Comments from the three of you who read this will be much appreciated. This is my intellectual property, and I do plan on attempting to have my work published when it is completed. With that being said, I will not post any of the later chapters. I'm sharing this in an effort to see if this venture is worth getting into. With that being said, DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT use this for your own personal use, as it is my property. The copyright information will be filled out, and violation of said copyright is subject to law.
Enjoy the story, and I hope you purchase the book - if and when - it comes out.
Chapter 1
Darkness. Darkness was all there was in the beginning, and when there was light the darkness disappeared, relegated only to certain hours of a day. When it was dark, men huddled together near fires to keep themselves warm from the cold night air, huddled near their fires to ward off any beasts that may be seeking their warm, hairy flesh for nourishment. To be alone in the dark - completely without light - in this prehistoric time meant certain death.
Even as times have changed, electricity – artificial light - has become a prevalent part of nearly everyone’s life, and, even with this convenience, the threat of darkness has dissipated only slightly. However, in this age of rampant technology there still lies the primordial fear of being alone in the dark. There are the strange few who savor darkness and solitude, those who welcome night over day, but for the most part, few want to be alone in dark, unfamiliar lands, streets, or rooms. The darkness was - and always will - be evil.
However, for some darkness means completely different things. For instance, take Jeremiah for example; he was born blind. His darkness is different than many, many others, as he has never seen the light of day, and therefore, he has always lived in darkness and has known nothing else. The strange thing is that Jeremiah is glad he was born blind, as he feels has sucked every last drop of life out of his long and prosperous life. As Jeremiah lays on his deathbed, family surrounding him, he looks forward to heaven and beholds his first glimpse of light. As his breathing begins to grow slower and slower, his lips turn up in a smile, and his eyes close to welcome the darkness – and soon the light – of death. Jeremiah’s breathing slows to a halt, the air grows still and silent, and an eerie feeling overtakes the family, a feeling much as that of being locked in a room with no windows or light of any kind, a feeling of emptiness, darkness – and they all finally understand what it is like to be blind.
I, on the other hand, have a different sort of darkness. I am not sure where this darkness comes from, but it is there and I know it will never leave me; it is a part of my soul, my very being, and to lose this sense of darkness would destroy the intricate balance of my mind, my spirit, and because of that I would come crashing down into oblivion, which is a darkness much worse than that which I harbor in the depths of my mind.
As I ponder these thoughts and write them on this paper, I try to remember when I first noticed that darkness had overtaken me. Perhaps I was born with it, but since human memory does not allow for concrete memories to be formed until one is almost five, there is no way of knowing when and where this darkness emerged. However, when I was eight years old I first noticed something strange in my thoughts, and I made a mental note never to forget what happened that day…but then again, how could I ever forget that day?
It was sunny on that fateful day, oh so long ago, and I was playing in the yard behind the house with my older brother. I was eight, he was ten, and we generally were good little boys who never caused trouble; hell, we never really fought with each other, let alone dream of doing something for which Mother would bring the wrath of punishment upon us. For some reason, though, we – actually, I – decided to push her to her breaking point; I had to know what would set her off, what would envelop her face in the twisted red fury of anger, I had to find out if she would hit me, I had to find out what the punishment was for doing something so harsh. After the fact, I felt great remorse, but it was an accident – wasn’t it? That’s what they said, and they new far more than little old me. You see, I did not know any better, and it just happened, a sort of curiosity…it pains me to this day, a haunting memory…but I am getting off the topic of what happened, when light turned to dark, innocence to violence, and life to death.
As my brother and I wrestled (why I do not know; he always won), my mother watched from her garden, making sure neither of us were hurt. His dark hair fell in his eyes as he smiled in glee, pushing me down on the ground, laughing at my plight; he was always larger than I, always stronger – but today was different. As we wrestled, his knee hit my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I grunted as my lungs deflated as my diaphragm forced the much needed air from my eight year old body, and a helplessness overtook me, my brain struggling for oxygen and he just would not let up, he would not hold back, and I could feel the anger burning in the back of my mind, and then the darkness appeared. A plan began to revolve in my mind…
I caught my breath, finally, and I soon mustered up the strength needed to overturn my brother. With my mother watching, I was going to hurt my brother like he’d never been hurt before, I was going to get him back for his total control over me; he would pay, I was certain. I closed my eyes and began to move, to move like the movie I was playing over and over in my mind…
…and with that, I pushed my knee into my brother’s crotch, hitting him square in the testicles and eliciting the scream of which I had only dreamt. My eyes were still closed, and I took this opportunity to ball my hands into little fists, powerful little fists, and I hit my brother across the face as hard as I could, and there it was: another scream! I smiled and swung again and again, and then I managed to straddle his body – growing limp – as I continued to pummel his tear streaked face with my fists…and…and then it happened.
