dark | side | thursday

dark | side | thursday | eight

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

bs 090

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 | eight

The approaching footsteps were heavy, laboured. Her belly churned, ached, as she took a small step forward, his fingers had slipped away, he stood still, did not follow as she walked on.

She looked back, she saw, nothing, blackness, the void. She turned, walked toward the sound of the footsteps. Into the dark.

He had stepped back into the corridor. The key in his hand. It was time, he knew it, felt it. His eyes took in again the cold tiles lining the floor of the corridor, the deep cracks running along the ceiling. Gripping the key he moved forward.

There was a door at the end of the corridor, he knew that. It opened to the stairwell, that descended down to the street. Of course it did, hadn’t he been this way so many times before?

Only, the last time he had walked this way, it had been different, he remembered the pain, the sounds, the blackened branches of the trees. He could feel the scratches still on his back. Closing his eyes, screwing them tight, he willed those trees back into existence.

Nothing, cold tiles, cracked ceiling. No trees.

He reached the end of the corridor.  Took the rusted metal doorknob in his hand and turned it.

She was alone in the dark, not even her fingers were visible. The key gripped tight in her fingers, she must not drop it. She turned and turned, no light, no sound, not even those footsteps. Beneath her feet, nothing. The darkness pressed against her face, sucked the breath from her lungs, pressed down on her chest, her belly. She fell, down into the dark void.

Her silent screams filled only her mind.

The door opened, the creaking of the rusted hinges filling the cold corridor with echoes of despair. He put the key into the pocket of his jacket, stepped through the door. The stairwell wound down into the dark, the bare bulbs in the ceiling at each level swinging, flickering, buzzing, as their lives approached an end. An odour engulfed him, the dense rotting smell of overcooked cabbage. He began to descend the stairwell, his hand gripping the cold railing, his steps tentative, reluctant. He heard cries, screams, children’s laughter, moans and groans of joy and fear, he heard people. But not her.

He reached the bottom of the stairwell. To his right through a row of filthy windows shapes shifted uneasily. The corridor ended in two filthy metal half glazed doors that opened onto a lobby. A row of mail boxes stood before him, their dark slits oozing with unwanted newspapers, demands for unpaid bills, neglect, despair, lost hopes of letters never received.

He stepped over broken bottles, dust and decay, pushed open the door to the street, crossed the uneven many times mended concrete path that approached the building. He looked up into the black roiling sky, the relentless rain, he turned to look back at the door though which he had passed.

And screamed and screamed.

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.

eight | fiftytwo

dark | side | thursday | seven

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

atownend_2015_05_15_7009-Edit

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.

AJT_6650-Edit

dark | side | thursday | seven

“Don’t let him, don’t let him take it, not now, it’s so close. Please…hear me…”

Her voice faltered. The empty feeling in her belly, the pain, coursed through her.  Her eyes closed.  She lay still. Alone, again.

His eyes ran down the page, the words scratched into the yellowing paper. Words he had read countless times since that first time.

“When the time comes, there will be no time, you will know what to do, inside, you will know, as I did. I tried, I wanted to stop it. It was too strong, she was too strong. I had no time, so please for Hid’s sake, when the time comes, don’t think, act, or you too will have no time…”

He pushed his chair back, stood, again took his flask, drank, his throat burning. He knew that time, his time, was fast approaching. He turned back to the desk. The box waited. The key waited. He reached across.

She screamed. No sound would come. Her mouth stretched open and she could not scream. The pain slashed inside her. Raging, searing hot flames burned into her, smearing her, undoing her. Screaming silently, her mind splintering, not like this, not alone, not this way. No. Her mind collapsing, panic ripping through her, smoke filling her lungs. Not like this. No.

Inside the pain she felt cold fingers. Cold fingers running along her arm. Her eyes snapped open. No flames, no fire, only fear. He was there, beside her. Blue eyes looking into her, through her, his fingers running over her skin. He reached underneath her, she felt his fingers, felt his arms wrap around her as he lifted her, pulling her tight against his body.

