I honestly felt that I could understand where she was coming from. In the dark, our imagination can run wild as our greatest fears gain purchase in a world absent of visual stability. Although not fully cured, I used to be far more afraid of the dark than I was now.
At one point in my life, I had decided enough was enough as I too often felt crippling fear in the presence of near pitch darkness. I couldn’t continue living like that and thus began organizing my own form of intervention and desensitization. Purposely choosing places that I was very familiar with and which I felt safe in when it was lit by the light of day or by other forms of lighting, I would then visit in the night and turn out all the lights. There, standing in the darkness, I drew upon my gift of chills and warmth, wielding it like an encompassing cloak and with an imagined sword of power did I challenge the darkness.
I challenged the demons of my mind and fears of my heart in those shadowed places of hidden solace. Nothing other than my incorporeal and invisible fears ever fought back, never leaving a trace of their passage upon my personage.
Once I began feeling fully safe in those familiar dark environments, I began expanding my places of new exposure. Being alone on a darkened and gloomy football field in the moonless night, the back end of a squash court once the illuminating lights went out, and the deeper darkness of a copse of trees were my new targets. Each time I would call forth my protective and supporting gift to provide solace in a place of fear and the unknown.
Over time, I had actually grown to appreciate the darkness. Even now, I like to sleep in a pitch-black room when in the safe confines of my apartment. Admittedly I still retain my sense of self-preservation. If I were to hear a terrifying noise of something that sounds like the scream of a wild bobcat or the shuffling around of a bear in the dark while camping in the wild, I may flinch and quickly seek safety amid my tent or car along with a holstered firearm by my side.
Logic and common sense was still with me, but I no longer balked at descending a dimly lit stairwell into a dark basement, nor did I avoid the deep and darkened end of a backyard swimming pool out of fear. A smile crept onto my lips as I recalled in my childhood being fearful of some passageway or portal opening in the obscured end of deep water, which would allow entry for a terrifying monster to draw me into the pitch-black depths of the unknown.
A properly stimulated mind can bring to near life a plethora of nightmare worthy horrors.
After bringing down the box of shadow stones, which I remembered to thank Gertrude for providing me, I requested that I get to use 3 of the stones. Victoria did vehemently balk at that. I however felt adequately prepared to argue my case.
“Master, you said it yourself, that this is a near esoteric stone. If I somehow fail the assimilation, there will be no great loss as you never intended me to use them in the first place.” Silence met my rebuttal and so I continued. “Additionally, would this not be a good opportunity to see if my limits can be reached with this stone and know if my ability to do the same with the earthen stones was truly a fluke or an abnormally high affinity?”
Gertrude was the one who actually came to my aid. “He speaks sense my dear. The worst that he may suffer are some residual fading nightmares and a burned pathway to darkness. Haha, not a bad outcome considering all that he has already accomplished.”
*uuuhhaaaa* With an intake and exhalation of a resigned breath, Victoria yielded to our joint request. “Very well, I too can see where this might be beneficial regardless of the outcome.” Looking at me with concerned eyes she added. “I just don’t like to see my apprentice suffer more than he has to.”
“Just think of the additional excuse you’d have to see Monroe again.” I cajoled with her.
“Hahaha! Too right!” She exclaimed with her eyebrows arching in mock abandon and delight. "Let’s get started then on inducing your nightmares." A twinkle in her eye at her appreciation of my joke, almost made me laugh before she disappeared to brew up my boosted darkness potion.
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Returning after a few short minutes, her right hand was somewhat obscured by the permeating darkness within the vial she held. Maybe because it was contrasted by the waning light of day and had three stones, but the special effects appeared more notable than its counterpart made from light stones.
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Handing me the finished product, I looked on at a potion that never in my mundane and mortal life would I consider consuming such a thing. It’d be great for a Halloween prop for sure. . ., but a beverage?
It was actually good timing and auspicious that the shadows of the evening were growing. With no further concern, I tipped back the tube and drank the contents of darkness.
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An odd kind of chill wormed its way down my throat and into my stomach. It wasn’t nearly as cold as the ice stone, and yet . . . it held something different within its essence. The cold fingers of shadow that stretched across the patio drew ever closer at an impossible pace in order to encompass me.
Too soon, I was embraced within a field of ever-changing shadows. I could neither see nor hear Victoria or Gertrude beside me. Shouting out, I heard the abruptly ending volume of my cry, like a whisper disappearing into a negative decibel room.
The feeling of hard stone beneath me disappeared last as I was fully swallowed up in an expansive abyss.
