From: bpaul@maths.tcd.ie (Barry Paul)
Subject: Darkness
Summary: Short story
Keywords: darkness, love
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 14:08:01 GMT


C & C welcome.


The Darkness


	He thought of the sadness that he knew existed deep within
her. A pain barely contained, pacing like a caged animal; backward and
foreword, backward and foreword, waiting for her guard to fall.
Sometimes when she was tired it would throw itself at her and she
would have to beat it back into submission. He had seen it in her eyes
on several occasions, that intense, far away look. It was like seeing
a lover naked in the daylight for the first time, he had turned away
when their eyes had met, not wanting to embarrass her with his
interest. Once his curiosity got the better of him and he questioned
her about the source of her pain.

	"Sometimes I feel my mortality", she said, sad eyes falling to
the floor, "Part of me is always aware of the futility of living. It
is a voice constantly asking: why go on living? ... what is the point? ..."

	He took one of her frail hands in his own and kissed it with
nervous lips. His shallow breath told him that this was important,
this could be a turning point in their relationship. It sounded like
someone else's voice asking her did she want to talk about it.

	 "It's not that I wont talk about it - I just can't", her head
shook and her hands trembled, "I can't even acknowledge its existence
to myself ... If I do I give it purchase ... it could take over ...
and lead me ... down into ... into ... "

	The darkness. He finished her sentence to himself as he took
her stricken shell into his arms.

	Looking back on it he felt he should have said "I understand,
I have seen it too" as he stroked her head, but she was lost to him
and he to her.

	Her words had triggered within him his own lonely feeling. The
feeling he had never articulated. It came to him, usually at night, as
a dream but more vivid and real. It was as if his eyes were turned 180
degrees in their sockets and aimed into the centre of his being. His
inverted vision enabled him to see all his thoughts and memories as if
he was floating over them. Below him lay all that he had experienced
in his life the sum of which made up his self. Each of these
experiences, or moments as he thought of them, was contained in a
roofless room and all rooms were connected by long corridors through
which his thoughts roamed. Some of these doors were locked to thought
but from his floating vantage point he could see clearly into all the
rooms, he could see long forgotten moments from his childhood, moments
that he had tried to forget and all the moments, both significant and
insignificant, that when strung together made up his life. Before he
could examine this structure more closely he would begin to sense the
blackness. Its cold fingers would come from the back of his skull and
caress him, closing gently around him like a powerful seducer. He
would shrug them off but they would return, as they always do, firmer,
tugging him towards the ever increasing dark cloud in his mind. Once
again he would push them away. They would pause, gathering power, for
a final assault. There would be no question in the violating hands
this time. Resistance to the gut wrenching grasp was be futile. As he
was dragged closer and closer to this void he knew that inside was the
cold dark numbness of death. At first, his fear of this place was so
intense that even the fear itself frightened him. He would return to
life before he was subsumed by the darkness by reverting his eyes and
opening them to the sting of tears. As the years had gone by the fear
had become familiar and a fascination with the secrets of the void had
grown. Lately he had let himself be drawn closer and closer in awe of
the infinity and power of death. He knew that this was where his fate lay.

	Dragging himself back he thought this must be what binds us
two together. This worm hole in space, this lonely blackness joins us
as securely as mother and child and as intimately as any woman and
man. He licks his lips in order to articulate some of these feelings
to her. He turns to be closer to her. He places a kiss on her soft
sleeping brow and whispers "I love you".



-- 
<<.><.><.><.><.><"Protect me from what I want" -Jenny Holzer><.><.><.><.><.>>
<<Barry Paul><.><.><Trinity College Dublin><.><.><Ireland><.><.><1-702-1531>>
Newsgroups: alt.prose,talk.bizarre