When Darkness Speaks, It Changes Everything…

thinksouthpaw
Sep 4, 2018 · 5 min read

“When darkness speaks, it changes everything, turning home into a foreign land and loved ones into strangers. Exile makes sense when you realise that you were never really home in the first place.”

“Did you ever consider,” the voice said, “That you’re the one who is wrong? Did you ever consider that it is not me but you that doesn’t belong here?”

He sat, facing the wall, eyes closed tightly, wishing it would just leave him alone. This house, this hallway, the rooms that they connect; it all felt different somehow. He felt different.

He refused to speak. He wouldn’t entertain it any longer.

So it took the air from the house and it tore the breath from his lungs.

He stared at the wall. He refused to speak.

He felt the weight of it crushing his chest and he felt its gaze destroying his will. But still, he refused to speak.

The voice screamed at him. It kicked open the doors and it let his life spill out onto the carpets. It opened those old doors and it reintroduced him to the pain that those rooms contained.

When you can do nothing but stare at a blank wall for a prolonged amount of time, it can get interesting. Try it sometime. A blank wall hides so much information that you look at every day, but you never really see it.

There was a scuff on this section from when he was shifting the boxes around. He’d finally cleared out one of the rooms and, as he’d dragged the final box to its new room and put it with some other junk to free up some space, it had caught the wall and left a light mark on the paint. It was as if the box was objecting to being moved and was trying to find something to grab onto. It was been cast into the darkness and it was doing what it could to leave a mark before it went.

There was a thin crack, thinner than a spider’s web, that scored the wall from top to bottom. He’d never noticed that one before; he wasn’t sure where it came from. The wall was full of cracks and holes. Many of them he could recall. Many of them were painful to recall. He’d tried restoring them but eventually he’d just given up.

As he stared at the wall, he considered the very texture. He found himself lost in a world of valleys and mountains. He imagined himself soaring like an eagle, looking down for a distraction below; something to sink his talons into whilst he allowed the dark clouds to pass overhead…

He could see the words left on the wall from before he’d repainted, scored into the surface of the wall. He’d covered it and repainted it but the words remained, no matter how many times he tried to paint over them.

He wasn’t sure that the person had realised how persistent the words would be. He wasn’t sure if they realised the mark that they’d leave or that they’d never truly go away.

Perhaps they didn’t care.

“Of course they didn’t care,” it said, “At least, not about you. Why should they?”

It punched the wall and left a mark. Another mark.

“This isn’t your house; you should leave. You don’t deserve to be here and you’re crowding the space. So, just take all your shit and leave. Nobody wants you here.”

He saw colours. In reality, it was just black — the only colour he could think of that would cover up the words. Clearly that hadn’t worked. As he stared he saw colours forming shapes in the wall. It morphed and formed waves and he watched as the black sea grew angry and turbulent.

More doors were thrown upon. It dug its way through the rooms and the boxes. It pulled out old photographs and old letters.

He tried not to listen.

He just kept staring at the wall.

Some days he felt safe in here. He felt so safe that, on occasion — rare as it might be — he would even invite people inside. He had his concerns, sure, but he couldn’t live his life alone.

He’d show them around, give them the grand tour, and maybe some of them would stay. Maybe some of them wouldn’t be horrified at the squalor he lived in. Maybe some of them would even help him tidy up some of the rooms; help it be the home that it was always supposed to be.

On occasion he would get the house back to a reasonable state — a state he wasn’t ashamed of. And there were times when he would even clear out some of the junk that was taking up so much of his space.

But then it would get back in.

When it spoke, it would scream with a thousand voices. It would tear him down and it would turn his home into a place he could no longer recognise. It made it hard for him to tell friend from foe and so he would just lock the doors; he would lock himself in there for fear that something else would get in, too.

He wasn’t sure he could take that.

So he would sit and he would stare at a small section of wall. Then he would back up and stare at some more. And he would keep doing that until he had analysed every part; every mark and crack and bump and colour. He would analyse it all until it was so familiar to him that it would feel like home again.

“This was never your home,” it spat, “You can paint it up and you can call it what you want. But you know that you will never truly feel at home here. There is no place that you will feel at home. There is no place that you will ever feel truly at peace.”

It stormed away into a room and began throwing more boxes into the hallway, “People like you don’t deserve it,” it called, from the room.

He wasn’t sure how it kept getting in. He always checked the windows and locked all the doors. Though they were few and far between, there were even days that he saw it prowling outside, unable to get in. But it would always find a way, somehow. It would open the doors and undo the progress he had made. Once it was in, it got comfortable and refused to leave.

So he would wait. He would wait, and he would stare at his wall. He would show it that he could outlast it.

He had to.