A Boy Called Darkness

CW: Mental health issues

The circumstances under which I met Darkness are as strange as the way through which he acquired his nickname. 

On a rainy spring day, I was walking with my friend Steve through the park, looking for a place where we could play our guitars. We walked until the park slowly became a forest. The rain intensified so we found a dry spot, a fallen tree trunk sheltered by the leaves of alder trees. To the right of me, somewhere behind the wild bushes, a quiet and unlit rugby field was covered in droplets of rain. 

Steve began playing his song, In our Town, No One’s Dancing. His song speaks the truth since nobody dances in the city of Hermann. They just shake stiffly like the trees throwing shade and shelter around us. His song was supposed to break this dance curse.

I began playing around with the chords of Steve’s song, strumming them on the guitar playfully when a musical light bulb illuminated in my mind like the restless glow of a disco ball. 

“Hey, Steve! These chords… they’re the same as Careless Whisper.” 

A smile overtook his face. We began to joyfully jam out to George Michael’s tune. The words ‘I’m never gonna dance again’ produced by my voice which gets pretty raspy when I try to hit high notes, a raspiness which was augmented by the beer and the storm’s wind, faded into the cool and lonesome air. 

After repeating the chorus a couple of times, we ended the song on the same chord when suddenly, our ears were startled by the applause and screams of a far away audience. We didn’t know what they were cheering for. It didn’t make any sense yet so we ignored the invisible crowd and sang something else. 

A young man with green eyes and curly hair appeared from a dark trail and glanced toward the rugby field in the distance. His gaze was piercing and his mind elsewhere. 

“You guys know how I can get to that rugby field?”

“There’s a hole in the fence if you go that way,” I said, referring to a known road through the park.

“I heard there’s another way,” he responded and disappeared into the cluster of bushes and the tree branches. It looked as if he was searching for someone. 

As the darkness grew, Steve and I decided to go home. We packed our stuff and headed toward the red bicycle path which spirals through the entire park and points toward our homes. But something stopped Steve. He kept staring at the bushes where the weird passerby vanished. We followed his footsteps and discovered a soaked and muddy trail which led to the rugby field. I suddenly felt as if my legs were magnetic and frenziedly drawn to this field. An open gate made of corroded metal welcomed us onto the field.

As we started tip-toeing through the middle of the field, we spotted a crowd of people sitting on stadium benches. They saw us too and began clapping and cheering. We stared dumbfoundedly at each other. Perhaps they heard us playing in the woods after all. 

“What should we do? Should we… go there,” I asked and felt as if between the crowd and myself there was a chasm of fear and distance. Yet, anxiety aside, I understood the magical significance of the moment. I’d later tell Steve that it all felt too staged. There we were singing somewhere in the feral part of the park to and for ourselves. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us, an audience already seated at the main stage was awaiting our performance. Leaving what was essentially backstage, we followed the left wing of the theater veiled as a dirt trail and found ourselves upstage left, plunged into a show which came to light when the hidden spectators unveiled themselves through an ovation. 

These things happen but if you tell people the stories, they’ll think you’re exaggerating. If life imitates art which imitates life, and cycles of mimicry all point toward each other, isn’t our day-to-day life similar to the stage? 

“I think we should talk to them,” Steve said. He never was an extrovert either but meeting people sometimes made him fearful. And whenever fear knocked on Steve’s door, he opened the door and invited it in for a cup of tea. I, on the other hand, felt like soiling the proverbial pants. I doubted the benevolence of the entire situation. 

“I don’t… know. I’m afraid.” Steve stepped closer, his boots squeaking from the wet grass. 

“We’ll do this together.”

Our footsteps in unison, we inched closer toward the silhouettes eagerly waiting in the darkness. We recognized the mysterious green eyed man who was looking for the trail earlier. There were a bunch of twenty-year-olds with long hair or tattoos or skater clothes or yellow beanies and ripped jeans. One of them had bleached hair and dark eyes. All of his clothes were black. He wore fingerless gloves; they were also black. I felt as if I knew him from somewhere. 

“You guys were awesome,” a woman said as we were getting closer to the concrete bleachers. 

“Yeah, you should play some more,” said someone else. 

As Steve and I reached their seats and could decipher their faces in the dark, we felt a bashfulness brewing around us. 

“Hey,” a girl named Amber said. “You two wanna come play some more songs at Chaos’ shack?”

“Chaos?”

“He’s a friend of ours. He's alright. His house is where we usually hang out. Oh, c’mon, I’d be fun! I haven’t been to a good concert in a long time!”

I really didn’t want to go to some dude named Chaos’ shack. It felt like a risky endeavor. Yet, the more I thought of it, the more intriguing the thing felt and I finally agreed after some reassurance from these people who seemed to me to originate from a parallel universe hidden in plain sight, previously invisible but finally perceptible to my senses.

Thus the group of friends led us through the park and the mud and the light rain. The point of no return was marked by a river which crosses the park. When we reached it, the motley and bizarre cluster of people crossed the river by stepping on a barely flooded concrete beam with grace and habit. One by one they walked and were on the other side before we could even decipher the topography around us. 

They looked back at two stumbling fools who were unsure if they should step onto the concrete bridge. The guy with bleach hair offered a look filled with compassion. Amber and the rest howled like wolves, probably to boost our morale. 

So we stepped onto thin water and walked cautiously on the supposed bridge. The hole in my shoe caused a lot of moist turmoil but after I reached the other side, I knew that the worst part, fear itself, was already behind me. 

