The Dark Within
She buckled under the excitement of an impending oblivion, making her disappear like burning paper. The fear and excitement of the night roosted ominously, like bats waiting for their flight.
For the past few nights, there had been a pattern of images alien to her that walked in her dreams. Images of death and torture trampled her sleep. Nightmares where she was complicit in causing devastating harms. She woke up with a guilt that was hemmed to the world she inhabited and what she thought was its expectation of her.
She would wake with deep despair, as if returning to something unreal and fake. It was a month since these dreams had started and she now felt its presence fully consuming her, capturing her mind and ruling her body, like a dangerous yet exciting guest. She did not call them nightmares as they did not frighten her, but in its strange way resuscitated her boredom.
She desired and feared them, like an illicit lover.
Where did they come from? There was nothing in these dreams that had even a faint resemblance to her life. Anonymity had been her shelter . She had always chosen to walk away than contest or collide. There were no grand schemes or expectations. Yet now these dreams filled her with an ambition. She was possessed by the desire to control and claim . To have the power over others and make them notice her, even fear and revere her for her power to destroy them, this thought and even more that it was possible, it excited her immensely.
If our dreams are the the doors to transit across time and between worlds, and carry within them our past and the future, these nightmares were ‘Her’, in another life, another consciousness, another spatial truth. This another self of hers was passing to her the dangerous gift of hate and recklessness.
In this transition lay the foundation of transference and legacy. And possibilities of a new her - like a country foreign, exciting and waiting.
The future carrier of this hateful power would be her and it would be her duty to inhabit and carry forward this work of darkness; and feast on it. She was thrilled. To be vengeful and relish the grotesqueness headiness of absolute unaccounted power filled her with an anticipated excitement. Here was the thrill of the unknown, in its darkest vile form.
There was no fear, no hesitation, no guilt. What fueled and anchored her movement was the seduction of absolute power. In this variant self, she would be free from the burden to be nice and always do the right thing. Not till these dreams occurred where she was fully free of any ‘good’ moral imperatives, had she realized how difficult a life it had been for her. How burdensome, to always want to be accepted. To tame her behaviour and thought, to the markers of conformity.
She was liberated now from the clutches of moral goodness. This possibilities of this dark world had her interest, admiration and even desire, like the attractive stranger on a long lonely road. No reason to fear this path any more. There was never much guilt, now there will be no shame.
