The darkness beyond my window allows the light within to create a perfect reflection of all that is laid before it. At this moment she shows me myself; my true self; my strong self; my dark self; my crimson soul.

I behold its strength; its power; its conviction. I embrace the significance of the moment. I am free, truly and completely. Fear has abandoned me. Grief has given way to the rapture of resurrection.

As the calm of the new day washes over me, I surrender to sleep. With slumber, comes my dreams. The chambers within which my deepest darkness lies release their holdings and allow these visions to invade my psyche. I allow it. I embrace it. I live for it. I will die for it. It is all that I am and need to be.

While the sun lights and warms the world, this darkness engulfs my consciousness and shows me my gifts. As I seek rest from my mission and refuge from the world, my mind creates its masterpiece. It shows me my story, introducing its characters in vivid tableaux depicting my grandest imaginings.

Old friends meet past lovers. They embrace lovingly. She offers her saw blade to him to aid in his nightly mission. As the liberated skin flaps about like the posted colors, his gaze meets mine. For the first time ever I feel as though he knows me. He can see me, and he recognizes me. The shiver that runs down my spine as that thought grazes my conscious mind is chased by goose bumps that quickly cover my skin and raise the hairs on my entire body.

My soul shutters in that moment, and the beautiful saw blade brushes away a crimson tear with the side of my thumb. The corners of her lips are curled into her signature smirk as her tortured eyes lock into mine. My soul weeps, but my eyes aren’t yet privileged to produce tears. Her pain is no longer shrouded by her blatant dismissal of the truth of its existence. The obvious no longer escapes her awareness, and her pain is now flaunted for all, even her own eyes, to see. I feel it; her soul’s agony, which manifests itself so literally through her perforated posture.

A light reflects from the surface of a razor blade. My old friend and I respond in concert as we each raise our right hands to our respective brows in an almost simulated salute to the sun.

The sun? Is that where the light came from?

As if they had been granted access to my thoughts, or else all of myselves think the same thoughts, we all commence to search our surroundings for the source of that brilliant light.

All else is dark, just the way I like it. We search lazily, slowly. Time here bends to my will, thus we needn’t ever rush through to the story’s conclusion.

Silence screams at my subconscious mind. My eyelids flutter; his eyelids flutter; her eyelids flutter. The light reflects from the razor blade. All three heads spin above my neck and quickly snap to attention with my left ears pointed accusingly over my left shoulder. The corner of my right eye discovers the origin of the light. I see without believing for a moment until the rest of me confirms my supposed witnessing.

My old friend nods his head, and his face flesh dances like a fleeing jellyfish just before his expression overtakes the mangled muscles exposed to my view, painting a bloodied grin on his hellish façade. Another chill shakes my core, reignites my gooseflesh, and causes the protruding razors to expand outward from her back like the claws of an aggressive feline, increasing the radius of the death fan and painting pain stricken grimace on my war-torn face.

War-torn? I always assumed that the scars were the result of self-inflicted wounds. Nevertheless, this lover’s face has seen much better days.

I gasp (all three mouths at once) to find air to fill our lungs. The cold stings my chest, eyes and throat, but my eyes still produce no tears. There’s only the blood stained tracks running down the lover’s cheeks and the scarlet rain that sometimes falls up from underneath my feet. Guess I won’t be crying away my pain today, not even with the sting of the blinding light.

That light, I saw it with all six of my current, weary eyes. I saw what I could not believe if it was but myself to see, but we three, I mean all three of me, clearly saw and we agreed. The light that blinds me and binds me to my restful slumber; the light I truly wish should go asunder; the light that defines my darkness, in reality defines nothing, but is in fact defined by me.

This light I see, it springs forth from the darkness that always was and came before eternity. The darkness I’ve always known, through every entire fault of my own, created an equal through which it could be defined by contrast, and ended up being confined by its past. The darkness created its daily tormentor, as I created the prison to which I condemned my living soul.

It would appear in the end that total control, if misunderstood can be a powerful obstacle from your goal.

She smiles as crimson rivers rage down all cheeks. I wipe the overly anticipated tears from my skin and watch as his tears fade back into the ligaments now poised in a gruesome smile that reminds me that it is more than possible to be happy with one’s true self.

My old friend retreats. All of me waves me good-bye. She grabs his hand in mine and they walk off side by side.

The flesh returns to my face. At first it’s riddled with scar tissue, but the blade tracks quickly fade beneath the last wave of crimson tears. I decide to leave the razors for now. A reminder of the pain I’ve caused might help to fortify the walls of my rising empire, while the pain I’ve endured helped to make me the person I am today.

I awaken. Five minutes have passed. The sunlight peaks in through the window shade projecting a luminous light show around Jim Morison’s face. The night’s shadows have long since retreated like the lost lover and my old friend.

I no longer weep. Their lives are now eternal. They are always alive within my darkness.