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 | fortyfive

…he heard her screaming and screaming her voice distorted slithering across the precipice of madness he could not imagine what she thought was happening or how she perceived the extent of his feelings for her or how he thought it might end or where it would lead his mind was an incoherent mess the thought slipped off the edge the cold razor that sliced the air between us and him and me and her and all of you and the darkness that always sits inside us as we work and play make love plan and fail try again and pick ourselves up and fall down deep into the pit from which freezing fingers grasp but can not reach and still his mind could not cope with the sound the terrible searing sense of loss that he knew would follow and all the while the pain that he knew that she was feeling could surely not be even remotely comparable to the selfish and frankly quite pointless grief he now felt for what had never been and had in reality only been and even then for a brief moment a snapshot a glimpse of another world beyond his a world he did not and could not and never would understand however hard he might have tried or ever might try and yes he had tried so hard to understand and speak the language and to accommodate and make compromises and yes he had made mistakes and yes now he knew that it was pointless and it had always been pointless and he could no more save her from the flames than he could now wake from this long cold dark night full of slivers of light bitter whining whispered words which always ended as he was locked in a nightmare filled with flames and smoke and screams and regret and pain and stone cold fingers inscribing sentences on shivering shoulders and so many more feelings he could not or dare not name not to himself nor to anyone else in fact certainly not to himself because he knew inside there was no answer unless he dared to open the box and turn the key and so again he pressed his fingers into his ears to drown out the screams and words endless words to make them go away he thought of the pigeon sitting on the lamp post and the wind in the trees and the cold white light over the distant hills the spires and towers the shifting petals of opaque green glass the outstretched waving hand the fake plastic premise the red glow of candles and the warmth that sense of home coming that once he had before the darkness came again in relentless rows and rows of cold distant empty typed words and even then he could not believe that the end was not coming but had already passed and the future was now and he heard her as she screamed in pain as she had in ecstasy…

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.

fortyfive | fiftytwo