From Inside Out

On a murky isle long forgotten to the world, there was a convening of darkness. Only a select few, with their private jets and natural aversion to the law, gathered on this eerily quiet evening.

Amazon Lynn was one of those select cunningly fraudulent fiends. She picked her way over to the covert gathering, her figure slipping through the collection of silks that clung to her supple curves like water. It was complimented by a selection of stolen jewels, a heart shaped locket resting at the base of her throat. Guided by the calling of fire, Amazon found two others silhouetted by a symphony of flickering firelight and sin.

Edric Exor made it no secret that he would devour Amazon in one bite if she wasn’t such a ruthless reckoning of quiet destruction. His eyes tracked her progress as her figure swayed mercilessly towards the group, but he would never touch, in fear of his very own sanity and more acutely, his genitals. Edric greeted her with a lazy tilt of his glass, taking a sip of his finely brewed scotch.

Ulric Artis sat quietly, his hands folded pensively in his lap. He had no penchant for small talk or the active investment of knowing others. Ulric only invested in that which could increase his already exorbitant amount of money, power and control. He did not care for games or the silly transgressions of ego, Ulric was here to destroy or be destroyed.

“Can I offer you a drink, Miss Lynn?” Edric inquired, a mask of politeness over claws and daggers.

“A whiskey for me, Mr Exor.” Amazon replied as she took a seat, her lips a red promise that could drown a man.

Edric rose to fulfil her request while commencing the meeting. “Thank you for joining me here tonight-”

“It wouldn’t be a true Edric affair without all the cloak and dagger-” Ulric interrupted.

“Yes, thank you Ulric,” Edric replied dryly, handing Amazon her drink. “I have gathered you here to discuss a truly innovative way to bolster our coffers.”

“Oh, do tell.” Amazon encouraged somewhat condescending but there was a spark in her sapphire eyes.

Edric found his way back to his seat. “A sickness.” He remarked, leaning forward towards the pair. “Tonight, we will redesign misery-”

“Without the fanfare please, Mr Exor.” Ulric said, the eyeroll palpable in his tone.

“I am tired of playing by the rules, skirting this imagined line of moral decency. Are you not also?” Edric asked rhetorically. “Let’s wreck havoc and then let us capitalise upon it.”

Amazon snickered wickedly, “And what is it exactly that you’re suggesting?”

“We will release the Darkness-” Edric began.

“-the Darkness is truly horrible,” Ulric chastised dryly, “It eats people up from the inside out until they have no choice but to destroy themselves.”

“Yes,” Edric agreed, “But the more it takes from them, the more the Darkness gives to us.”

Ulric pursed his lips, as if to say, 'you raise a good point' and shrugged away any sign of moral inclination.

Amazon smirked, her eyes alight with appreciation, “I thought you were not willing to play with the Darkness.”

“I wasn’t,” Edric agreed, “But people change.”

“Is this about Loralei Rue? She left you six months ago-”

Edric’s eyes darkened. “Sometimes your heart gets broken and you just want to watch the world burn,” he growled viciously.

Ulric tsked, clearly offended by various topics of love and heartbreak and the triviality of human affairs. “You have taught the Darkness to obey you?”

“That is what I have been dedicating my time to recently. It’s ready.” Edric promised.

“Then let it swallow Loralei Rue first,” Amazon raised her glass ceremoniously, her voice edged with a little too much delight.

“You are truly wicked, Amazon,” Ulric reprimanded, his tone thick with derision.

“I eat evil for breakfast Ulric, you’ll have to try harder to insult me.”

“At first light, we will free the Darkness,” Edric rejoiced, ignoring the pair’s bickering.

Ulric took a final sip of his drink. “Once again, a truly invigorating encounter, Mr Exor,” he awarded begrudgingly.

And without any further spectacle or festivity, the group departed to their various private aircrafts to watch the world burn in a destruction of their own creation.

* * *

The Darkness had come to her.

Ella had lived a privileged life, only having heard of the Darkness but never seeing it for herself. She hadn’t realised how lucky she had been… until now.

First, it came sporadically, momentarily. It whispered to her in the night, it buried itself in her guts while she slept, it leeched the life out of her eyes as the sun dawned.

Ella couldn’t place the moment that it had gone from an infrequent and unwelcome intruder into an all encompassing ocean that took her under and wouldn’t let her go.

She wasn’t sure what unleashed its full potential. She didn’t have time to think because she was descending, disappearing, evaporating into this inescapable web that weaved her nightmares with the waking world.

Ella couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t fighting the Darkness. She couldn’t remember a time before it swept in and took everyone she knew with it. Ella watched as towns crumbled, societies collapsed, countries fell. She thought she could outrun it but then the Darkness came for her, more quietly and mercilessly than she ever could have imagined. Like it had finally turned its greedy, predatory gaze towards her and it would not be stopped.

