I’ve always been enchanted by darkness. It haunts me. It lures me. It holds my deepest fears. My deepest desires. Ever since I can remember it’s been there, playing with my mind.
My heart can melt just by being surrounded by a night scene. It’s inviting. It’s tempting. I wish for nothing more than to be able to become one with the night.
The stars. The skies. The far-off planets. It’s their mystery that intrigues me so. And their supreme beauty. The moon, too. It lights the night. Illuminates all the wonder.
The trees, the ground, scattered street lights, the wind—they fascinate me as well. Maybe it’s simply ply the way they look under the dark sky. It all just makes me think of dreams and nightmares. And oh yes, I love those too.
To me, darkness is safety. I feel much more comfortable to express myself when surrounded by the dark. I feel like emotions are free to ride. Anything is possible once dusk covers the lands and twilight makes itself at home.
Sunlight always bothers me. I feel no warmth from it. It just blinds me with its penetrating rays. I feel too exposed. It’s not just night that I love so much. Other forms of darkness will suffice. A rainy day, a blizzard, a cloudy sky, a power outage, a dark room, a place lit only by candles, a dark tunnel, or a thunderstorm, my personal favorite. I’m just simply drawn to the dark side of life.
Don’t think, though, that I don’t appreciate art and color. I do greatly. I couldn’t bear a life without color. I love them all, except white. I always have thought that white was such a superficial color, a brief look that goes no deeper than the surface to see all the other colors that make it up. Each other hue holds its own beauty. In fact I don’t even have a favorite; they are all so beautiful. It’s the way they are put together that makes all the difference.
In my mind everything I lay sight on is a photograph, a painting, basically a piece of art. I always observe the sights around me as if I had an artist’s eye. It’s rather strange because I can’t draw, or paint. I’m not even good with a camera.
I’ve always dreamt of being a writer. But I have a crippling fault—I’m a procrastinator. I can’t procrastinate now, though. I must get my story down before my time runs out, for I fear it will all too soon.
I often considered writing a complete autobiography of my life. The problem is, who would be interested in it but me? It’d be too long anyway. I have an exquisite memory. I remember minute detail.
Now when my life has changed and become something of possible interest, I can’t dwell on the tiny details. And I can’t start at the beginning of my life either. I have to start in the dark, because that essentially is the beginning of it all, and where I am now. It could quite possibly be the end as well.
And despite all I’ve said about my feelings towards the dark, there is something I must add: it scares me. Yes I, the lover of darkness and night, am afraid of the dark. I can’t walk down a dark hall without constantly glancing over my shoulder and getting chills up my spine. Maybe it’s the fear itself that entices me. I have always loved fear. As a child I would stay up late many nights reading adult horror novels that would scare me to death and give me terrible nightmares. But I did not hate my nightmares. Instead I treasured them. They just encouraged me to read more horror books. I liked bad dreams. I still do. I love to be scared.
It’s also the mystery in the dark that entices me. One cannot always see what’s lurking around the corner ready to sneak up. One cannot always anticipate what will come next. It holds me in constant suspense. I also think that the fear of not knowing what will happen next, knowing absolutely anything can pop up out of nowhere and be of great danger, knowing the horrible things can’t be prevented because they aren’t expected, is one of the greatest fears. And one of the most mysterious and alluring.
Even as I sit here writing I know great fear. A fear greater than many can imagine. I don’t know if I treasure my fear now or loathe it. But it drives me to write, so it can’t be all that bad.
But I lie. I make little jokes with myself to pretend things are OK, or at least not as bad as they truly are. I try in futility to be funny so as to downplay the terror of it all. It’s useless. A mere smile will not help anything. Or save anything. This is no laughing matter.
It’s kind of ironic actually. It’s just my kind of night. The night sky stretches for miles and miles to unfathomable reaches of the universe. The stars are plenty. The moon is full. I see only by the candles burning beside me in a darkened room. The scene is picture perfect.
I am grateful though, that there is no sun. I have such a strong aversion to the sun; it’s as though its rays harm me, wound me even. If the sun shines too brightly my eyes hurt and I feel dizzy. I, on the contrary it would seem, have never fallen victim to sunstroke or dehydration or any other illness caused by the sun.
You see, when I walk through a sweltering summer day I can feel the heavy air, smell the humidity, feel the warmth around me. Yet I am never a part of it. I feel none of this heat. I am indifferent to its warmth, but its rays still bother me greatly.
I have often wondered if I wasn’t a vampire.
I have always thought of myself as not being completely human.
~~~
Okay, so, dredging up more stuff from the Dark Ages, aka, you know, high school. I wrote this–not just the prologue but this complete manuscript–over the winter of my junior year. Like most high school writing, it’s pretty freakin’ terrible (early on in my freshman year of college, I thought about coming back to this and completely rewriting the ending for an almost opposite effect) but when I look back, there is a part of me that is proud that I wrote something to completion, starting with writing long-hand in a composition book (cover was red and white instead of black and white), often while sitting on my bedroom floor in the corner near the door and leaning up against my mint green walls, then typing it all up on the computer, going through some edits and generally seeing a project (albeit sooo cringe-worthy) all the way through.
So in light of that, I’m going to post a chapter a week, so feel free to follow along!
And yes, there may or may not be (but definitely is) a vampire element to this story, but I was in high school before Twilight or True Blood or any of that. I got my vampire lore from somewhere else (which is revealed in a separate writing piece). And the vampire stuff isn’t fully central here.
For more writing samples, check out the Samples Page, Early Works, and Published.
~Emilia J
April Julia 