The lights burning in the sky gave me second thought of my actions yet somehow it has to be done. Flashing left and right through the dark mass of clouds, they beckon my presence and taunt my soul, those energies of the light. My thoughts turn sullenly to the ones behind me as I face the perilous downfall…a thousand fathoms away. They would never understand if I did not step up to my plate. Now here I am, waiting for the sky to strike, on one lonely night and as all stared in awe. “Come back from there, man, you crazy!” One bystander allowed his voice to echo in the bellows of the chaos of light before me. Standing on the edge of this cliff shifted a thousand memories and forced them into echoes across a past now gone. Now I stand with life regretted and the shiver of cold from my dark heart, begging to learn how to feel. Yet, now it is too late; my decision is made and it is done. “What the heck are you doing? Come back this instant!” Another attempted to grab my attention, and for once, it awakens. I looked back slowly at her dark, shiny eyes that still glowed under the blanket of the dark. I simply gave her a smirk over my shoulder and turned away, to view my nightmares once more. The time is near and I am ready…for the sky to strike…

She leaped forward and breached the wall of people forming an aura of caution from me. She continues to creep closer and closer, until I stop her with my indirect mutters. She stops for she hears them and she now listens… “ I am waiting…on this mountaintop…yea for once the sky will strike…” I directed my attention to her, “ For you my apology is lost…upon the nightmares you granted me…gone to ashes in the crash of light…I will be back to let you see…who I am…what I am meant to be…my story” I see nothing but light…burning within…wounds aren’t healed…the dark heart remains. The sky has opened…what was night is now like day. What was dark is revealed in the consuming light…again yea again I am taken…woe above my soul…he will strike me…

-3 months later-

“All that’s left is this book…his journal he got for his birthday…I don’t know why he did what he did but…” She began to cry. Tony steps up and addresses Mina, “Come on, we can’t live like this forever…he is gone…I miss him too, I know there’s just now much to say.” Mina looks at him in a sense of dire horror, then gently her expressions calmed into an undefined face that holds no expression or weakness. She stands and looks out the window asking herself “why?” They both trudged out my room and skip down the stair without words. As they leave the house, Mina still holds my journal in her hand. They stop and look at it in a bit of odd wonder then just smile and nodded to each other. Their roads split and they both took different paths.

Mina holding the book began to review its contents on her way home…she never knew…me…in those days.

Chapter I: Origins of the Dark Heart

(Mina’s Perspective)

Looking through the contents I began to notice that he was a rather different character. I believed him to be rather scary; seeing him alone all the time. With what I heard from friends, I thought it was best to keep my distance. Something in him always caught my eye, and for a time we were good friends, yet after that one summer when he really started to spook me out, he changed. He was trying somehow constantly to regain what he lost…but I left him desperate. I always wanted things to be what they were once before…he was always so kind, yet scared…scared to make the wrong move even I couldn’t see. Maybe something could have happened…but I never got the chance... the chance to really what happened. I view the scenery in the dark, rainy hue of the atmosphere…just like on that day…but a bit brighter, somehow signaling that it’s over…but I know it’s not. It cannot be.

My eyes drifted to the relieved skies and a pulse of anger rushed through me. “How could you be so peaceful in times like this?” Stepping out of the car, I gazed in pain at the relentless skies, shifting with winds of a subtle torment waiting to unleash its power upon those who I hold close. Thinking out of my indignation, my reason returned to me. My steps no longer lingered with the delay of disturbed grief. With something, that close to you happening it is no longer the things you would find in a horror film or book; it is real…it’s in my hands! My room was quiet across the hall and when I was in it, the silence began to send the shivers of fear across my body. I laid the book on my desk and sat for a second, soaking in the silence as it so freely flew by me. The book held textures of green gripped all over it with designs of roots and vines tangled in proportion of a spiral from the middle. The values of green gave a physical texture that allowed an unexplained, repulsive fear to emanate from it, yet I believed entirely that nothing could happen beyond reason, for it is just a journal. I opened the first page and found a picture of a man sitting on a chair with a dark stare in his eyes, full in thought, and disturbed within. It may have been something he drew to resemble himself. Then my fingers glided to some lettering on the top as my eyes followed and stopping immediately at words my vision squinted upon. There were words there visibly impossible to miss and others that would fail a first glance, yet nothing too small. Overall, it was all in proportion with itself and nothing in it was left incomplete. I began to read the introduction given, “Hear me, as I pray, of the Chaos that haunts me so.” The words somehow beckoned me to view the picture again, yet I resisted and scrolled down to scrutinize the little words. As I read, questions struck me as I realized it was not complete.

My words never heard, my prayer never answered…again I wait…in my pain, to view the echoes of useless life triumph the halls of falsehood again. Am I not who I am, the purpose of a being in life, made to serve, lost forever in this road of life. Yet, upon this road, I am chosen to be…the lightni-

The words are cut and the ink trails off to the side. As I followed it, I noticed that before the trailing was never there at first. I looked around anxiously to see if I was holding a pen while I read, yet I there was no such utensil within my room at that could flaw the words like so now. I looked under the desk to if I dropped it unconsciously. Yet I found nothing, and as I returned to my reading, I noticed the picture changed. Struck with terror I looked at the man in the chair, no longer looking into the distance. His eyes gleamed red staring at me instead. I fell back and hit the floor with the chair following me down. The loud crash awakened my fear and I pulled myself back to the bed. The book was closed and my chair was lying to the side…all was now calm as my mind returned to me. I stood up to see the cover’s textures. My hand quaked as I dared to touch it; I felt my heart beating before my will is complete and I laid my hand forcefully upon it with success. Calm again, I ventured to go further. The cover now lay open and the first page was normal as it was before, in the beginning. Then the thoughts ran through my mind as I stepped back into relief and rested upon the supports of my mirror. I stared at it and wondered, “How will the rest of the rest of the pages be like?”

