Inside a small dark room within the depths of some unknown Fortress, a small wooden bed sits in the corner, and a lowly figure lies sleeping, finally getting a release to just fade away into a dreamless sleep. A cold dark space with cobwebs littering the corners of the room and smelling of decay, insects scurrying across the floor, and gruesome black spiders the size of a small cat give chase that even the rats are fearful to tread within. Covering the walls other than filth and moisture are lines scratched into the rock walls as to serve as a calendar of sorts for the sleeping figure, so as to know how many days have passed within this dungeon deep within the dark cold earth. There are no windows to his cell no light save for a faint flicker on what looks like a crude desk, in the opposite corner of the room.
The figure stirs with a moan and groans and raises his head from its resting place. With great effort he brings himself to a seated position, now sitting on the wooden bed, starring as the cold steel bars that again he has awakened to. His eyes empty and void of all emotions like love, joy and happiness all that can be seen in them is empty cold despair. He leans over to the rock wall and finds a spot on it that has not yet been marked, and he scratches another line on the rock wall so hard that blood trickles from his finger tip. He sits there for another moment looking at his hands, torn, broken and scared, hands that once created such beauty now nothing more the grotesque shadow’s of what they once were.” Micheal, what has become of you”, he mumbles to himself. His raises his body to stand, with great effort and scuffles over to the crude desk to complete his task. On the table lay fragments of what once was his heart, now broken and shattered strewn across the table, is this dark prison. The pieces of what lay before him flicker with a faint light, a light which was once to strong as to inspire many people with his creations.
Within this darkness deep within, a dank dark space, the figure sits at a table, working ferociously in the darkness, with the dim light assist his efforts. He looks around to see what can be seen in the darkness surrounding him, all he can see is the prison he has constructed, in which he now dwells, seeking an escape but unable to do so, until he completes his task. With trembling hands, whether from sorrow or cold, and eyes filled with tears, tasting their saltiness in his mouth, he tries and tries, but it is difficult to work alone with such a faint light, but in this prison of his own design in solitude and in darkness, he must continue if he is to succeed. If he is to smile once more, know what it is to laugh and love once more, he must continue. If he is to step into warm, embrace the light and life outside his prison again and find his freedom once more. The tool of his salvation is within his grasp, all he needs to the courage and faith to complete it, and use it for the task it was constructed for.
Suddenly from the stirring within the depths of the shadows beyond the confines of his cold cell, he sees a figure peering at him through the darkness. A gruff chuckle fills the dark space. “Do you think you can hide from me in here, Micheal? Haven’t you learned anything yet?” a dark menacing figure, shrouded in shadows steps from the darkness, eyes glowing with a blood red glimmer, he steps arrogantly into the dim glow and grabs the cold steel bars of the man’s self-made prison. His face pushed between the bars, with a crazed psychotic expression on his face, “Look at me you pathetic wretch, come look into my eyes, and see the truth, before you hurt yourself!” His voice echoes thru the room as if said by countless voices filled with anger and rage. Micheal stands up, filled with dread and fear, trembling nervously, sulking to where the dark figure is standing and peers into his eyes. It is as if looking into a mirror, but the reflection is dark and twisted version of him. “You think hiding in here will protect you from me, I am you, I will find you where ever you hide, I am your other half, your stronger half. I was created by your darkest thoughts in order to protect you, and now you run and hide from me? That trinket you are trying so hard to piece together is what summoned me from the darkest depths of your soul.
You were weak and broken, you had given your heart away to freely and now, nothing more than pieces of shattered glass in this dark hole” The Micheal looks down at his feet in shame, unable to hold the dark figures gaze. “You are sitting in here, with that meaningless little light of your broken heart, sitting here hiding from whom you have become, like the little bitch you are, as you try and hide from yourself? You truly think you are strong enough to overcome me?” with this, the dark figure grabs the Micheal’s head through the bars and pulls him tightly into the bars.
“Look at me and understand. You know what I am, you know what I am capable of, you have watched from your hallowed prison as I wreaked havoc upon this world using your body as my own and still you believe you can possibly defeat me? You created me, you were not strong enough to face your demons alone, and thus I was born. I defeated your demons, hell I recruited your demons, made them my own pets using them to do my bidding and assumed control of your meek pathetic body, as you hide away from me, yourself in the dark corners of your pathetic mind. In our name, I made people fear us, we took our rightful place in the food chain as you hide, watching, whimpering. I am respected and feared, with more blood on my hands than most would admit and still this pathetic creature that created me thinks he can in anyway stop me.” A loud menacing laugh filled the dark dank room, echoing once again of the cold moist walls.
” I have destroyed much more powerful than you, I have murdered, tortured, raped, abused and destroyed many more capable than you, and here you actually believe u can stop me?” spitting his words into Micheal’s face, his vile breath filling his nostrils, the dark figure pulls Micheal’s face even harder against the bars distorting it, against the cold steel bars.
Micheal no longer trembling, face forced against the prison’s bars and with the dark figures vile breath in his face looked him in the eyes, “I will triumph over you, as I no longer fear you. You are nothing. A mere shadow who has no power but in my mind, I may have stood by, watching you take control, but no longer. Your evil stops here!” and with those words Micheal, from behind his back pulls out a crude dagger, the one he has been furiously working on in secret, in the dank darkness, and forcefully slips the grasp of darkness and moves beyond his reach.” You thought I have been to piece together my heart, but through all these years I can see something that can never be had whole again, broken one too many times has turned into nothing but a pile of unfilled hopes and dreams, joys and loves never to be experienced. Oh no my friend you don’t know me as well as you think, I have been working on my true salvation, your destruction.” And now Micheal standing before his dark self, that but a moment ago was nothing but a broken man, now standing his ground, his eyes filled with something that resembles a slight glimmer of hope.
Laughter erupts in the dim light space, “And what are you going to do with that, kill me, you have no idea …..” The man defiantly interrupts the dark figures rant “Oh, but I do, you see, you gave me the answer, you and I and the same, two halves making a whole, one cannot exist without the other, so …..” and as Micheal says that he takes the musty dagger and plunges it into his own chest, glaring deeply into the red eyes of his dark self, ” I die, you die ……and ….. With our…….death, release”. The man and the dark figure fall to their knees, the smirk on his twisted face replaced by an expression of fear and shock. “You can’t do this, you are not strong enough, I am your strength,” and the dark self feels his strength, his power fading mutters, gasping for air, ”You could have had power, great power beyond your dreams why …,all you had to do is surrender to the darkness, to me” and collapses into a pile on the floor.
The once powerful dark arrogant and menacing figure, now nothing more than a muttering broken creature, his wicked laugh no longer echoing, lying in a pile of pity on the dirty dank floor. Micheal, covered in blood, dagger deep in his chest, looks at what is left of the figure and mumbles with a faint smile on his face these last words.” At what cost would I get such power though death, destruction and chaos, to high a price for me, I am not a monster like you, I may be a bastard,” gasping for a breath to talk” but I am not a fucking monster……..I will not lose myself, my true self …… by losing myself to you ” gasping for air as he collapses onto the cold dirty floor. The two laying there, beside one another, separated only by the prison bars that now slowly fade away into nothing but a smoke like mist, dark and menacing on the one side and light and hopeful on the other. And as the dim light from a shattered heart fades into the shadows, the two clouds drift towards each other and become one and then fade into the darkness, into nothing.
D. Kay
RMJ Creations 