She breathed. The fire had gone. Realising now it had not been real, she exhaled. She felt him breathe, felt his need, his fear, it.

She pulled away. The pain there still. He stood beside her, his fingers in hers. Her belly ached, the emptiness churning inside her. Holding his hand she turned and took a step forward. Toward the stone steps. Leading the way, she felt the cold stone under her feet as she walked forward and stepped down into the darkness. He followed.

He reached across the table, to the box.

He wanted to open it. He could not. Withdrawing his hand he pushed the seat back hard. Stood, walked to the window, driving black rain filling his mind, he looked out into the darkness.

Turning again, back to the desk. He found the box, pressed the button, slid his fingers slowly inside, opened the box. Released the key, driving black rain filling his mind, and walked back toward the door.

He knew the time had come. It always surprised him. There never was time. He felt the key in his hand, and stepped back into the corridor.

They stopped at the foot of the steps. She felt his fingers slip out of hers.

In the distance she felt footsteps approach.

It was time.

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.

seven | fiftytwo

dark | side | thursday | six

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

2015_06_19_02488-Edit

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.

AJT_6650-Edit

dark | side | thursday | six

The pain seared through his arm.

He woke, in fright. His eyes would not, could not, open. Cold cracked tiles lining the floor of the corridor did not make for a comfortable resting place. And he was wet. Very. And cold, so cold.

Twisted fleeting fragments flashed through his mind as his tortured senses fought to deal with the pain, the cold, the wetness. The emptiness he felt.

Her emptiness.

Blackened branches bruised his mind, a collapsing corridor. A moment when he slipped. Through.

And oh Hid, her voice. Her voice. Oh, that voice he wished not to remember, to erase.

He had heard her voice. Soft and pleading, seductive and terrifying.

“Don’t let him, don’t let him take it, not now, it’s so close. Please…hear me…”

His fingers had grasped the bottom of the flight of stone steps. Cold, slimy and old, like that thing that twisted inside him. Then, nothing. Cold, dark, empty, breathless nothing.

The voice, her voice, still echoed inside his head. She had been there, in his mind, in his soul, although he no longer imagined he possessed such a thing. Not now. Perhaps she’d always been there. Deep inside. Each time it happened he felt this. The cold, the emptiness, the desire, the sorrow. The terror.

His back was sore, bleeding. From the blackened bark? His eyes, now open, looked around. Blinking, swollen and sore. Taking in the dark corridor, the tiled floor, the damp concrete walls, the ceiling scored with deep cracks like aching distended veins.

No trees, no steps, no voice.

And the door. The door, leading back to his table, and the box.

He stood, began to walk, his breath ragged, thready and broken, pain flashing along his arm with each step. His eyes widened, dry and swollen, when he heard the door click and swing slowly open.

He walked to the door, paused at the threshold. Would anything have changed had he stopped at that point? He walked in. Did not look at the box. Oh, he wanted to.

He stopped at the shelf. Dust covering the few books that lay there, unread. He picked up the leather bound journal, walked back to his table, pulled back the chair, sat down, took his flask, hungrily downed another harsh shot.

The journal was old, the leather cracked, stained and unloved, it was held closed by a thin leather strap, tightly wound around the yellowing pages.

His belly warmed as the shot flared deep inside him. His fingers, shaking now, took hold of the leather strap binding the book and he began to unwind it slowly.

He opened the cover, the pages stuck together with the dust of ages past. He quickly the found the page he wanted, began to read, again, he knew the words, but.

She lay still, after she fell. Her waking fingers tracing the edge of the cold stone that marked the top of the stone steps.

Through her pain she tried to speak.

“Don’t let him…”

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.

six | fiftytwo

dark | side | thursday | five

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

atownend_2015_05_15_6919-Edit

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.

AJT_6650-Edit

dark | side | thursday | five

The door closed behind him.

The dark corridor stretching out ahead.

That damned box. The box that wanted him to press the button, slide his fingers inside, release the key, release it. That box now waited behind that door. Release, waited behind that door.

He could not think of that now.

He knew if he did, he would be lost. Again.

