This are the first three paragraphs from my first short story, which was written in two chunks over the space of six months. I was basically testing the water, trying my hand at putting a thought into fiction. The story (3000 words) explores the rationality of nyctophobia (the fear of the dark). This is copyrighted 2005, please leave a comment if you want the rest.
We are taught from an early age that the darkness is simply a lack of light. A shadow is the place where the light cannot see. The world cools when the light departs, and warms when it comes again. It wasn’t always like this, before the light, the earth was void and without form and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Then the light came and captured the darkness in its brilliant cage, forcing it into eternal submission. But light is easily distracted, and chases itself around the world, like a dog playing rabbit with its tail.
It was dark outside, it had been dark when Charlie had left earlier in the day, and it was dark again now. There’s something unusual about only breathing the night’s air - something unnatural. The quite of night brings all the sounds to the fore; they’re brighter, more distinct. Under the orange glow from the sulphur streetlights, the stone bricks that made up the outer walls of the terrace took on a deep, almost moist texture. The shadows were long and thick and bled into the pavement. The thin strip of grass by the road showed nothing of the dead breeze that drifted by, floating endlessly onwards. A moth, that was little more than a blur, circled upwards towards the street light, his street light. The tiny creature filled the cone of musty light with its little dance.
Charlie picked the key out of his pocket, and slid it into the slot. He turned it slowly, the click propagating through the air with a resonance that briefly filled the terrace and then ceased just as quickly. When the silence returned, Charlie realised that he wasn’t the only one in this alien environment, but that someone else was making waves in the quiet. Someone else a fraction more tense in the sulphur night. Someone else.
...
We are taught from an early age that the darkness is simply a lack of light. A shadow is the place where the light cannot see. The world cools when the light departs, and warms when it comes again. It wasn’t always like this, before the light, the earth was void and without form and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Then the light came and captured the darkness in its brilliant cage, forcing it into eternal submission. But light is easily distracted, and chases itself around the world, like a dog playing rabbit with its tail.
It was dark outside, it had been dark when Charlie had left earlier in the day, and it was dark again now. There’s something unusual about only breathing the night’s air - something unnatural. The quite of night brings all the sounds to the fore; they’re brighter, more distinct. Under the orange glow from the sulphur streetlights, the stone bricks that made up the outer walls of the terrace took on a deep, almost moist texture. The shadows were long and thick and bled into the pavement. The thin strip of grass by the road showed nothing of the dead breeze that drifted by, floating endlessly onwards. A moth, that was little more than a blur, circled upwards towards the street light, his street light. The tiny creature filled the cone of musty light with its little dance.
Charlie picked the key out of his pocket, and slid it into the slot. He turned it slowly, the click propagating through the air with a resonance that briefly filled the terrace and then ceased just as quickly. When the silence returned, Charlie realised that he wasn’t the only one in this alien environment, but that someone else was making waves in the quiet. Someone else a fraction more tense in the sulphur night. Someone else.
...
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