Ella tried to claw it from beneath her skin, scream its essence into the aether but it remained, gripping onto her cells and systematically draining her lifeforce with every greedy gulp of her being.

The last thing it took was her vision. It overhauled her world, carving it out of shadows and the dust that rests upon the very worst of man’s potential. Ella laughed cynically, ate greedily, pranced nonchalantly, cared about no one and nothing, but every part of her was burning with heaviness. She waited for it to release her, to forget her.

But mostly, she waited for the day it would finally take her.

* * *

Pete just wanted to read books.

Somewhere, out there, beyond the thick film of Darkness that leached into his soul, was a literary treasure of comic books and manga and the works of Andy Griffiths, if he could just see, if it hadn’t stolen every piece of joy from his aching soul.

But he was drowning in a furious burning of sorrow that wrapped his claws around his throat and would not release its hold.

Pete knew the Darkness had conquered the globe, that was the hard truth. It had slithered its way between continents, across oceans, among the stars and stole beauty wherever it crawled. It was isolating, terrifying and came for them one by one.

We can fix you, it whispered to him across layers of quiet sorrow. Denounce your money, give your time, your energy, your dreams.

The more the Darkness overcame him, the more he gave to it until he was disappearing, vanishing, losing a hold on the very essence of his being...

* * *

It was a gift from his father that saved him.

James only wanted to feel closer to him, clutching the lighter that his father gifted to him before he passed. It was the Darkness that took his dad. James vowed it would not take him too.

When the Darkness came for James, it rushed at him like a wave that would surely swallow him whole. He raised an arm to cover his face, roared with the fury of a mighty warrior that would not go easily. But it was that little flickering of burning flames that stopped that Darkness from taking him under.

He stumbled blindly through the Darkness but it did not sink into his skin like he heard it would. James felt awake, alive, whole. He navigated the Darkness slowly, desperately, not daring to move too quickly less the flame was struck out. He held one hand out before him, while the other protected that fragile flicker of light.

Perhaps, James wondered after being lost to the Darkness for an escapable eternity, he could not feel such agony caused by the Darkness because his heart already ached so terribly from loss. The more he believed that, the more grief tightened like an unforgiving noose around his neck. That flame grew smaller....

With nothing left to hold onto, his mind spiralled down to fragmented memories; his father’s smile, the loving fold in his brow as he held James’ mother, the way his father would return from work and hold James like he’d been searching for him all his life and now they could not be parted.

His mind emptied, all James could see was that smile. The flame began to burn brighter and brighter, reaching up to the roof of his captivity within the Darkness. James began to realise with a chilling clarity; within the Darkness, he was both the enemy and the weapon forged to fight against it. But that weapon was not made of steel or anger or pain or anxiety. That weapon was forged from a burning fury of light, love, hope and dreams.

The flame in his hand surged higher, breaking through the darkness. If James believed in the gods, he would’ve thought it was an evangelical blessing from the heavens.

Suddenly, within his blind stumbling in that sea of thick, black sludge, he bumped into that which felt like flesh. He reached out and blindly grabbed hold of one hand and then another.

James lifted his lighter to find two faces gaping back at him, firelight flickering across their shocked expressions. It was a young girl and boy, both having been saved from the brink of darkness in one fell sweep, a clarity creeped into their eyes as they held each other.

But how to get out of this place?

Together they gave to each other, took from each other, to find a reprieve from this quiet evil, love and light passing between them in an ethereal sigh. Their reprieve held long enough for them to see a flash of silver within this silent plane of everlasting night.

They followed the flickering light until they found a mirror. Within the reflection, the heavy blanket of shadows peeled away, strip by strip, revealing the world they longed for. They stared into seeing the glorious construction of the world around them as it once was. There were high-rises brushing the sky with their long reaching fingertips, trees of a glorious green, a sky of heavenly blue.

But the darkness had not gone, even in this image of paradise.

It lived inside them, pooling in their stomachs, swirling around in wait.

And then they transformed, they melted away and reformed, whole and complete, returned to their former beings before they had been swallowed up and spat out by the Darkness.

It was so real. The pavement beneath their feet, the enclosing presence of the buildings towering above them, the channel of wind that came bustling down the streets.

It was real.

People pushed and shoved past the group of open-mouthed teenagers. They were of little interest to the hustle of the business precinct. But the city-goers could not see as these teenagers saw - each person that passed - either donned with a suit or jeans or a mishmash of confused modern fashion sentiments - all with a living, breathing, pulsating Darkness lurking inside them.

“The shadows live inside of us,” Ella gasped, clutching at her centre, a deep, permeating sadness echoing throughout her being.

Pete frowned, “The Darkness was an illusion? All along it has been living inside of us?”

James nodded, “Yes, we may have escaped the mirage but we are not free.” He surveyed the people rushing around him, carrying the Darkness like an anchor that weighed them down, “The greatest disservice we committed was to accept this as normal.”