He walked on down the hall.

He felt the pain. In his arm. It hurt, as it always did. And the corridor narrowed. The ceiling, the walls, the floor, dark, shifting, coalescing. And the pain. Oh, that searing pain.

Dark, so dark. His chest tightened. Air, he needed air. He felt the walls closing tight around him. How could that be?

The sound of stone, stone slowly scraping over stone. The dull heavy thud. No light. No light. No light. Only dark remained.

His lips had touched hers. She kissed him back, wanting him, hungry for release. She felt his need, his fingers.

Then. Darkness. Again. Blue eyes twisted. Gone. Empty.

She could not breathe.

The pain twisting, growing inside her. His lips cold. She pulled away. The light gone again. The emptiness remained, engulfing.

He shivered as his eyes blinked open. He was not in the corridor. The air damp, musty. He could hear water flowing nearby. Flowing swiftly, darkly.

Light began to filter through the crooked, leafless, blackened branches of a tree. He struggled to remember where he had been, where he was.

The corridor. He had walked through the door, entered the dark corridor.

Which now appeared to be formed from the bark of a forest of ancient black trees.

He struggled to sit, the pain in his arm intensified, his breathing ragged. He sat with his back pressed hard against the rough bark, not caring about the scrapes he would suffer from later. Reaching into his pocket, he grasped the seductive slick metal of the flask. Unscrewing the cap, he pressed it to his lips and felt the harsh liquid burn down his throat.

She had pulled away. Could not face those empty, not blue, eyes for now. The pain in her belly gnawing and churning inside her. He had turned away from her. His eyes averted for now.

She walked, slowly at first, then began to run.

He did not follow. He had turned, those empty eyes watching as she ran.

She had tripped. Fallen. Her hands reaching out.

That was when she had seen the steps. Rough stone steps, descending in front of her. Cold and damp. The emptiness inside her churned again as she looked down the steps into the shifting darkness below.

The harsh jolt of the shot revived him a little.

He turned his head. The pain in his arm screaming and raging.

He bit hard into his lip, rose unsteadily to his feet.

At that moment, he saw them. Ahead of him, through the trees. Rough stone steps rising into the darkness.

Then, oh Hid. Then, he heard her.

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.

five | fiftytwo

dark | side | thursday | four

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

atownend_2015_05_16_00896-Edit

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.

AJT_6650-Edit

dark | side | thursday | four

She saw.

Or she thought she saw.

The key felt alive in her fingers, vibrating.

His eyes. Those sparkling blue eyes. The eyes that made her melt, want him, need him, ache. There. Those eyes that took her. Made her. They had gone. The light at least had dimmed.

And, in that moment, those eyes grew dark, twisted, shifting.  And, empty.

Her breath would not come.  The hand holding the key cramped and pain shot up her arm. Cold tendrils of fear spread from the very centre of her. That empty place deep inside her. That place that would always be empty. Not that she knew that then. Oh no, then, even at that moment, she wanted, hoped, needed.

She dropped the key.

Looked away.

And, from the corner of her eye.

She saw.

He paused for a moment. Writing had once seemed so easy to him. Now it had become a bitter fight. He had to tell their story. His time was short. He knew that. His fingers ached and fought back. Again the cold seeped into his veins, his bones, his mind.

His eye strayed to that box.

He closed his eyes and, for a brief moment her emptiness spilled into his mind. Or what was left of it.

He stood. The rain pounded against the glass, the sky ripped by cold fire.

He turned. Reached for the bottle. Poured a little into the glass. He closed his eyes, tipped the harsh clear liquid down his throat and rasped those words again, “na zdraví”.

He remembered. All of it.

And he knew he had little time.

He touched the box. Felt it vibrate a little. Closed his eyes.  And, in the darkness, swirling, pulsating, he saw it. Not for the first time.

The day he had found the box he had gone there to learn. Walking among the dead. He had not imagined just how much he would learn, and how important that learning would become.

Turning back to the bottle, he took another shot, felt the burning liquid flare deep inside him. Sat down, picked up the pen. Laid it aside. He could not concentrate. He wanted to press the button again and release the key.

