There lives a private darkness, slumbering mostly these days, but by no means defanged as yet. Curled up somewhere at the base of things, I can hear him snore most days when the wind does not howl and nobody screams.
Yet, his arsenal remains well stocked with well-cared for and beautifully preserved weapons and lures, shiny in their eager working order.
It used to be that the tiniest breach in my armor stirred him to instant violence and I, only too happy to comply, would exact his lusts upon the world.
These days it takes a little more to wake him, but wake he does, still, one way or another, and when he does, as if annoyed at being disturbed in the autumn of his mission, he wreaks vengeance with, yes, a vengeance.
Viewed through the eyes of the uncomprehending alien, no human behavior looms more mysterious than the sexual act. Why (the poor visitor grapples with his reason) would two perfectly normal-seeming humans shed their protective clothing and start hurting each other in the nude, she with her legs spread apart and he with that odd little shaft of his reaching skyward.
For surely they are hurting each other judging by those little yelps and moans and shrieks and sometimes outright screams. Sometimes they cry, too. These two nice humans, so reasonable and well-behaved not an hour ago, now possessed—yes, that is the conclusion he arrives at—possessed by what manor of daemon he cannot conceive.
Yes, when he sees them a little later, both a little flushed, she is smiling, he talks about nothing in particular, and both seemed restored to their charming normal, de-daemonized selves.
What is our visiting galactic friend to make of this?
There lives a light, more and more awake these days, that gives me the eyes of a visiting alien.
One day it told me the fable of the leper and his sores.
Once upon a time there was a leper whose sores itched so badly that no amount of rubbing or scratching with fingers, nails, sticks, rocks would still the terrible, terrible itch.
Sores that itched so badly that the only thing that would still it (or, rather, out-shout it) was the searing of burning ember.
And so, desperate to gain relief from the tormenting itch, the leper would with tongs or fingers reach into the dying fire and bring out a glowing ember, to then press it into the sore, sizzling and searing the rotted flesh into silence.
Into short-lived silence.
For soon the itch, momentarily chased into submission would rise again, now alongside the pain of deep burning to freshly assault the leper in hungry unison, forcing him to the ground in anguish and fresh despair.
And he knew this all along, the leper. He knew that the embered relief would last no more than a breath or two, to then die an even more tormenting death. Still, he would reach for the ember, again and again, for that one breath of anguish gone.
And, says my light, this is what the strange humans do whenever they shed their protective clothing and hurt each other: they press glowing embers into the insatiable need of itching sores.
My darkness wants to hear none of this. Fable, he says. Fantasy. Not in the least true. But he would say this, would he not? for he wants me to reach again into the fire and bring out, with tongs or fingers, a glowing coal and press it into my itching sores.
There lives a path, whispered and whispering the way away from sores and greed and stilling itches at all costs. It takes a soft wind to bring it, a good ear to hear it, a heart truly yearning for peace to listen, and a mind tired of mirrors within mirrors within deceiving mirrors to embrace it.
And I have finally, after much searching and I don’t know how many lives, found that path, and set my feet upon it, to find each step lighter than the one before it.