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Shush, You Make Wake Him10/24/2022 The door creaks open, the sound refracted and echoing in the small room. It hinges screaming of misuse and age, metal on metal grinding each other down. The wood, long since its prime, shudders and cracks at the mere touch. Still cold from the air surrounding it. The hand pushing it trying to reduce the painful sound the door gives, an injured animal giving out its finally cries for aid, for salvation. The hand on the door is warm, trying to give the same heatwave to the room it looks to enter. It gives a final push allowing the light from behind it to penetrate the udder darkness from inside. Light an unwelcome visitor within the complete darkness.
The room looks used, as if the mess which was meant to be cleaned up was not. Overly packed and disorganized. The items scattered across the floor making a minefield of noise. Either from those who misstep and allow the oblong items to shoot pain through them, soon followed by painful screams. Or the items themselves reawaken and playing songs long forgotten, sounds of dying batteries and broken speakers. The person reaches inside the room, now having enough space to allow their hands to slide against the wall. In search of a switch to break the crushing darkness and illuminate the secrets within the room. At any moment, an entity from the dark may be reaching out to snatch the hand and drag the innocent explorer into its domain. The arm sliding up and down the wall in deep search for any contact with the switch, the outer casing being a guide. As the hand meets the switch, a momentary pause is taken. The moment before the storm meets ground and what is hidden becomes shown. For all secrets and unknowns to be brought into the light. The hand, almost without fear, pushes the switch up, light catching like fire and consuming the darkness. Light flooding the room making the items which had once looked menacing become clear and friendly. Fear is also chased away as light forces it back into its hiding places beneath beds and deep within closed closets. The air lightens and becomes less heavy, as the person finally speaks, ready to face the beast that lies within. “Wake up!” the voice said in a loving but dominating tone. “You are going to be late for school.” The mother walks back to the kitchen to get her coffee, now having completed her duty as the alarm for her son Emotions not meant to be Buried10/20/2022 “Who let you in?” screamed a voice from the room. “How did you get in! That should be impossible!” The shouts turn to ones of sorrow and fear. The sounds of a trapped animal aware and conscious of its own demise. The knowledge that it cannot fight back and cannot win. Acceptance of fate.
It was a peaceful morning for Lilac, she had finally cleaned out her cottage and planted all the herbs and vegetables she felt she would need to survive this spring. Just a week ago celebrating the spring equinox with her friends. She laid plans to have some over when she was complete with her move, everything placed out, and the one dilapidated cottage made cozy. With this promise, she set to prepare the cottage for visitors, for guests. All the wood had to be cleaned, moss removed. She kept the moss as it knew not that growing on her home was not good. She allowed them to continue their growth on logs she found in the surrounding woods. Ensuring the log was fully submerged in water to allow the moss to take hold, she placed it along her customer log fence. Which function less like a fence should and more like a barrier to stop people or animals from mistakenly wandering into her garden. She needed to get more shale to fix the room, as the previous winter had allowed small holes to emerge and she knew that if she did not fix them now that they would only grow as the water got inside. This would be as simple as grabbing appropriate pieces from the local river and bringing them back. If she needed help, Coriander would likely help. Being her neighbor, if one could call being the next closest house buried in the forest a neighbor. But in the past he had proven to be of aid when a task was too much for Lilac. She wanted to go out and collect more straw to fashion a new broom, as her previous one had gotten wet and decayed. All of this would be a simple day's work for her. A long and tiresome day, but nothing she could not handle. As she had been doing this for the past 5 years, cleaning her house, preparing for the seasons, and ensuring everything was taken care of. It had to be that way, it was her home now and it needed to be given love and care. Especially after Lilac’s significant other of the time, August, had disappeared and had yet to return. This is not for lack of trying as everyone in the local area aided Lilac in her search for August. Everyone knew how much they were in love with each other and how much they meant to each other. It had taken months for every inch of the forest to be combed, every rock overturned, and every river skimmed. Yet they found no trace, no track, no hint of where August had gotten to. Lilac soon settled into the idea of having to manage her home all by herself. Taking on the tasks of two people on her own. She tried to find joy and passion in the upkeep of her house, the one she once shared with her beloved. Thus far, she has been successful for 5 years, 20 seasons, and many celebrations. With her friend wishing to visit once more, she had to make sure that all the tasks were completed and done with no issues to avoid any of them thinking she was giving up on her cottage. She couldn’t give up on it. It meant so much. Held so many memories. It was also the only place she could be close to August. You see, she had constructed a basement years ago with the help of August, his safe haven from the world. They had put their heart and soul into it and kept it a secret from the world. It was truly a place only they would know of and it was. Now it sat in disrepair, Lilac unable to bring herself to clean it, unable to stand being down there for too long. But she could not leave and let someone else find out her home's secret. Especially now that August’s body was starting to break through the ground. This summer she is going to have to dig deeper to hide his body from everyone. Her mask and blade buried deep down with him. She would hate for someone to finally find her beloved and all her tools Darkness Becomes Him10/20/2022 The darkness never bothered him. Some may say that he was born with the darkness, the cold being part of his very essence. So standing alone in the alley was more like home to Zander than being in his room ever was. He enjoyed being in the unseen, being hidden, being free. That is the exact reason that even at home he had removed all lighting fixtures from his room, closed all outlets, and covered up his windows. So that the night would allow his room to enter into the darkness he thrived in.
