What if
tonight, when you’re scared and alone, with one arm hanging off the edge of your
bed, the darkness reaches up and holds your hand?
What if,
instead of pulling back in fear, you hold onto the hand of darkness, and you
tug. And what if you drag the darkness out from underneath the bed. It
struggles and kicks, but you don’t let go. You drag it up onto your bed and
throw your arms around it so that it can’t escape. You can hear both your heart
and its heart pounding in fear but you don’t let go. And finally the darkness
gives up the struggle and goes quiet.
Why did you touch my hand? you demand, trying to keep the fear
out of your voice. Why are you always
lurking down there, trying to scare the hell out of me?
The darkness
doesn’t answer. Instead, it reaches out a hand you cannot see and touches your
face. It’s a gentle, hesitant touch. The fingers of the darkness are cold, but
not with malice, you realize. They are cold with fear, and longing.
The hand of
the darkness moves again, takes your hand gently, and moves it to its own
heart. You feel its heart beating frantically against your
palm.
Heart of darkness, you think. Like that story you had to read in high school, about the crazy guy up a river in Africa. You didn't get that story. Why did the guy have to go up a river to find darkness? You can find it anywhere. Like under your bed.
But that was before. When you thought darkness was your enemy. You know now what the darkness has felt all these nights, huddled under your bed, alone and longing and waiting but terrified also that this night would come. This night when you would finally meet face to face and the darkness would be forced to confess how it really feels about you. How much it needs you.
Heart of darkness, you think. Like that story you had to read in high school, about the crazy guy up a river in Africa. You didn't get that story. Why did the guy have to go up a river to find darkness? You can find it anywhere. Like under your bed.
But that was before. When you thought darkness was your enemy. You know now what the darkness has felt all these nights, huddled under your bed, alone and longing and waiting but terrified also that this night would come. This night when you would finally meet face to face and the darkness would be forced to confess how it really feels about you. How much it needs you.
You pull your
hand away. You’re afraid again, but not the same way as you were before. You
want the darkness gone. You want it back where it was before, when it was the unknown. When it was the place you could fill with everything you were afraid of. And the darkness knows this. It moves away from you. It stands
beside your bed, with no face that you can see. No eyes. No sign that you can read to tell you how it's feeling.
There’s a low
rumbling from the darkness beyond the darkness. Then a pair of dim lights
appear and grow. A vehicle of shadows pulls up beside your bed and stops. On
its roof is a glowing silver disk, and on its side, in phosphorescent letters,
the word Nightcab.
The darkness
climbs into the backseat and the Nightcab drives off. You’re still sitting in
your bed, and there’s light coming in through the window. A grey light, like
dirty dishwater. It will be morning very soon. Time to get up and get ready for work.
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Sending you bows...
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