Silence.

It always starts with the silence.

My mind lives for the silence, my demons survive off it. Only when my surroundings are quieter than my mind, does the evil emerge. It is in the silences that my mind is given the chance to wander; the chance to devour my courage and chew on my consciousness. It is in the silences that my deepest and darkest fears emerge to the surface – like diseased slime.

It’s in these silences that I am truly myself; because only the darkness can see me, and darkness is blind. The masks I wear sink and the pretenses that I bear dissipate. It leaves me feeling exposed, naked. My only companions are the demons I have suppressed during the noise of life; but in the silence I cannot control them. They run ominously and recklessly through the hollow corridors of my consciousness. They scream and shout. Their haunted and twisted rants echo through my entire being, shaking my existence from the core.

In these moments I am paralysed as if I’m a bare seed in the black gloved hands of an omnipotent phantasm of my own creation; a beast so powerful, so dark it dare not show itself to others. Not because it is fearful, but because my darkness is most harmful to me, not others.

The only way to beat the blackness is to succumb to it; to let it take over every inch of my being. That’s the only way I can still convince myself I am in control, because I have the choice to give in. And through the darkness can I only find peace… Without the darkness there wouldn’t be hope and without hope there wouldn’t be goodness.

How then can I be blamed for my sins? It is the darkness. The black gloves of power make me do it. I have no choice.

Neither do you.