But that was when he was still at his house. It had been 3 weeks since he left, caused by his father demanding his son to “put on some damn light”. This had been Zander’s final straw. His parents were his polar opposite. Both needed the light to feel safe, could not allow for darkness to infiltrate their lives. For them, every room had to have light reach every corner and leave no shadows or spots for darkness to reside. This had always been a point of tension between them. Where Zander could handle having to be in the light most of the day, when it was his time of the day, he would retreat to his room and to the darkness. His parents never dared to tarry near his void, consuming all light. A place where your eyes saw nothing, and nothing saw you. That was at least what Zander had always thought. That was until something did see him. Zander remembers the night when we had finally retreated to his room, his void. Where he thought nothing could be seen and nothing could see him. It was the night the golden eye of a cat, but far too large appeared before him. It spoke nothing through sound, but through Zander’s mind. A link that was established that night and has kept held since then. “You have found peace in darkness” it spoke with a ghostly whisper directly in the mind of Zander, who was transfixed by the eye’s appearance, its glowing presence, and how it entered his void no through the door. “You are confused, we can sense that,” the entity continued, “we are of the darkness too, yet we have been formed by true darkness where light is forbidden to approach. You have entered its lesser appearance through effort of your own.” The eye blinked out of existence as Zander sat against the wall, the feeling of the solid object aiding him feeling grounded. If there was darkness beyond this, Zander had to know. He had for so long been bound to find solace in his void, to know that this was his home’s brightness to this creature was a thorn which buried itself in his side. He must find a way to enter this world of complete blackness. It was that night which began a downward spiral into the world of dark. Zander did not know, but he had opened a doorway which was only able to be shut from inside. He spent weeks learning all he could of darkness, of beings once thought to lurk in it, creatures and monsters believed to have come into existence in the presences of nothingness. Between myths, legends, folktales, and any other literature he dove into the world he had already built his comfort in. It was also through this, that Zander came to hear rumor that those who were accepted by the void were gifted. They were able to form and warp the void, the liminal space, to their desires. Travel instantaneously. Disappear without trace. Consume light like a black hole. The further he studied, the more he knew, the more the information began to change him. At first it was near unnoticeable. His already jet black hair began to consume all light and not reflect it back in the sheen his peers had come to expect. His fingers began to darken, as one may expect to see a dark witches fingers to occur, nails and fingertips blackened to the same all consuming blackness of his hair. It was only when his left eye began to change that the changes became known. Slowly his eye lost all color it was born with; changing from its once blue-green to a darker tone, and finally to black. If one was to look it would seem that his pupil has consumed his entire iris. Yet, it did not stop there, day by day it expanded and consumed more of the white in this eye. It took not even a week before it was only if he strained his eye that any white could be seen. He had learned that he could control the discoloration of his hands, making them appear normal during the day and allowing the blackness to overtake them as he entered his void. His parents took notice and attempted to infiltrate his room with light, but even with lamp after lamp plugged in and the bulbs known to work, the darkness persisted. Not allowing the lights to even show in the darkness. His parents grew more and more fearful of their son, as he was constantly in his room. A room that now would eat any ambient light before it could cross the barrier of the doorway. It was the night that his parents saw his eye had turned completely black that they chose to speak with him. Feeling whatever was going on was hitting a climax. That soon whatever was taking hold would be all consuming like their son’s room. They took their son, who had once simply been an oddity into their living room now flooded with lights from all angles and sat him down. “What is going on with you?” his father asked. “What have you done?” his mother begged. Neither taking notice that some of the lights had stopped shining and slowly a shadow was growing in one corner. They became so invested in interrogating Zander that they had forgotten to check behind them as the shadow reached them, sending a shiver down their spines. But it reached not for them but for their son. It met his foot and as he reached down inviting it into himself, that was when his parents saw what their son had become. As in a moment, Zander once sat in front of them was gone, as was the shadow which called to him. It was then he stepped out into the alley, consumed with the blackness he loved. Yet still too bright for him to find absolute comfort. But it was not time for comfort. It was time to be free. He heard the footsteps wander towards him, he saw the eye he had seen once before, and he heard the voice. “Welcome dear Zander, I am pleased to see you have not failed us.” In the shadow sat a pitch black cat, one eye golden, the other consumed with the same darkness Zander’s eye now held. “It is time we speak in private about the future.” With that they both stepped into the shadow Zander had only recently emerged from. It was that night that the local power station failed and thrust the town into a true darkness. Yet it was still bright to Zander and his companion; soon, so soon, the town would see the peace in the darkness. Richard McKabaA storyteller with a desire to make worlds beyond the possibilities. To weave tales and plots to amazing and entrance. My Books |