Yin

The seductive monochrome of night is all I know. A dog does not know that its master sees the world differently. All that matters is that its master sees him. And feeds him of course. Our connections serve a purpose.

I read once that there are people who do not remember their childhood. An early form of dementia no one likes to talk about even though few recover from such an affliction. A gentle tsunami of trauma gifted to the child by an earthquake of an adult who did not find it within themselves to be a parent.

People speak of love. An infinite well of the lifeblood of connection. I see so little of it about. Perhaps it dwells where I fear to tread. In the places I cannot go. I think not. I am all too familiar with the fear of others. They cannot help but share their fears when their end is nigh. Such simply complex creatures! They fear death all of their lives, but when they face the inevitable, that fear dissipates and finally they understand. They regress to the point of birth and see it all for what it really is. All it ever was. They came into this world with the wherewithal required to live well. Then they chose to fear life itself and called it a fear of death. In that they are right. So many exist in the shadow of a living death. I should know. I am both shadow and death incarnate.

I love them from afar. A cold, calculating love. But to my mind, it is love all the same. I feel it, but more importantly, I live it. I am the silent gamekeeper. I watch over my herd. I am its protector. I am forever hungry. Incomplete. Cursed to be one half of a whole I can only ever touch in the fleeting moment. There is no future. Only the moment. And so the past eludes me as much as the unrelenting expanse of all that lies ahead.

I was human once. The fear that conceals that past has never made itself known to me. And so I gaze upon what I was with a blind envy. I can no more understand what it is to be human than they could ever know me and my nature. In those moments where we dance, they catch a terrible glimpse of what I am and it very nearly undoes them. I see that and something deep within me screams, for I share what it is that they see and it shames me to the hidden core.

Legend has it that my kind abhor mirrors. So many half-truths slither and hiss in this world of yours. You are our mirrors. The noise of you is cloying and unseemly. Yet you are beautiful in your ignorance. Determined idiot savants flinging yourselves this way and that in a desperation of shortcuts towards a life well lived. Hiding. Always hiding from yourselves.

Your truth hurts. And that is where the fullness of your beauty resides. The pain of your truth. The more you live, the more you overcome your pain and fear and the more you shine. In the end, you all shine to one extent or another. Even those of you who have sacrificed all that is decent and good to the darkness within. Your soul cannot be extinguished and neither can the light it contains.

For such a long while, I hated that shine of yours. I misconstrued my place in this world. I took that shine from it and gloried in my power. Your shine reminded me of that which I can never have. The light of the sun upon my face. To reside in the warmth of the day. These things are denied me. I am the darkness and I am cold in that dark. I never thought that there was anything in this world that could warm me. Then I saw you afresh and I wept at the insanity that I had become. The madness I had wrapped around myself until I drowned in it.

It took me walking into the light to see more of what I was. Or rather that which I should have been. I once again tired of my existence and instead of burying myself in the ground and sleeping the sleep of a hundred years, I realised I craved the finality of an end.

I wished for that end and it was granted me, but not as I had hoped. I found a quiet spot and picked my time. I stood in the shadows and composed myself. Prepared to say my goodbyes and realised that I had nothing to let go of. That I had become nothing. And so I walked out into the heat and light of the Summer’s day and raised my arms in welcome capitulation. Wondered what lay beyond this last day of mine. Laughed insolently at the prospect of eternal fires.

The pain of my wished death was indescribable. My skin blackened and smoked. Then it began to slough off my bones. I staggered backwards and before I knew it, I was huddled back in the comparative safety of the dark. Broken and twisted, I discovered a lust for this life of mine. And so I crawled deeper into the shadows and lay in an excruciating stupor of permanent consciousness. Living on the blood of rodents and birds I slowly came back to myself, but I was never the same again. Humiliated and humbled I could see far more than I had ever allowed myself to see. I was you and you were me. Only I was your dark half. The part of you that you deny. The part you must embrace if you are ever to make sense of yourself and the life you were always destined to live.

I came to realise that I was the answer to the riddle of you.

As I lay there in a state so close to death, but elusively far from it, I connected with the energy of the universe and I became more. The peace of humility grounded me and my attraction to the people around me aligned to the profound. The darkness of the human psyche spoke to me in gentle whispers and encouraged my recovery. In your darkness I was saved. I was tested, I faded into nothingness and yet I was everything.

As I recovered, I would stumble and crawl out into the night and lay gazing out past the pin pricks of light at the universe beyond. I opened my eyes wide and allowed the infinite to flood me with its energy. I embraced the darkness and I became one with it.

In worshipping the contrast to your shine I saw beauty and at last found purpose and balance. Never was I here to merely extinguish the light. I had missed the point of my being entirely.

You see, it takes one to know one. I see your black heart and it inflames me. You gave up on your shine and withdrew into your own darkness. You dared to stare into the abyss and the abyss stared into you. Another mirror. Asking the questions you must answer in this life.

How am I doing?

Am I romanticising your cowardice sufficiently?

For giving up on yourself is nothing short of pathetic. Hiding in the coat tails of the true darkness. Betrayal upon betrayal. Weak excuses for your abusive behaviour. Hurting others because you can’t bear to face yourself. Can’t look in the mirror of your humanity. You hate the living and eschew life for a dark, pitiful existence. You become a meaningless facsimile of me. Problem is that I mean it. You never do.

Well, unfortunately I cannot allow you to venture into my darkness. This is my territory and I’m not having you ruin my brand and reputation. This is no arena for half-baked amateurs. For people who don’t mean it. You can’t get away with that shit in my domain. I own it. I own you.

Now look into my eyes and fall into the real abyss. Taste the bitter fruits of evil. The acid pain of a poison that will burn away your lies and expose the truth of you. And if you can, ask me for the Dark Gift. Beg me to make you into the likeness of me. Become my disciple in drinking of my blood.

You won’t though. For you do not have the courage of your convictions. There are no convictions residing within your hollowed out frame. You’ve run from every fight. Never owned yourself or your actions. You’re a cruel and callous childhood bully forever hiding from the adults around you. You’ve never fought a fair fight. Never stood up for what counts. You are an empty vessel and I heard your noise from a mile away. Tasted the salty tang of your fear before I ever set eyes upon you.

Now, I will end your stupid game. That’s the problem with this futile pursuit of yours. Eventually you come up against someone who plays your made up game of vengeance far better than you ever could. And I mean everything I do. I really do. My black heart is in the game and I’m here for keeps.

The fruit I feast upon is rotten to the core. An acquired taste. I get drunk on the blood of the corrupt and rejoice in the darkness I consume. Rejoice in the good I am doing. The world shines more brightly every time I feed upon a dark soul and whenever the light shines more brightly, the darkness pulses with a thrilling defiance. I hear the music of this harmony and it enlivens me.

And I’ll let you into a little secret of mine. Since I walked into the light and had my dark epiphany, I have never taken a human life. Not one. You see, there’s a point of eternal limbo that I can take a human soul to. An exquisite state of punishment that is fitting for those who betrayed the beauty of humanity and sought to defile it. One day, I may bestow the Dark Gift on one worthy of it. But for now I draw those who have chosen evil into a state of perpetual darkness. A purgatory of eternal shame. The consuming darkness that constantly whispers and writhes. A darkness that can never rest.

You are right to fear the dark. True darkness is always hungry. I feed it. But it is never sated. Thankfully there are plenty of dark creatures masquerading as decent folk to keep it at bay. At least for the time being.