Welcome to the second BlogFlash event! The first (#BlogFlash2012) was so well received that we decided to run it twice yearly. It’s a great opportunity to get creative, meet other bloggers and get a new audience. Whether you join us for the full month or just a few days, the main aim is to have fun and be inspired. Anything else is a bonus. Worried about word count? Don’t be! It’s a guideline so the month doesn’t feel overwhelming but if you feel inspired to write more, feel free. Good luck!

#BlogFlash2013: Day Thirteen – Darkness: Sweet Dreams

A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

#BlogFlash2013 (March): Day 13 - Darkness

The halogen lamp in the room behind his closet gave off barely enough of a glow to see clearly. With higher wattage he risked the light seeping under the door into the closet, into his room. Better to strain than take chances. He’d built his life on the steady blocks of vigilance, structure, meticulous work. One careless mistake and the walls come tumbling down.

He held the photograph to the light. The hair of a nymph, he thought, the tendrils curled to perfection. Squinting, he imagines her sizzling curls running through his fingers like light. She’s lying on his table, her eyes closed. With a scissors, he snips the hem of her skirt, cuts to the waistband, lays the skirt flat, opens and lays out her shirt and her bra.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall spend their time; a man of talent tries to use it. He steps back, satisfied for the moment, and watches the rise and fall of her chest.

Her lips part, her eyelids fluttering. She’s dreaming. Sweet dreams. Sweet, sweet dreams. Working, he enters a parallel realm, a land far away-a distant planet, a perfect world. A land of beauty and wonder. The heavens and the wilds merge in terrible splendor.

On the first day he watched with hungry eyes. And he saw it was good.

Chuckling, pleased with himself, he tacked the photograph to his wall. Yes, yes, it surely was good. He tacked the second a smidge to the right, on top of the first, the third on the second, the fourth on the third, each a hair to the right so she appeared to be moving.

Movement was necessary. Movement was good. If he’d learned anything in this life, it was the necessity of movement, the grave need for continuity, progress-the staff of life.

The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.

He had progressed. Wildly. He’d been a boy his first time, a young, callow, feckless adolescent. If not for his mother, he’d have paid for his sin. Or his talent, as it turned out.

The taking of life? Of course not. The glorious photographs. The collage on his wall. Desperately beautiful women, pining for their lost little girls. Hope is the result of confusing the desire that something should take place with the probability that it will. Schopenhauer was right. Always was, always would be. With his camera, he’d captured the misguided hope in their eyes. The longing. The desperation. The desire. The magnificent grief.

Omne individuum ineffable. Every individual is uniquely her own. Every mother, every child. The children were never for him nor were they for their own sake. It was the mothers he wanted. The mothers he yearned for. The mothers he watched, he obsessed over. The mothers he loved. The secret, the key to every girl’s death, was always his love.

He stepped away from his desk and studied the women, his magnetic eyes drawing their energy, their crackling light. His toes burst into flame, his feet, his ankles, his thighs. He was alive. Powerful. Burning. Aroused, he pivoted slowly, his hair raised, his chest an inferno. Glorious photos, beautiful, grieving, supplicant women on every inch of his walls. He drank in each one, absorbing emotion. And then it was over. And he turned out the light.

Sweet dreams, pretty ladies, he whispered, closing the door. Have a good night.

Next prompt: Home (20th March)

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