The Dark

A Story

Once upon a time, a girl lived on the farm with her parents.

Once upon a time, love and happiness followed her like a train.

Flowers seemed to bloom at her sight, and sorrow seemed to flee at her might. The townsfolk loved her and the girl loved them in return but the girl loved other things as well, she loved working on the farm, and she loved feeding the animals but the love she had for her parents was unrivalled. She loved how they let her do anything she wanted to and she loved how they treated her, not as a child, but as an adult and she was happy...

But that was once upon a time before the Darkness came and destroyed everything.

No one believed the rumours at first, but then the number of people disappearing increased and kept on increasing until the rumours stopped being rumours and started becoming truths. Some were about conspiracies by the government while others were about humankind having disappointed the gods but one stood out. It spoke about a magic-made darkness that came from a remote town named Blackwell where the first cases had been reported and the rumour said that the Darkness slowly invaded people's minds until there was nothing left of their minds or their bodies. Until they became nothing...

The girl was still happy though, for she believed that nothing could touch her. That she and the ones she loved would prevail. That they would be the ones to persevere, how very wrong she was...

And so the day came when the girl opened the door to her parent's room but they weren't there. She looked in the shed and she looked in the fields but they were nowhere to be found. She screamed and she wept and she prayed to all that was holy and good and right that her parents be returned to her but they never came. Every day she woke up, hoping against hope that this was the day they would come back and everything would be alright but that day never came and gradually she gave up. She still worked on the farm and fed the animals but the happiness that used to follow her around was dying little by little. Being replaced by something worse, something bad, something wrong. But she kept on going and whenever her mind threatened to remind her of the past she didn't let herself follow the thought. Instead, she worked and ate and slept because whenever she did hope, she didn't want her parents back. She now wanted the Darkness to take her too.

It never did, instead, it fed upon her sorrow and watched as her friends and their families disappeared but not her, never her. People like her were important to the Darkness for it needed sorrow to live and people like her had an abundance of sorrow to spare. So the Darkness kept her alive and watched as the last embers of love and happiness vanished and the grief and loss inside of her reigned at last. And it watched as the once happy girl let go of life and wished for peace and as she plunged the kitchen knife into her belly the Darkness flew high as if overjoyed at the thought of someone as pure as her succumbing to the Darkness...

The whole town, or what was left of it, came to pay respects to the girl, they had all loved the happy little girl she had once been. They all watched as the plaque was placed in the middle of the field when the sky suddenly darkened and as a bolt of lightning lit up the sky the whole town disappeared...

Now in the middle of an empty field lies a plaque and on the plaque is written, 'Here lies the happiest girl in town, the girl who could make flowers bloom at sight and now because of whom the flowers planted around this plaque will bloom as well, farewell Samantha Rose.'