III - The Boy in the Dark
The world in which one must inhabit to let such thoughts
manifest does not necessarily need to be a negative one. The sun still shines
in my life. The love from friends and family still exists and can be felt.
Health is kept in shape and no misfortunate happenings plague my existence.
Though one might ask then why? Why would I willingly let myself succumb to such
devils and malcontents and macabre vessels then? What drove me to such depths
of abysmal thought?
I can
not say the root of my negativity or if I’d even call it that now. I would
simply state it as an alternative life pursuit. I was and currently still am a
successful man. Successful in the material and societal sense until the trials
firmly begin. Then I will be successful in the ethereal sense.
I have
a job that affords me much. A comfortable living space and plenty of friends to
occupy my life. And yet…and yet there has always been something missing. Something
nagging at the back of my mind. Always a little boy in the dark playing with
the dead mouse. Something shying away from the light of day but is most visible
in twilight. A small quiet yearning, for damnation.
A
rebellious spirit, owing to years of repression, will burst forth at the first
opportunity. Some men murder, some men steal, some men rape, some men go to war
to do all three. Some men let the primal instincts of primitive beasts to burst
forth and overtake them, no matter their standing or influence or upbringing. Not
ten years ago I read an article about a landowning merchant man who never even
gave a nasty look to a passerby one day snapped and murdered his entire family
in their sleep, set kerosene upon their corpses and set his on home ablaze. A passerby
saw him standing erect, in more ways than one, at the head of his doorway with
a grim smile upon his face. The flames licked at his clothes as they engulfed the
world around him. The passerby, the witness to the whole ordeal, said he looked
possessed by a devil, that he was not the man the world thus far had known. A
victim of possession and unholy corruption.
During
the war, I and many others, were witness to the atrocities that men can do to one
another. One story I heard passed around, but that I was not witness to,
centered around a lieutenant who, instead of letting his men be captured by the
enemy called an artillery strike on their own position. One survivor, the
maimed man who spread the tale before the loss of all four limbs and most of
his face succumbed to his wounds, said the look on the lieutenants face wasn’t
one of horror or sadness to what he had done to stop the enemy, but of morbid
glee. A painted smile and eyes wide with fire as the first shells exploded
around them.
Upon my
hearing of both of these stories I shrugged them off and believed as many
others did that it was the Devil’s work. Corrupting otherwise good men into
doing his bidding. A stressed soul is a susceptible soul, my uncle once told me.
That the greatest cause of possession of men by evil things is the faltering of
one’s own happiness and will to go on in the light of god. He told me this when
I was a mere boy, but it lodged it self into the larger part of my soul. But at
that injection of Godliness a small piece broke off and became the boy in the dark.
The little voice that upon hearing such stories as I did, wondered if I would do
the same, if I could do the same. If
part of me wanted to do the same with
the same morbid glee. I never gave credence to the whispers until the night I was
met by the devil on my chest. The voice was no longer a whisper. The words no
longer lost on my ears. They were now louder and more persuasive.
I
longed to give in. But I would not be the same as the others. I wouldn’t simply
let myself become possessed. I’d make a pact. I’d earn a new life and being
from this abomination under god. I would succumb, willingly, to the darkness. I
would invite it in.
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