I could feel my mother trying to pull me off, but it was no use, as the adrenaline was pumping so fiercely throughout my system that her trim figure was no match for mine. John’s face was a bloody pulp, his breathing shallow, and I was holding him by the neck with one hand as I continued to obliterate his face with my fist. My mother stood back now, frozen and crying, in shock…I looked up with pure hate in my eyes, I could feel it burning a hole in her soul, and I closed them to hide this evil from her, this darkness.
My brother was dead when the police arrived. Mother was sobbing as I sat nonchalantly next to his lifeless body. I peered over into his brown eyes; they were so cold, so very cold, so vacant and accusing, and the image still sits with me to this day. Father arrived home a bit later, called from work because of this incident, and the police had some psychologist or other questioning me. I didn’t know why I had killed John, and the psychologist, I was told later, dismissed the whole thing as nothing more than temporary insanity. Not surprisingly, my family relocated to a different area, and any sign that there were two children in our household were hidden from our new neighbors; if there were pictures of John, people would ask questions, now wouldn’t they? And no one wanted to attend school with a murderer…
And so I grew up with this deathly secret haunting my parents and I. It doesn’t haunt me, really, but it bothers me. Yes, I know that’s a rather confusing statement, and I will attempt to clarify: you see, I have no remorse for my act, but it still bothers me that I killed him. I’m a very controlled person, and this act was a total loss of control. Granted, I was young and didn’t know any better, didn’t know I had to control myself in such a way, but I had realized at such a young age that there was something that needed to be kept a secret…and the murder of John had just increased the awareness.
And so I’ve kept my darkness within, away from the light, away from prying eyes that might give a damn as to what was going on inside my mind. The things that I’ve done I’ve hidden exquisitely, and as I sit in this dark room, lit only by a single, bare bulb in the ceiling, writing on this yellow legal pad my thoughts and confessions to some unknown reader, I’m simply contemplating what I’ve done with my life up to this point in time, this time where my life will end; I’ve seen it in dreams, and it is oh so very beautiful…
Every night it comes to me: I’m sitting alone in the very room that I sit and write this, and I’m coming to the end. I cross the last T, dot the last I, and I stare at the finished work, and I watch my signature flow from my fingertips. I set the pen down – isn’t it strange how one views themselves from the third person in dreams? – and watch myself pull the gun, along with the box of bullets, from the drawer beside me. The gun is a jet black army issue Berretta, and the shells are .45 caliber hollow points; they would obliterate the flesh covering my chin, move through the mouth and nasal cavities and exit out the top rear of my head, destroying the thought area of the brain – what was it called again? Feh. It doesn’t matter – and then, then the dream fades to black, to darkness. Ah, my beloved darkness!
I’m not scared of the darkness, as I’ve lived with it my entire life. It has always been there in the back of my mind, creeping into every thought, every action, every single part of my meaningless life. Well, my life wasn’t all meaningless, now was it? I wrote this, didn’t I? And that’s saying something. So many people tortured by the Darkness were wonderful writers: Poe, Whitman, King, and others that escape my mind at this juncture. I hope to be named among those, as this is my first and last work. A strange form of autobiography, this is, but it is an autobiography nonetheless.
I keep wandering from my train of thought, and it isn’t good for a piece of writing to meander in such a way. I’ll do my best to stay focused on the task at hand, to explain why I’ve killed and why I will die in such a way, a way envisioned in my strange little mind. Ah, where to begin? How about high school…
Jamison Carter paused over the yellow legal pad, put the pen cap back on the tip of his black Pilot V-Ball, and stared at the wall briefly before rising; he was thirsty and a bit bored. Carter pushed the chair underneath the small writing table, turned, and exited the tiny, windowless, nearly empty writing room.
In stark contrast to his writing room, Carter’s penthouse apartment was large and spacious. The living room was large, with a huge leather sectional couch, solid oak end tables and coffee table, and several expensive paintings, (Monet, Picasso, and the like) and also a state of the art entertainment system: a fifty-one inch plasma TV complete with Bose theatre surround sound (THX certified, of course), DVD player, and four hundred channel cable. The kitchen, which Carter now entered, was equally impressive with brand new appliances, all professional stainless steal, and marble countertops with oak cabinets that seemed to match the accessory furniture within the living room. Carter’s bedroom was large, with an enormous walk-in closet filled with designer clothes from Armani, Gucci, Versacci, and half of a J. Crew catalog. A king size bed took up the center of the room, and a large patio door opened onto a balcony which overlooked the crowded streets of bustling New York City.
