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 | 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