After dark is an amazing time. It's bewitching and exhilirating, but unfortunately it can be terrible and scary as hell, because we all know bad shit goes down at night. Reclaim The Night is an organisation that fights to take back the night from rapists and murderers and the rest because it's not right that we should be afraid of the dark. Find out more about their work, how to join one of their marches and other ways to get involved here: http://www.reclaimthenight.org/.I love the night time. I find it so inspiring and I love to write (bad) poetry and short stories at night. But I do all of that inside, when I'd love to be sitting in a park writing by moonlight because I'm just too afraid. It is definitely time we take back the night.
(The following story should be read at night):
After Hours
Comme c’est curieux... How inaccurate is the phrase the dead of night? When here we are at that time exact to the nanosecond and yet so alive, alive.
This is night fall. When the sky sighs into purple then slips on black, the stars come out to play. Tonighttime we are letting our strikingly beautiful, horrifying imagination run away with you. We believe anything is possible and we are not scared when it all happens.
This is the witching hour. So named because it would stretch infinitely if the sun didn’t wake, shooing it away like the shopkeeper will come morning time to the homeless people sprawled on his doorstep. And we call this magic because we don’t have the words to say what else. Then the hour waits till light wanders off to start again, bewitching all still present with a temporary perpetual darkness.
There sits a girl, just metres away, on a bench. Her wild curls glow in the moonlight. She sings, wondering if her off-note could carry all the way across the world and back, then she stops abruptly. Don’t worry, nothing will happen to her. Hopefully. Our peace is slit by drunken cackling in the distance. It dissipates into a cold silence. So quiet she can hear you breathing. Shh quiet. Hold your breath and you might be able to hear her whisper.
“Would you like to know something? Of course. Here is a secret only a few fearless people know: there are stars in this city. But you have to go to the darkest, dirtiest places to see them. That’s where they’ll shine right through it all. Wink at you. Hold your glance. Stare you down. Not intimidating, but calm and comforting. You are watched.”
And we are, locked in by her fierce eyes, watching her watch us. She’s a clever one. She knows we’re here. She knows that everyone is a ghost at this time. She knows that this city will swallow you up and let you lie in the warmth of its body.
This city will swallow you up and the acid in its gut will burn you to crumbles.
Are you ready? Come on, Let’s go.
Feel like writing something? Enter the writing competition now!
Or spend the night in London/New York City with our list of AMAZING books and films that pull you into the heart of their cities.
Or spend the night in London/New York City with our list of AMAZING books and films that pull you into the heart of their cities.
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