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 | thirtysix

He was the man in black.

There was no going back. He had to fight back.

Back to what? Back in black? Or should he swear allegiance to the cowardly white. He had no damned idea. He floated in a none place, somewhere between here and there, not quite anywhere. Full of fear. Flags fluttering, symbols, colours, meaningless. All of it.

Floating.

And yet, he was damned if he was going to give in, not now. Not after all he had been through, not after all the endless circles he seemed to have circumnavigated, ceaselessly . In search of, in search of, what exactly? In search of her. The woman that had haunted him since that time long ago, that warm evening, that hole. In the ground.  The fake plastic flowers. Taking photographs. How much of what he could recall was real?

His mind curled into a virtual ball inside the walls of his polished skull, pulling deeper inside, tighter and tighter. Quivering deep inside him. Afraid of what, he could no longer remember.

Floating.

And then? Then it had all become confused. His dreams, his nightmares had converged, conflated, collapsed. He could no longer tell reality from fantasy, night from day. Life from death.

There had been flames, fierce burning flames, and old flames. Plates. Plates with bloodstained handprints, stairways and airways. Constricted airways. Hands held tight. Taunting, teasing, not wanted. Statues and towers. Flowers and towers. The tower of death. He had climbed. He had lost. His way. He couldn’t stay. Not welcome. His time had come, and passed away.

His mind clenched into a fist. A startled sphincter, repelling entry. The world, a tight hard ball, deep inside his empty skull.

Nursery rhymes. Adult crimes.

Janet and John. Humpty Dumpty. Snakes and Ladders. Beauty and the Beast. Jack and the Beanstalk. The Magic Roundabout. Winnie the Pooh. Gingerbread cottages. Wolves, with dripping fangs. Red haired beauties. Barbie, Ken and Action Man. Plastic threesome. Not so winsome.

White faces, and long white incisors. Howling at the moon. Stories, gory stories. Wrapped in candy, and spread with poison. Happy endings. Stories never ending. Frauds and fallacies. Favours and Quavers. Chuppa chups. Will o’ the wisps.

Out there. Sounds. Muffled, far away sounds. Booming and slurring.

Ahead of him, the light. Sirens calling. Sensuous and embracing. Come hither. Don’t dither. The light is right. Don’t fear, we have beer. And good cheer. Forget the pain. Don’t strain. Relax. Let go.

Pictures, words, fragments filled his mind, a showreel from hell, spinning, out of control.

Sound intensifying. A strident shrieking. A bell blaring. And voices, could those be voices? Really, in the land of the nonny nonny no. No.

Wrapped up tight, inside. He floated. The light pulled.

The voices entreating.

Rhythmic pulsing. Pushing and straining.

Resisting.

Tightening. Darkening. Sounds, becoming frightening.

The light approaching. Pushed to the light. Intense white light. No longer squeezed and confined.

And those words. Again. Squeezed into the light.

‘Don’t let him’

Lungs opening. He cried.

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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.

thirtysix | fiftytwo