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 | fiftyone

The beeping stopped.

The angry sounds of the crowd receded. The hate and fury faded.

Her fingers slipped from his.

His eyes closed.

The sky faded.

He slipped. Away.

The fingers came closer, touched his face. A latex clad finger pressed against his lips. The voices had died down. The beeping had stopped. Hadn’t he already observed that?

Her fingers had been cold. Before they burned.

He heard the cold sound of stone on stone. They had blocked the light. They had blocked the light for ever. They had blocked it all. It had been cold. Empty. They had filled it with water. Sealed the opening. Closed. Locked. Secured. Forgotten.

Later. Much later. They had come. To visit. To remember. They had brought the photographs. The fake plastic flowers. Layer of hypocrisy. Innocence and hope. Lust and longing. Grief, guilt and gullibility.

They had sealed it away. Locked them deep below the ground.

And yet.

That had not been the end.

What they had taken from her. What they had ripped out of her. The act that had finally silenced her. That had been his undoing. That had made her and then undone her. That had no end.

They had tried to silence her, to silence him. Tried to hide what they had achieved. They rewrote the facts, mocked and jeered, decried and negated.

Love is our resistance

These thoughts passed through his mind as he lay on the bare boards of the yacht. The sky darkened. The moons had fallen below the horizon. The waves had ceased their endless flow. All around him was darkness and stillness. Empty.

He listened to the gentle sound of the birds that circled above him. Despite that dark night.

He had tried. He had risked his life, his soul, all that he loved. It had never been enough. The very act of risking had been decried. Denied. It had been his own undoing. Better that he had not tried.

It could never be enough.

He was the man in black.

After all.

That he could not escape.

They could not bury, blast, bomb or break that. He was what he was. He could not be healed. He had made terrible mistakes. He had lived by them. And now, well now he knew there was no going back. He would, finally, see what he would see.

The fingers ran across his brow, he realised the latex had been removed. He felt soft warm skin gently caress his.

Voices in the distance. Conversations he would never take part in. Opinions he would never challenge. Hatred and love. Passion and fury. Lust and longing. All gone. All shut down. Locked down, tight. Gone.

No more chances. No more decisions. No more regrets. Just nothing. Nothing was all that was left.

He felt the fingers, free of latex, gently touch his eyes, felt them pull down his eyelids.

He stood there. Watching this. Watching the end.

And then, he felt the fingers in his hand.

Not hers.

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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.

fiftyone | fiftytwo