She saw.

From the corner of her eye.

And then it had passed. The shooting pain faded. She breathed in. The cold empty feeling deep in her belly remained, twisting and cramping.

His eyes were blue again. She ached. He bent down towards her, and as he did so, reached for the key, picked it up and held it out to her. She took it. He moved closer, her lips found his.

He knew he could not open the box this night.  He stood, walked to the door, looked back, paused, opened the door and walked out into the cold dark hall. The door closed behind him.

And, in that room, the box waited.

It knew he would return.

Knew he would press the button, slide his fingers inside.

It wanted.

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.

four | fiftytwo

dark | side | thursday | three

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

_20141207_001288_269787

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.

AJT_6650-Edit

dark | side | thursday | three

He opened the box.

Again, as he always did when the time was right. Since he had first found it.

Pressing the concealed button, he slid open the lid with care, darkness seeming to slither out of the box.

He stood, walked to the window.

The rain continued to sluice down, the window smeared. His bones ached. His heart too. He sighed. He turned back to the box.

He took it out.

The key.

The key he had first found in the box, in the hole in the ground. He had crouched down at the edge of that hole, gazing into the darkness. Feeling, as he did again now, the cold, the uneasy shifting sensation deep inside. The fear, yes, always that fear.

He had spotted the simple wooden box, sitting in a niche in the dark walls of that terrible hole in the ground. A black painted wooden box. A box lined with smooth black metal, a box that seemed to reject the very idea of light. And, the box that contained the key.

The key, which, on that uncommonly warm spring evening so long ago, as their fingers touched, they had found on the grass as they sat there on the side of that path. And so it had begun.

And they had felt the cold, the same bone chilling cold he felt now.

How things might have been had they left that key lost amongst the grasses of that path.

He picked up the key.

A simple, not ornate, key. Black. Like his heavy heart. He turned it again in his fingers.

He held the key as he looked into the rain, the dark clouds. Thinking, again, of them. Of it. Always of it.

He turned back to his desk, placed the key back in the box, slid the lid closed tight. For now.

He sat again. Picked up once more the pen and continued to write.

They stood, she took the key from his hands, she intended to keep it safe. It was, they were not. The sun, that had warmed them as they walked had abandoned them.

They walked on. Still not wanting the moment to end. Even though the evening had grown cold. Had they looked back, would they have seen? Their fingers entwined, they looked up. The stars seemed different tonight. Shivering, she turned to him.

His hand aching, he stopped to write for a moment. His mind drifting back, to the moment he had decided. Decided to reach down into that terrible hole, to reach for that box.

He had lain on the dusty bricks, his face pressed against the filth at the edge of that terrible hole. Stretching he had been able to grasp the box. And he brought it out. Into the light.

At that moment, the air had grown chill. And, he felt it. For the first time. Its presence.

As she had felt it when, holding the key in her fingers, she looked into his eyes.

And saw.

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.

three | fiftytwo

dark | side | thursday | two

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

AJT_6670-Edit

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.

AJT_6650-Edit

dark | side | thursday | two

The end.

The end, he had encountered in a crudely covered hole in the ground.

The beginning.

The beginning, well, that took place beneath the fading light of a long gone time. Years before he had first opened his eyes.

The light of an unusually warm spring evening. Shadows scored by the setting sun surrounded them. As they walked together. Hope then in their hearts. Still.

Dandelion clocks marked the path like lanterns.

Clocks marking the passage of time as the gentle breeze bent their slender stems and the soft seed heads dispersed. And time was all they had. Nothing more.

That day, they were free. Free from what would come. Free from fear.

Free from it.

Of course, he knew none of this, not then. Not on the day he stumbled across the hole. No, that knowledge would come much later. His discovery of that rudely abandoned hole in the ground. The end of one story, their story, had become the beginning of another story. His story.

Back in the light. In that time of hope. They walked on. Looking around them with joy in their hearts.

And yet.

And yet, in the spaces in between, those spaces where the sun was absent, in those spaces, it stirred. It had not yet taken shape.

