Darkness

• Erin Fawcett, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2015

For me, the night is a blanket, ridding the sky of its pastel blue and swirls of white, creating patterns as unique as any person. Instead, the night covers the sky with a velvet sheet of navy, with only the stars, hundreds of thousands of light years away, to add to this mysterious beauty. This sky, which we live under every day, forever changing, holds a power, from deep within a million fairy tales, speaking of the stroke of midnight, when everything changes, the ball gown turning back into rags, the carriage turning back into a pumpkin and the prince of your dreams, lost forever.
The night is more important to any person, searching for themselves, than anyone or anything else. The power of darkness, sweeping over the nation beckons a different being within ourselves that can only come out in the safety of this mask of black.
Darkness – darkness – darkness! The night seeping into the atmosphere, all the tricks and twists within your calming nature. You have the power to scare and compose us at the same time, your tranquillity unspoken, but always there in the depth of the transformation of the world when you arrive. You hold more secrets than the government, any word spoken disappearing into obscurity. Darkness, you are the unsureness whether our eyes are open or closed, a hazy state between awareness and the sleep we’re all so desperately grabbing for. Darkness – where anyone can run and hide, away from responsibility, away from expectations and judgements. Darkness – where we go to escape from society, whispering secrets into the void of your nothingness, lifting the burden of keeping everything locked inside of us. Darkness – where shadows can swirl around, creating all images of our greatest desires, sucking us into the trap of our brains, leaving us with our thoughts. Darkness, you allow us to hide, with fear and without, in the safety net of unknowingness, letting us turn into the monsters under our beds, the monsters that we all know are there, lurking in the depths of our brains, that are too scared to come out in the light.