At Dark, I Become Loathsome

Children lose their innocence when they realize that adults can hurt them,

Christianity has made sycophants of most of us—lobotomized zombies who will suckle at any available teat even if it’s leaking lighter fluid and we’re holding a torch.

You see, when we begin our lives in this world, we begin as creators. We are constantly building. Our lives are spent creating, inventing, designing. I always knew I was building something, starting when I was very little. I only wish I had known it was a grave. My grave.

The world is nothing more than a carnivorous plant that devours the things that are the softest and most delicate.

What I once thought might bring me a modicum of comfort and release has now polluted me, making me nothing more than unusable goods.

But though humanity doesn’t escape us when it’s dark out, I’ve learned that human decency only exists when it’s convenient.

That's how I've come to regard my relationship with life. I'm far more invested in misery, heartache, and despair than in life itself or the actual act of death. There's something decidedly divine about wallowing in the depths of despair, in the throes of melancholy—it's holy sacred. Death is the final act and cannot be undone. Despair and misery, however, can ferry you to the most consecrated of places within the confines of your mind.

That's when the little girl finally answered. "Heaven is a dark room," she said. "There's nothing for us there." That's the only reason I haven't done anything substantial to end things permanently for myself. Because like that child, I know that there's nothing beyond this imitation of life. There's no hope of seeing my beloved wife or son ever again. The thoughts bend into me like fishing hooks, especially at nighttime. At dark, I become loathsome.

At night, I become guilty of crimes I haven’t committed, much less even contemplated. I become a caricature of my former self— a creature to be persecuted, loathed, reviled, detested. At nighttime, I’m something to be tortured until condemned— someone completely and forever misunderstood.

There’s something decidedly divine about wallowing in the depths of despair, in the throes of melancholy—it’s holy, sacred. Death is the final act and cannot be undone. Despair and misery, however, can ferry you to the most consecrated of places within the confines of your mind.

What’s the point of pretending that we’re being carried through the universe by the giant hand of some caring, compassionate deity? We’re not, and there is no point.

I feel as though I exist in some awful state of purgatory, trapped between both sexes.

That’s when the little girl finally answered. “Heaven is a dark room,” she said. “There’s nothing for us there.

What’s the point of carrying on when I know it’s futile? There’s nothing for me here. Perhaps there once was. But not anymore.

Still, there’s a part of me that wonders how I might feel if I turned everyone and everything away until I was completely alone with my thoughts as my only companions.

I can’t help but wonder if she thinks I want to fuck her. I don’t.

I think people should remain protected when nighttime approaches, almost as if twilight were a cancer that could rot us away until we were threadbare, tattered, and broken things, never to be repaired again.

The Christian Bible is nothing more than a book of fairy tales written by clerics and other so-called holy men who might have found success today in the art form of speculative fiction.

That's a thing people don't talk about enough - that there are people who will judge even the way you mourn your loved ones.

I’ve learned that human decency only exists when it’s convenient. The rest of the time, we’re feral creatures tirelessly spinning against the whitewater current of rapids bearing us down and carrying us toward an infinite black sea.