The Darkness

• Dani Tamlin, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2021

There is nothing more tempting than the darkness. The allure it beckons, its spindly tendrils of fingers reaching out to grasp your hand. The promise of answers, to any question you seek. Silence, thick and sticky, frames the soft blanket of the caressing swathes of inky void. The shadows suffocate any flicker of light weakly trying to breach the sea of black, tides turning endlessly. There is only the soupy stew, stretching endlessly, swallowing any shards of hope.
The taste of the metallic tang as it slices through your tongue, biting and sinking its fangs into your soul. Silky waves churn as the abyss yawns. It’s the other side of the moon, the sliver of the shadow curving like a smile of an adder. Cold as the frost on a window pane.
While the roiling of the storm clouds thunders across the plain, lighting crackles, electrifying the air—it’s just as alive as the steady drum of the heart caged like a bird in a chest. The darkness is born from the light and to its birthplace it cleaves.
Everything is a never ending circle, repeating, repeating, repeating.
Echos of jewels of heavenly bodies, dreams of far away lands, are sucked into the void of despairing hope. The soundless rhythm dances with Death as she smiles with open arms. Death’s wings are softer than silk as she glides over the storm, the sea snarling and snapping at her heels. Though there is no place better Death fits in this beastly nightmare, deep inside her cavernous, hollow cage of ribs, she dreams of something long lost. Of bejewelled planets dancing around falling diamonds. Pools of gleaming light adorned with beaming tears glowing with life and joy. Oceans of suns to bless her eyes, the glisten of moons for her to drink up like liquid starlight. The kindness of the universe clutching her heart, as stone cold and still as ice fractals as it can be.
It was a familiar dream to anyone lurking in the darkness—a secret hope. Maybe in another life, all the demons yearning for another soul to snatch could be the angels, the givers of love and hope. The embodiment of a star, bestowing grace upon the life of the fortunate one who sees them.
To be a rattler of stars is everyone’s destiny, but seizing that fate is what distinguishes the sinners from the saints. After all, one could shake the earth with malice rather than holiness. And that is why the darkness exists—never leaving, carving a place in your soul to stay.
You can’t escape it. It is inevitable, as certain as the turning of the waves. The darkness lives within you, lurking, waiting for a moment to strike. To face it, or to perish? That is the question.