Our walk merely continued in a straight line without deviation to neither the left nor the right. The park gave way to the hills that were crossed by a long and steep staircase which led straight into a slanted street. As we were moderately fighting gravity while walking up the street with a sharp angle, Steve told me that he had dreamt this exact moment. 

We crossed a neighborhood through one straight slice, turned left and arrived at a house. It was Chaos’ shack. Looking around I started to understand the origins of his nickname. The sink was filled with broken plates and cups. Shards of glass and broken electronics inhabited the cupboards. The floor had dry mud on it. Someone told me I should check out the bathroom door. All that was left of it was the contour of the bottom metallic rail.

“What happened here,” I asked, imagining a gang of thieves trashing a place to find a hidden stash.

“Chaos. He went a little bit mad and destroyed his stuff,” a thin and tall guy with a taunting Adam’s apple explained. “It’s usual for him. Chaos doesn’t hurt no one but he does destroy things from time to time. Don’t worry, though. He’s getting better.” I couldn’t help but worry, though. His entire house was crumpled into little pieces. 

Chaos came back home and greeted us. He had long black hair and olive eyes amplified by thick glasses. His front teeth were really large and exuded adorableness. We exchanged names and spoke a little bit. I felt as if he had two gazes. A very friendly one which he wore very well. But there was another, a wild one which attempted to hide pain and anger. Chaos appeared very devilish from certain angles, as if he were ready to be consumed by a secret and unexpressed side of him. The Shadow, perhaps. Or maybe I’m imagining these things. Those eyes though, they dazzled and pierced. 

I began to worry about the safety of everyone there, Chaos and Steve and I included. I wondered whether our host was getting treatment and therapy, whether he might hurt someone or himself. I asked myself a substantial sequence of questions until I realized that I did not know how to answer any of them. All of this pondering was getting me nowhere. Throughout the day, things have been unraveling around me and the more I tried to simplify them, the more they eluded me and dissolved into hidden symbolism and haphazard synchronicity. 

After Steve and I became accustomed to the faces of the group and the shards on the floor tiles, we were offered to sit down on a very large Persian rug whose red and yellow shades have been desaturated by relentless waves of dust. And so we sat on this rug and sang all the songs we knew, some of his, some of mine, a ton of covers. I even sang a Johnny Cash song. The crowd enjoyed our improvised show tremendously. There was a certain moment where their focus was so intense that I felt waves of energy floating around the room, fueling the intensity of our music.  

When we took a break, I approached the man with black clothes, dark eyes and hair dyed bright like shining gold. He had a smile which exuded wisdom and patience. 

“Hey, I’m Mike.”

“I’m Billy. But my friends call me Darkness.”

“They call you… Darkness? Why, are you a nocturnal guy or something?”

“It’s a long story.” 

After we spoke about our passions, about music and photography – he shoots black and white pictures – I asked whether he’d like to share the story about the source of his nickname.

“Alright, if you wish. When I was a kid I used to be terrified by the dark. I couldn’t sleep without a lamp on. Every night, I’d stay as far away from the dark corners of the house.”

“I completely understand,” I said. “I’ve also gone through such a phase. Couldn’t sleep without this specific dim blue light shining and brightening the dark walls of my room.”

“You know the feeling too! Well, anyway, I was always scared by the night, by the darkness and by whatever monsters and beings I imagined crossing the threshold into our world. This fear followed me into my teenagehood.” He fought against a nicotine cough before continuing. 

“When I was eighteen, I went to the beach with my friends. There was a band playing in front of a huge crowd. It was the Old Customs band and they were going crazy with some older punk melody. After I headbanged and jumped around with the others, I suddenly grew extremely bored. I usually enjoy live shows, especially if it’s music bursting with energy. However, on that day, for some reason, the music began fading into the background of my mind."

"I instead became entranced by a concrete path leading backstage. I went toward the right where the crowd got thinner. There, I could see this large concrete wall extending toward the horizon where the road kept growing darker. To tell you the truth, I was afraid. But there were little signs on the way that kept me going. A twig pointed forward. An empty bag of chips partially held by a rock waved its foliage into the wind urging me to delve into darkness.” He drew his breath.

“I eventually encountered a tent placed in the middle of the trail. It had two opened doors and through them I could glimpse the road stretching onward. At that point, I simply felt that I had to move in a straight line and not deviate from the path. I crouched down and moved my legs like a crab, stepping into the tent and then quietly out, one crab leg at a time. And, finally, I arrived where I was supposed to.”

“A dead end. The road led to walls which towered above and cast a large shadow. I encountered a darkness denser than any I’ve seen.”

“I knew that I had to let go. And so I surrendered and stopped trying to control all the uncertain conditions of life. After stripping naked, I threw items of clothing into the shadows. I felt wild and filled with strength. Screaming, I plunged into the darkness and let it wash over me as if it were cold ocean waves awakening my pores and my energy. It was at that moment that I stopped fearing darkness.” 

“Half an hour later, I started seeing things in the darkness. Waves of pulsations spread around. And then I felt it. The stench of alcohol betrayed the presence of a drunk and unconscious guy. He woke up at some point and I talked to him for a long time. It was a bizarre experience given the fact that I didn’t know what he looked like. I could’ve just as easily been talking to the darkness.”  

Following a long pause I asked: “So ever since you’ve come back from that hole in the dark you haven’t been afraid of the night?”

“I love the night.”

After a couple more songs, an exchange of words and phone numbers, Steve and I thanked Chaos and Darkness, Amber and the gang for listening and for bringing us into this experience. The two of us left the shack and walked through Alder Park enjoying the night, the shadows and the strange sounds reverberating between the trees. Whatever I find in my path, I will not be afraid. A boy called Darkness taught me how to surrender.