A lone light, round and amber, glows in the gloom. A tight gust sends the flame dancing, flickering against the cold of the dark. There is a tang in the air, a sharp, metal scent that stings the nose. Something is burning, and the smell that follows is dry and unpleasant, much like the tannin in rind. Scattered footsteps and a scramble paws echo somewhere in the shadow, a sound that is both familiar and unnerving, like an astronaut listening to music in space.
The darkness is an unwelcome guest, a horrible companion that shrouds reality with its deep wings, eliminating all hope of sight in exchange for the other senses. It is the dark that gives humanity its fear of the unknown, of the monsters and murders who move through it, like black serpents slithering through a dark lake towards a thrashing deer, sending ripples that press out, ribs in a breathing chest. The world that used to be kind becomes cruel, and that which was once friendly is now the enemy, poised to trip the blind and feed the sinister. It is a deadly adversary.
So naturally, we harnessed light.
Pure light, crooked and white with power, hot as a dying star. We watched as it ripped the sky in two above our heads, forking through the night with deafening force like a silver comet. Entranced, one man set out to capture this phenomenon, and produced what was quite literally the key to our salvation: lightning. Now, we never had to face the dark again, watched as it dragged itself back down the hole from whence it crawled. We were safe.
Or so we thought.
For one day, when we least expected it, the dark came back, but this time, it rendered us slaves to its fury, bound by fear and paranoia. Our food soured. The water ran slow, like molasses, poisoned. And most of all, the monsters who lived in the shadows now had their way with us, flies trapped in a suffocating web of nothingness, doomed.
Photo Credits: Sander Dewerte (unsplash)