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 | fifty
He sat bolt upright.
Pulse racing. Mouth opening. Screaming into the silence.
The sun rises in the East. Not the West.
He screamed as he began to see. What he had not seen, could not see, never wanted to see. How could he?
The boat rocked. Water began to cascade over the sides of the yacht. Panic bloomed, he felt his chest tighten, his fingernails dug deep into his palms. Thunder rumbled across the ocean. Abandon all hope. Women and children first. Iceberg, what iceberg? I see no ships. Shoot first, ask questions later. Lifeboats, what lifeboats? Every man for himself. Over the top. Trust me. It will be ok. This won’t hurt. I’ll never leave you. Soon, very soon. Are we nearly there yet. Of course. Lies. All lies.
The sky exploded. Thunder shattered around him.
The clouds ripped apart, the sky obliterated, as a fissure slashed raw in front of his disbelieving eyes, ripped from east to west. From the edge of nowhere, to everywhere.
He needed water. A fountain. A tanker, full of clean, bubbling fresh water. Reason had left him. Just. Give. Me. Water.
I’ll never look into your eyes again
Water surrounded him, reaching his open mouth. The sky had been split in two. And the sound.
It would not stop.
A regular spaced monotonous beeping, filled his ears.
And through the slashed chasm across the sky, fingers reached down toward him. Fingers, clad in powdered latex. Fingers, isolated and free of contamination. Fingers, pushing through the slit ripped across the sky.
An alarm sounded far away. Doors slammed open. Shouts and cries. The alarm grew louder. The voices more insistent.
The fissure above him in the sky fell further apart. The alarms replaced by the sounds of a mob. Screaming and shouting. Cursing and spitting. An enraged crowd. Boiling over with blood lust. The fissure slammed shut.
The flames had started small. Delicate filigrees of fire. Licking around their feet. This could not kill them. Surely, someone would help.
Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
She held his hand. He could feel her fingers.
The flames licked, grew greedy. The shrieking crowd grew yet more frenzied.
He’s old and his skin is old, the west is the best
The flames consumed. She looked into his eyes, her dark eyes, lost, innocent, and insane. The flames burned and burned and burned.
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
The smoke followed the flames. The silence. The screams. Her fingers had sliced into his as her throat contorted, her eyes melted, her body consumed by thick black smoke.
The crowd roared and roared. The insistent beeping continued. The water poured over the side of the boat. He could not breathe. He was cold. He was on fire. He was drowning. Burning. Losing.
Above him a light shone bright.
And from her burned and used throat
It hurts to set you free
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.
fifty | fiftytwo
andy townend 