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As I lay there, no! As I existed within the darkness, there was no sense of touch, taste, sight, or any other sense by which I could think of.
Simply existing there among the dark, I felt a distinct loneliness swell up within me. As a far spectrum introvert, I was no stranger to being alone as it was often my solace after an exhausting day of interactions with others at school or work. However, even I, in my solitude, experience occasional heart tearing episodes of loneliness. It most often comes when I discover something beautiful or powerful that I would wish to share with another, and to see their shared appreciation and joy for having experienced it with me. Far too often that desire of mine to share was left unfulfilled as I had neither the social connections, nor a close knit group or precious individual with which to unburden myself. From that loneliness, which in this moment became agonal, I began to feel despair.
Fear began needling its way into me as I lay adrift within this never-ending expanse of nothingness. Fear of being alone, and fear of not being alone. Nightmares I had thought long since repressed or eradicated began emerging from the confines of my mind. A hint of movement shone out of the corner my of black infested sight.
I reflexively flinched back, but I honestly couldn’t tell if I had really moved. Swirls of different toned shadows began taking on the essence of formless creatures. My heart grew cold as I tried to close my eyes against these invading entities.
However, it was all for naught. . .
Time passed for who knows how long, and this distinct lack of concrete stimulus began weighing me down.
I felt my psyche begin to crumble beneath the onslaught of the unknown and unseen. My sense of self, being already suppressed to an unimaginable degree, began fracturing and fading within the turbulent abyss.
I longed for the light, and I longed to see or even feel and touch. But I was bereft of all that which might bring me a semblance of solace.
Regret filled me as recalled the genuine concern of my teacher and master. She was right to caution me against taking on this trial, especially with a concentrated potion. The powers of the other potions appeared to instill symptoms upon me, drawing upon the elements from the outside. However, this potion drew from within, and inside of me was a deep darkness that I was too afraid to face. How could I have known that there was still so much fear hidden within me ready to be dredged out?
The pall of silence quieted the beating of my heart and stilled my breathe. I knew not if I was alive. Did I pass-on inside of the capsule and lose touch with all life? Was this it? Was I on the way to ceasing to exist?
The long fingers of impending death drew tightly over me and compressed me into an ever-smaller form.
Until.
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Huh . . . I felt something . . . push back?
A feeble tendril of hope sparked within me at this vague sense of resistance. What was it and how did it happen? These thoughts passed like a black wind unseen in the night, . . . but they existed, nonetheless. Felt on a deep level so far down that only now that I had reached rock bottom were they able to be noticed.
I reached out to the unseen spark of hope and drew upon it.
Warmth. . . it filled me! Followed by a grainy touch, then slithering wetness, and fragile air. Feelings that I had thought lost passed through me. . . And last of all, something that I feared I would never see again.
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Light!!
It started off as a faint glow, hardly discernable in the massing field of darkness which surrounded me. But as I focused and brought my mind to bare, I felt it grow and magnify itself.
Focusing inward, I felt soul restoring relief accompanied by a sense of awe.
Each of the elements that I had assimilated prior to this, now could be seen in their distinct forms within this small sphere of light. Earth lay low as an ephemeral foundation, while the other elements each created a home for themselves within, above, and below the firmament, reminiscent of a small world.
Was this inside of me?!?
A memory of an interview with a world-renowned psychologist by the name of Jordan Peterson who passed on before my time, surfaced in my mind at my current situation. It involved a question and challenge to him in the form of an old saying. His host posed to him a variation of a quote from Nietzsche which stated, “And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
I believe the intended interpretation of that quote was that when you gaze voluntarily or involuntarily into the deeper aspects of the world to see the darkness and depravity, that those same traits could be unintentionally instilled upon you for daring to gaze upon them. It was like being stained by a puddle of ink when you dared to sit in the middle of it. Jordan Peterson argued that the more voluntarily it is that you gaze into the abyss the more transformative it is. (Whether that transformation was beneficial or not depended on other factors.) He also stated that when you are involuntarily or forcefully made to stare into the abyss that it can be terribly destructive, even to the point of death.
I chose to look into this abyss! And I would not allow myself to be transformed for the worse, as such can happen too often for those unprepared who stared into its depths.
A shudder came over the small world inside of me, as if reflecting my inner spoken conviction. I watched in real time as it swelled slightly larger than before, further rebuffing the encroaching darkness.
As I continued to watch, the dark tendrils began to lose their adhesion to my form, and they began to retreat.
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