At least not its final, terrible, shape.

Would they have seen the way the light seemed to bend, behind them, as they walked along the path. Had they paused, stopped, turned, would it have made any difference? Would they have seen it then? If they had, would they have recognised it for what it was and what it would become? Would their end then have been any different? Would his?

All this he learned later.

When it would also be too late for him. So very late.

He looked across the desk, at the chaotic piles of papers, books, and that box. Always that damned box.

It seemed so long ago now. All of it.

His hand, aching, his fingers bent out of shape, swollen, gently picked up the pen, and he once more began to write. He had to write, tell his story, and theirs. Yes, their story, he must tell it, before it all began again. And it would. It always does.

For them, on that warm spring evening, time had stopped, or so they felt. For them, this moment was all they wanted, for it never to end.

But, of course, it would. It always does.

They had sat down, on the grass to the side of the path. The air heavy with pollen. Their fingers touched.

As he pushed his pen across the paper, he felt the room grow cold. As that evening long ago, they too felt it. The cold. He stood, his back sore and bent, he walked to the window and looked at the dark clouds, large oozing drops of rain smeared against the panes.

And remembered.

How he found that hole in the ground.

And had seen.

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.

two | fiftytwo

dark | side | thursday | one

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

AJT_6650-Edit-2

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 | one

It stopped. Suddenly. Under the spring sun.

Over. All done. Nothing more.

A soft wind caressed the few hairs left on his head. As he gazed, without care or regard, over the serried ranks of headstones.

All those names. Those faces pasted to the marble. Staring back at him.

The fake plastic flowers. Their fake, plastic, feelings.

Death. Decay. Despair.

He had been shocked, by the flowers. The intensity, of the flowers. Their lack of life. Lack of pollen. Lack of decay. Their, lack. Their fake colours spoke to the horror. In his heart. In his soul. If he had one.

Walking, among the dead. The cold gaze of the stone sentinels. So little to do. Just staring and waiting until the wind abraded their faces into anonymity. They left their statues, to absolve their conscience. Standing. To do the bidding of those who no longer care.

He felt it. Even before then. That moment. He felt it.

He had come to learn, to capture the essence, to absorb his new culture. Familiar, and, not.

And all those names and dates and faces and false, fanciful, fake, flowers.

He pressed the shutter release over and over. Yes, he did. That’s what he did. Over, and over. Recording, reporting, revealing. And, later, he would know. More than he wanted. He would. Know.

Pollen covered his shoes. A light dusting. Dust, that troubled him.

And, those massive, stone, slabs. Sealed. Suffocating. Echoes of Poe. That damp earth. The broken finger nails. The strangled cries, of despair. Beneath.

He continued. To walk.

Among those slabs. Those inscriptions. The man, hanging on the beams of wood, one vertical, one horizontal. A fractured world. Lost hopes. Lost dreams. Always fighting. And, then, a photo on a stone. A photo.

He was incensed by the injustice. The rows of small stones. The mausoleums of the rich, the mayors, the benefactors. Who decides. Of all those faces, gazing out from the stones. Which deserved his care? His attention? His lens?

Troubled. He pressed on.

Soon, he found it. It, found him. They, found him. And it, they, will never let go.

The space. The emptiness. Between the stones. That stopped him. Made him think. Too much, as always. He had always thought too much. Without thinking.

There was no grass. No marble. No stone. No written homage to the great and good. No stone sentinel.

What had been there, was gone. No smooth marble cladding. Only bricks, scraped, exposed, bare. Industrial. Yes, industrial. The stark futility, pierced him.

What of those who had knelt here? Those, who had been left behind. What of them?

He stared at the bare boards. Those rough hewn, wooden, boards. The concrete lintel. Surrounding that terrible open hole. The slates. Dragged across that gaping, terrible, hole.

He knelt. He looked. He, saw.

A cold pit. Filled. With water.

Cold walls. They no longer constrained their bitter cargo.

And, he looked. He heard. He saw. He felt. What had been there.

The end.

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.

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