The next day was a weird one…the whole page deal I figured to be some kind of dream that had no possible connection to reality; at least this is what I kept telling myself. It was rather disturbing to see the shadow he leaves from the Light, yet I believed there were the reasons for this inside the book. I woke up to a peaceful Saturday with a horrible twist of bewilderment. Yet I concluded the fear was not real so I dismissed the memories in that hour. I decided to go to the park for the noon since it was a nice cool day outside. Stepping out to the sidewalk, I paused for a second’s worth of thought and continued on to the park.

The silence drew me in as I sat comfortably on the bench. Staring at the clouds as they slowly moved across the bright white of sky, words of a distant inspiration that brought the lyrics to thought. In the melody, my mind caressed a kind of warm hope for the strange events at hand. Suddenly as my eyes opened, I remembered I had his book with me. Pulling it out of my coat, I held it before me. Just before I began to open it, I took a long stare at the designs. “Trapped under vines I stare in agony…?” a song from long ago was somewhat heavy compared to most that I hear now. That was the only lyric I remember…

Unraveling the introduction, now innocent of surprise, I turned the page and a blur of words; words that held meaning in a puzzle deciphered only by a mind like his…a dark, strange mind. I skipped down to plain English and read the entry near the bottom of the page.

None can explain life in a single word; there is just so much to understand. Yet, there is so little to say of a life like this. To fight, to win, to lose, to die…I somehow just cannot find peace and purpose to mend the wounds I have created…yet there is always hope as there is for me. Chaos greets me with the echo of pain following and sin takes my throne meant for God. What do I do in this life of the two-faced falsehood? Well I will explain…

I kept on reading and all focus was on the words he had to say… “I hear you…” I said to myself as his plea is held out to me from his book. My concentration led to what I read in the “horror story” of his life or so he portrays it so. The simple and minor things that happen to him seem normal and easy to most…yet in his perspective, it is a rather different world.

The park lies here as a getaway to a peaceful life found in all seasons and all times. Even in the bitter cold, there is still warmth. The barren trees still held life and the faded colors of white in the sky above me left the impression of calm all around me. With these wide eyes, I see his past and forever on I wish I could go back. My eyes began to grow a bit tired the air was getting a bit hasty with the wind chill. Standing up I closed the journal and looked about. Something was not the same now. The clouds moved in a more agitated mood, signifying a disturbance. Looking side-to-side, I searched at first instance to see what could be wrong, and yet nothing came up. My cloak begins to flutter as the wind blows a bit harder. Just as I begin walking off, fending the wind away from my face, someone’s or something’s presence stopped me in my steps. I carefully begin to turn about to reveal what force has disrupted my conscience so much. My courage then peaked as my back was half-turned and I immediately stepped forward to face it. There was a man sitting on the bench with a dark cloak that behaved like water as it moved about to settle upon the wooden planks. Staring out into the distance, the man remained silent as I did in the awkward moment. There was an aura of dead silence about him and every second felt like an eternity as that silence overcame the peace that once was. Then the still silence was broken and he began to rise from the bench with the robes following him in command smoothly. I began to step back in fear and he moved faster. Just before I took off in a sprint, he stopped and pulled his hood down. I looked at him and the bare sense of relief came over me.

“You scared the crap out of me, Joseph! What the hell are you doing here?”

“Hah, sis, You really took a scare out of that didn’t you!” My brother laughed hysterically. “What is up with you and this book? You’ve been all to yourself lately with all this crap about this guy no one cares about anymore!”

“Look, Joe, this is not some joke, okay. And, there are several people care about him. I…”

“Well, for your information, he’s gone! He left and is never coming back, ya! So forget it…you’re creeping us out. Drop this before you do something stupid.”

“You don’t care if he’s still alive…if he’s in pain…he’s not who any of us thought he was! He left this…behind…for a reason…”

The silence grew solemn as Joseph began to realize the real situation. He began to regret his insensitivity to all of it then as I stared down to the rigid cold of the concrete.

“Hey…I’m sorry…I didn’t think it was like that…I thought he ran away or something… What really happened that day? All I hear is crap from a bunch of people trying to forget it.”

“…Well…” I shivered as I recalled the memory of his disappearance. “…who I am…what I am meant to be…my story …”

The silence began to confuse Joseph, “And?”

“There’s not much to say okay…some people really want to forget that he was like that…”

“Well…okay sis’…if it does bother you, I won’t bug ya…” My brother turned about in the shivers of a bit of guilty regret, “I’m gonna be at the house so you know where I am if Mom calls you up. Someone will find him, trust me.” With that, he walked off leaving a smile on my face. Yet something still pressed my thought, “what if he was really trying to be heard and he really was not trying to aim for anything along the lines of suicide…What was he trying to do? He has to be alive somewhere…trapped in this realm or the next; somehow, he is still very alive if he is trying to open our eyes to his life. A shaken mind… something that broke his spirit and gave him no choice…yet he still speaks through rather supernatural means. Maybe not, yet more so of an innocent intent...why did he say his apology is lost for me?” I said these things to myself in the cool October wind before the truth opened my eyes. From what I have known, from what I have seen, he has the broken heart searching to feel complete.

“If they could just teach this dark heart to feel…” The words whispered into my ear through a gentle breeze. The words were clear to hear yet they flowed with the wind so easily. I followed the breeze with my eyes as it glided by me.

For sure, I knew he was looking back at me.