A CERTAIN DARKNESS

by:Joshua

(Viewer Discretion is Advised)

It was time to wake up and once again he had a splitting headache; like a hangover. The past few months had been hell for our protagonist. Every time he woke up with a headache, something bad would’ve happened. Not knowing why this was happening was killing him on the inside, as if something was eating him from within, consuming his soul, slowly, until nothing was left to devour. He had no strength left to get out of bed, knowing that something would be waiting for him, something that would finally break him and his mind. Somehow, he convinced himself to get out of bed and get dressed for work, his body trembling in fear. Since it was a chilly morning, he decided to wear his long coat. When he put his hands in the pocket of the coat, he found a list of names scribbled on a paper, names of people he knew, crossed out in red. He had tried to get rid of that list many times before but he couldn’t seem to do so. Holding the list in his hand, he did not know who it was this time, the fear of knowing someone he knew would be no more, maybe living in denial would bring them back or make it seem like that they never went away.

As he opened his front door and walked into the lobby of his old and gloomy building, he saw the corpse of his landlord being taken away, covered in blood, eyes gouged out and fingers cut off. He saw the cops talking to his neighbor, a college girl, in her final year, about to graduate. She had beautiful golden hair and brown eyes that complimented her smile very well. But today she seemed scared, shook to her core, her hair was a mess, probably bed hair, and she was shivering. Was it the cold? Or was it the sight of the old man’s corpse? I couldn’t tell

A detective noticed our protagonist and walked up to him and informed him about the situation and asked him a few general questions, if he saw anyone or anything suspicious, about his whereabouts, and if he had heard anything the previous night. He calmly answered the questions and proceeded to go to work, on the inside he was terrified and wondered if his landlord’s name was on that list. As he got on the 10 AM train, he slowly pulled out the list and mustered up whatever mental strength he could find, and opened the list. Right there, on the eleventh number, he saw the name of his landlord, scratched off with red ink, or was it blood… The train’s brakes were suddenly applied and the screeching sound that followed only amplified his headache. At that moment he heard a voice in his head saying that the landlord deserved it, that justice had been done. He immediately started sweating and became anxious.

(Flashback to the previous evening when he was returning from work and walked into the lobby of his drab building.)

He saw his neighbor being cornered by the old landlord, trying to take advantage of the poor girl. As soon as the landlord noticed him, he backed off and his neighbor rushed into her apartment while sobbing. The landlord made a face that showed his displeasure at our protagonist and slowly walked away while rolling his eyes. Our protagonist then went to check on her and comforted her, but there was nothing he could say that would turn back time. He heard her whisper under her breath that she wished the old man would die a gruesome death. This triggered something inside him, something dark, was it the voice in his head or was something darker at play here. His head suddenly started aching and he went to bed.

Right as the clock struck 3 in the morning, he woke up, put on his long coat and picked up some stuff, few rags, a bucket, some tools, and calmly made his way to the landlord’s house. Fortunately, the old man lived alone, his wife had passed away 13 years ago and his children despised him. He knocked on the old man’s door. After a minute the door creaked open and the old man’s shriveled up silhouette was seen against the streetlight coming from the window behind him. He immediately knocked him out with a hammer on the head and dragged him inside and closed the door behind him. He tied him up on a chair and stuffed his mouth and tied it with a piece of cloth. He woke him up with a splash of water and whispered in his ear about what he was going to do to him, and smirked under the flickering light. He cut off his fingers slowly, one at a time, showing the old man the fate that awaited him and kept going until all his fingers were gone. Picking up a spoon from the kitchen, he made his way towards the old man’s eyes and gouged one of them out. The muffled scream, making him more eager to remove the other one out. Eventually, the screaming stopped and he cut his jugular vein and let him bleed to death. He collected all his tools and made his way back to his apartment, trying not to leave any evidence behind. He immediately made a list and scribbled a few names and crossed them out with the blood of the old man and slipped it in the coat pocket and went to bed after getting rid of any biological evidence he could find.

(Back in the present)

His sweating had stopped and he was as calm as he could be. The train reached the last stop and he made his way onto the platform. The train had stopped at a small town on the outskirts of the city. He made his way to a nearby bridge and sat on the bench that was next to it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a gun. He put the gun against the side of his head and whispered under his breath, “Justice has been done” and pulled the trigger, killing the twelfth and thirteenth person…