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Darkness
I remember the look in your eyes when you first set foot here. Sometimes when I touch you, your body tenses and I know that your eyes are as wide as they were then. I find that revulsion of yours difficult to understand. This place was open arms to me. I welcomed me, enclosed me, took me to a place within my mind where I was meant to go to from the moment I learned what sin was. It embraced me as I embrace you. It teethed on my nerves like my kisses on your skin. But you — you hated this place from the first moment. You, you did not seem to belong here. The blood runs heavy here. This is the shadows — the shadows that thrill me, the shadows that you hate. Music spills out into the daylight. Here in the darkness, people dance. This place is not for hiding. This is not a sanctuary. It is dark, and the air smells like human sweat. Oh, and you hate it. The music makes you deaf, the smell makes you choke. You stare at us if we are insects caught, pinned, and set out for inspection. But I know you. I know your beautiful twisted paradox. You hate this place, but still you love the drip of blood. You like to watch. You like to touch. You like to see it flow, see it run, see it hurt, and inside I know that you are smiling, inside you are laughing. This is the darkness. We are all mad here. When I saw you I knew you were mine — was it the same for you? You who stood there staring, afraid and wanting, you who fled from others yet came to me. My name was branded on your chest, tattooed upon your skin, and you were my property and mine alone. I was sure of it. When I laugh my teeth catch the light and I look ready to tear the meat from your bones. I will, if you let me, just as I did then. And I still don’t mind if you pretend you don’t like it here, where the sun doesn’t shine. Because when you cried and clutched at my hands, that was enough for me. I loved your torture. I still do: your torture, and that little part of you that pulls and pushes at the same time. You came to me every night, to my little corner of the darkness, and the room was dirty and the floor was stained and I was corrupt and here, only here, you were filthy too. Do you remember the first victim I brought you? Do you remember slicing open my skin? Do you remember the first time that I made you bleed? The others have suspicions. Only you and I know. You are only human, after all. The darkness is your home. We all came from here and we all belong here, somewhow, in the corner of our mind that stares at violence and cannot look away, in the piece of us that wants to lash out just to see the event unfold. Even you, too pure for this place, are merely human. But you found that so difficult to accept, don’t you? Even after a thousand nights, you are still trying to pull away and still you fear the beast within. That is why your body tenses. That is why your eyes grow wide. I remember the day you left me as if it were only yesterday, as if you had come crashing back into my arms only moments ago. That is not the case. It has been some time now, but the memory has not yet begun to fade. It would have been one thing if you had found help, an aid, a friend. You would have left me, I know it. But I was lucky. You are unique, and you are alone — there are none that are unhappy here and only you would ever think to leave. To wake up that morning and find you gone was more frightening than a thousand terrors. I thought that someone else had taken you. I thought that you had left me, and it crushed my heart. But then I heard you scream — we all heard it, cutting though the smoke and fog to pierce our eardrums. Did you honestly think that the light would welcome you back? The darkness has stained you, and every sin that was once in your head is now real. You could cling to the very wings of angels and not even that would lift you from here. I stood at the base and watched you climb the cliff face — cliffs that I had never noticed before, cliffs that you created as your own obstacle and your own hope for escape. I stood with hundreds and we watched you inching up slowly. We listened as you cried in pain. It must have hurt to climb. When it was over, your hands, cupped in mine, were torn to bloody shreds. Pulling yourself up that cliff, trying to reach the light that evaded you, it must have been hard. But you knew the whole time, didn’t you, that you could never make it and that if you did the rays would burn you and light would scald you and now that you are a child of the darkness there is no going back. You rejected me. You hurt me. But I never once feared that you would escape me, because I watched you slow and falter, and I knew that the tainted can never go back. I have seen you as no others ever have seen you: you laughing, you vindictive and masochistic and cruel, you as a hell-spawn and a sinner. I know that you could not leave because you love it here. Through all of your refusal and rejection and hate, this is your home. You are only human, after all. On that cliff you climbed, and you suffered, and you prayed. I missed you, but I was laughing too. I knew how it would end. The light must have seemed beautiful, tucked away in your mind. But what is life without those sins that make up the very fiber of who you are? You love them. You love violence, and weakness, and the pure inhuman mutilation that only your hands can wreak, only your eyes can see. The tumble back to the ground would have hurt if I had not been there to catch you. It would have hurt your body, and it would have fragmented your mind and broken your love for me. There is a difference between the pain in the darkness and the pain that would drive you from me forever. The torture, that you love and revel in. But to be unloved, forgotten, and unwanted — there is no pleasure in that: that you hate. We are all insane, and we are all disturbed, but we still love — we love with passion and we bond so strongly, and the light-dwellers will never understand. And you do love me, don’t you? You love what I can do for you. You love what I can make you be. I love you too. There will come a day when the world will end. I do not know how, and I do not know when, but one day the darkness and the light and all in-between will crumble. I can see it in the future. But that day is not today, and until it comes I will love you. It is not a gentle love, you know that. Because you are a creature of hell, not a light-dweller, I will love you with the wickedness that is in you and I will love you with the shadows in your soul. I will love you as you were meant to be loved, and I will love you until the day the world ends. That is why I caught you as you fell — to protect that which I cherish above all else. I have seen you change since the day of your attempt. Your eyes narrow still at the sight of what goes on here. You pull away from us. But you do not look away — and that is key. You stare, now, unabashedly. And do not think that no one has seen you finger a pool of blood when you believe all eyes are turned away. Suspicions are being confirmed. Would you regret the hand of an angel now? That I do not know. But I do know that you come to me every night, and I do know that you can skin a human hand. Even when your eyes widen and you remember the disgust, the revulsion, the disbelief — even when you pull away and itch to climb to the light — even then I know that you will never leave here. Maybe all the human race is mad, somehow — but you and I, we are the lucky ones. We have this place that panders and adores. We have this place that even God cannot find. We have this place that fosters our love and helps it grow. So please, tell me that you hate it here. Pry at my fingers when they trace down your skin. I want to see you cry. I want to see that beautiful paradox that made you mine in that instant, so very long ago. I know that between every word and whisper you are saying that you love this place, and every time you strike back you are lost in the moment, and every gasp and cry is a revelry in the pure paradise of hell, of the shadows — of the darkness. |
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Darkness
12.29.02 1622 words |