It was past midnight. I was sitting on one of the half-broken benches in this deserted alley. Not a soul, but for me, was to be found in this abandoned place. I was sitting with my legs crossed and stroking the fringes falling over my forehead when I heard a deep voice echo behind me. The voice would have scared the life out of any person sitting here alone, but me, because my imaginative mind realized that this voice just didn’t emerge out of nowhere; rather, it crept up my mind and whispered into my ears, “Are you afraid of the dark?”
I sat still for a while. I don’t know how a normal person would have reacted to this question, but, an evil smile slid across my burnt face. I looked behind me in the direction of the voice and called out boldly, “No.”
The Voice of the Dark must have been taken aback at this reply because it took some time to get composed before asking me yet again, “Aren’t you afraid of the dark?”
Keeping my calm, this time, I whispered back to the Voice of the Dark in a soothing tone, “No, I’m not.”
“Why? ” came the thundering peel from behind me.
I had perhaps wanted to be asked this very question since time immemorial. I didn’t need to ponder over this simple question for a long time as would any other person have done. My quivering lips formed a pattern of their own even without my realization. From deep inside of me, deep down from the core of my sub conscience, an angelic voice whispered back,
“I have stayed both in the hours of the broad daylight and the hours of the ghostly darkness.
The daylight has always judged me by my outward ugliness while the darkness, unable to see my tattered face, has judged me by my inner beauty.
The daylight has constricted my imagination by presenting a painted picture before me while the darkness has laid out its jet black canvas for my imagination to make it look stunning with the unseen colors.
The daylight has made me feel lonely amidst the chattering laughter that has always excluded me from the merry conversations while the dark has helped me analyze my happiness by finding peace through introspection during embracing my loneliness.
The daylight has made me helpless with its enormous trouble and over-confident with the trivial ongoing. By presenting the obvious obstacle along with the expected victory or defeat, the daylight has taken away my zeal to fight back. However, the night has thrown unknown challenges at me and let my courage and my determination decide my fate. It has taught me what it feels like to fight the unknown and the unseen. It has taught me to hide my strength as my ultimate weapon and use my weakness as my ultimate strength.
So, in one sentence, the darkness has prepared me for the life ahead.”
The Voice of the Darkness stayed numb. A deep sense of remorse and regret overpowered it. It thought that it had pushed me into the painful core in which it itself was agonizing.
Right then, my lips quivered once again, and, this time, it got transformed into an angelic smile and whispered to the Voice of the Dark,
“Those who had never been out of the broad daylight into the pitch darkness don’t know how beautiful the dark is. ”
The Voice of the Dark stood dumbstruck with a tear rolling down its unseen eyes…
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