Carter wandered over to his fridge, opening the stainless steel doors and rummaging around a bit, and eventually decided on a bottle of Guiness Drought. He then strode to the living room in his fuzzy bunny slippers and plopped down on the leather couch, promptly putting his feet on the coffee table and switching on the television. The Knicks were playing, and of course, they were losing. Carter sighed and flipped the station to some pointless movie, nothing but guns and violence and sex. He frowned at this, rubbing the slight stubble which had grown upon his chin during the day thoughtfully. Yes, he thought. Violence would have a significant part in his last book, and he knew just the place. Carter muted the television and picked up his cordless phone, dialing several digits from memory. A thin smile spread across his lips as the other end picked up…
“Hello? Jamison? How the hell you been, man? I haven’t seen you for ages. Where’d you go, it’s like you disappeared off the face of the earth?” Shane Hefty answered on the other end. What in the world, he thought, Jamison hasn’t talked to me since we graduated from college, why is he calling now? He’s famous now, what could he possibly want from me?
Hefty was an English teacher at a high school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He was just under six foot tall with a dark complexion and broad shoulders. He was in shape – barely – and had been married for several years; his wife was expecting their first. Hefty, up to the phone call, had been secretly relieved his newly famous friend had not bothered to contact him since graduation. Carter was a strange fellow in college, and Hefty had nightmares from some of the things that Carter had written and said, and because of those things Hefty simply could not bring himself to read Carter’s books – even though the man had sent autographed copies of the horror novels to Hefty. His wife looked at him thoughtfully as she tried to read the confused expression on her husband’s face.
“Oh, I’ve been fine, but busy,” Carter replied. That little shit hadn’t read my books, even after all I’d done for him, he thought angrily. Carter could tell this fact simply by the slight guilty tone in the teacher’s voice. “Say, I’ll be in Chapel Hill for the Duke game, what say you and I go together? I have two tickets, but Becca was unable to with me.” Becca was Carter’s off and on girlfriend, really nothing more than a fuck-buddy.
Hefty paused, and then answered, “Sure, why not? We could catch up, touch base, and enjoy a helluva game. Do you know where I live?”
“I believe I have your address down, yes, yes I do. The game starts at four, how about I meet you at your house at around two? We could go get some coffee first,” Carter suggested.
“You’re on, I’ll see you then. Take care, Jamison,” Hefty said before hanging up the phone. He frowned and looked at his wife, shrugged, and turned back to grading his students’ papers.
Carter tossed the cordless phone on the couch and sipped at his beer, turning the television back to the Knicks game. There was still the matter of getting tickets to the North Carolina game against Duke, but that wouldn’t be a problem with his contacts. He’d have to rent a car, rather than drive his own, and that was an annoyance to Carter. Ah well, it was a necessary annoyance. Oh, look, he thought, Allan Houston actually made a jumper…
The car sped along the highway at around ninety miles an hour, water splashing from underneath the tires as it hurtled towards oblivion. Shane Hefty was in the passenger seat beside Jamison Carter, and Hefty’s knuckles were turning white from gripping the leather arm rest attached to the door. Carter reached over and unbuckled Hefty’s seatbelt, adding to his angst. The accelerator was pushed flush to the floor, and the car continued to speed. As the car passed over a bridge, Carter let go of the wheel.
Hefty screamed as the Mercedes sedan smashed into a concrete barrier, his face hurtling against the windshield at over ninety miles per hour, stopped briefly only by the air bag before exiting the vehicle; that is, half of Hefty’s upper torso flew from the destroyed piece of German engineering, as his legs were trapped between the plush leather seat and the crumpled dashboard. The teacher’s body was airborne for about five seconds – an eternity to the poor soul – before landing hard on the pavement, ripping the remaining clothes to shreds and blistering his flesh beyond recognition. However, his eyes were still wide open, very much alert and very much alive, and he stared up as Jamison Carter approached, limping slightly, and stood over his friend’s dying body. Carter pulled out a pistol, his Berretta, and aimed it at Hefty’s forehead. The teacher’s life flashed before his eyes as he heard the hammer move back, oh so slowly, he opened his mouth to scream, and then all he heard was a bang…
“NOOOO!!!!” Hefty screamed from his Chapel Hill home. He was sitting up in bed, sweating profusely, and his wife had her arm around his shoulders. “No…” he repeated, trailing off. Hefty cradled his head in his hands, and his wife kissed the side of his head, comforting him.
“Was it the same dream, dear?” Jamilee Hefty was pretty, with large brown eyes, dark hair, full lips and dimples. Her concern was genuine; her husband had been having the same dream for several years, but he definitely seemed to be in worse shape now that the antagonist of his dreams had actually contacted him. Tears formed in her eyes as Shane nodded his head, and she blinked the tears away and held her tortured husband close. Eventually, the couple fell asleep again, but it was mostly from exhaustion.
