In My Dark Space [grim v.short tale]

[Paranoid66]

In My Dark Space
A very short very grim tale by Paranoid66

My name is unimportant - call me Legion if you like - for I am everyone, and no one! My purpose here is a selfish one a desire to make you think, to delude myself that by gaining an audience I am granted a little justification - I know - sad isn‘t it?

There is a time I believe - through extrapolation - in every Argons life when they suddenly discover they are mortal. Why by extrapolation? Well simply because it happened to me! So I make pretence to some commonality to you all. I used to be afraid of the dark isn’t that funny? I remember as a child going to the dentist, and being anaesthetised - it resulted in a nightmare - I was all-alone in a: silent, void, lightless, space shouting, and screaming out terrified - frantic - to make a connection. Now in this place I am forced to wonder was that vision under gas a premonition of my whole life!

I didn’t set out to become the villain of any story. Returning to some brighter times in my childhood I always wanted to be the hero: to rush to the rescue, to represent all that was hale, and whole, and good. Nonetheless, in the peculiarly unethical innocence of my youth I slaughtered innumerable villains in my mind in various affrays to the cheers of more worthy people. Deeds not of despair but of justice committed without any qualm of conscience, a masculine thing perhaps a product of indoctrination, well didn’t bad people deserve to die? Certainly I didn’t perceive anything amiss in defending peace with war, the fair maidens honour with the sharp sword, civilisation by violence that was what these things were for when properly employed!

I believed light banished darkness, knowledge defeated ignorance, and truth would naturally slay a lie. So you may ask how did it all go wrong? I honestly must answer that I don’t know I envy you if you can find a first cause for any of your misdeeds! I can’t decide if I slipped, jumped, or if I was pushed? You see I perceive my life as action, and reaction so sometimes all my choices seem like illusion, my personality the product of random association, my fate out of my control? Often I have felt like a passive passenger in my own life a leaf blown in the wind or a twig carried by an especially strong current. No? I agree that would be all too easy! I made choices didn’t I? Yet we are products of everyone else’s choices too even our parents choices as to when we are born. We drown in a sea of interconnectivity, and yet despite all these endless links we still contrive to feel alone - we still shout, and scream from our individual dark place.

I believed I was brave when I first faced the naked night - remember - as a child I was afraid of the dark. Bravery is expected of adults - I told myself - isn’t it? Have you ever thought how odd Outer Space really is? From a planet Space is the starry heavens a seemingly unattainable place filled with wonder, we are even made of star stuff according to the wise, but when you get out there - trust me - it is as close to hell as you can get. Maybe you don’t agree, but Outer Space is dark, silent, empty, freezing cold, and yet burning with terrible radiation - a hostile environment - to most sane forms of life. Certainly Space is no place for an Argon that is not armoured against its fell embrace, something I am trying as I compose this short message very hard not to think about, but as usual being a contraire Argon I am failing in my design.

I want you to know I never wanted to hurt anyone, but I did! I didn’t set out with malice of forethought to kill anyone - at least not specifically - yet I have! Not only have I murdered others it might even be argued that by my actions I also slew myself! Luckily evil people deserve to die don’t they? Yet murder is always different when it is ourselves - we never mean to do it - it just happens as if by accident. So it was with me one moment I was an honest Space Trader carrying cargos from station to station the next a smuggler desperate to keep in business, then just plain desperate as a killer pirate! So when did it go wrong? My old companions soaked in space fuel, and choking from smoky space weed would claim in their simplistic philosophy that it went wrong when I got caught, the police would say it went wrong when I first pulled the trigger, I would attest it went wrong much earlier than that!

Of course I am guilty, but so is everyone else - I tried to explain this to the Tribunal - but they didn’t care about my pet theory (that they all made me do it, the whole of our society) just as I was making them kill me now through the same unbroken chain of connections. So sitting here with this computer pad in my lap I wait for my last artificial station side dawn. I find myself returning to the fears of my childhood, and ask myself which darkness scares me the most: the emptiness of ceasing to exist, the emptiness of existence, or the emptiness into which the Just plan to cycle me without the protection of a vacuum suit via the nearest convenient airlock?



The end.

[Snowship]

Interesting little view into a mind there Paranoid.

Started off seeming a bit dexterish in that hurting the unjust, but then more reveiled and the main hook ends up being someone not worthy of compassion eventhough they might think they do.

good to see you haven't given up writing. and trying different styles.

Snowship

[Paranoid66]

I like the emotive nature of criminal characters' rationalisations. I was interested to see how people react to a character like Legion could they identify on any level.

For my part I can't help but sympathise to some degree with any character I produce - even the nasty ones - in a way they need more consideration as they are harder to understand.

I was also trying to argue that if we are good or bad people - part of that is luck - in both the experiences we have had, and our innate makeup, and reaction to those specific events, as we all perceive reality slightly differently.

EDIT- Also find the difference in attitude society has to legal, and illegal killing a thorny question always worth looking at.

[The Zig]

Good short story.

Did I detect a biblical reference there?! "My name is Legion - for we are many"

Anyway, it was experimentational, and not like anything I've seen here before. Some nice ideas well developed. Good stuff.

[SOTS]

My name is unimportant - call me Legion if you like - for I am everyone, and no one

Sure, biblical, but the first thing I thought when I saw that line was of the Cirque du Soleil! Saltimbanco, to be precise. I saw a similar version of that line in the programme.

Back on track, I loved it. Dark, atmospheric, philosophical. Well executed (no pun intended) and an interesting idea.

When I have the time, I shall be reading Reaper's Passage!

[Paranoid66]

Thanks to everyone I am glad you liked it I wasn't sure how it would be received. Wrote this one roughly by hand this morning at about 7:00am before I got up then typed it in a bit later with a few modifications.

I was thinking the night before about doing something different - as a short break - from my current somewhat heavy chore of corrections on the Reapers Passage.

The Reapers Passage - as you might guess - is more mainstream I suppose being written as my first real attempt at both fan fiction, and an on line story. Inspired by reading such material as the wonderful tales that came with the X2 disks. Something probably apparent in the early chapters until I got into a good flow, and found my own voice - rather rambling though my voice is sometimes!

[-=Legendary=-]

I like how it unfolds and the reader realizes hes already been convicted way too go! That was really smart