dark side thursday

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.

AJT_6650-Edit

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.

one | fiftytwo