaps she never had been. Not in any real, or meaningful, sense.

He was alone, and in pain.

And he had not the slightest idea what was happening to him or why. His recollections of recent events were scrambled, incoherent. Flashing lights, sirens, her warm body, what she had done to and with his body, that hellish impact.  Fragmented memories from far away, fragments long buried that had bubbled to the surface.  The button. Tied to the morphine drip, he had kept pushing the button, long past that point when any pretence that he could control the flow had long passed. His teeth had hurt. Not his teeth, the space, he realised, where three had been wrenched, torn, out of their place in his face.

She had gone. This time, he thought, for good. Or bad, or, whatever. He didn’t really feel able to think, let alone assess the consequences of recent events.

He did want a shot. Some internal warming. Precious chance of that just now.

The room in which he lay was white. Everything was white. No relief from the white. He felt stronger. Relatively at least. He rolled, with some difficulty on to his right side, used his arm as support and pushed himself (slowly) upright. Most parts of his body sending signals to his failing brain that this was not the best decision he took this day. Ignoring the signs, the strains, he sat, upright. Took the glass that rested on the white table that sat next to the bed. Lifted the glass to his mouth, with abandon drank deep long gulps of cold water. His head span, heart beating faster.

He looked around the room. Apart from the bed, white frame, white sheets, white pillows and a white table, the room was featureless. He could see no door, no window, no cabinets, no life-saving machinery. He was wearing a single white tunic of soft material that covered his entire body. Only then did he realise this. The parts of his body not covered in white were restricted to his eyes, nostrils, mouth. The rest covered, enveloped in white.

This made him stop for a moment. To think.

He moved again, so that he sat on the edge of the bed. Placed his hands, palm down, on either side of his body and pushed himself upright.

He was surprised that this did not hurt him as much as he had feared. His body felt light, ethereal.

He walked. No. It felt more like floating. Floated towards one side of the white room. It was hard to tell where the room ended and the wall started, maybe there was no such division.

He paused. For a moment, he remembered her. The feel of her warm body. The touch of her fingers on him. Her warm wet lips.

Reality. He needed to get a grip.

He reached out his fingers toward the white wall.

Reality.

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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.

thirtyfour | fiftytwo