Available Darkness Season 1

again. For some reason she couldn’t understand, this made her cry more than the thought of having to kill again.
    They embraced for an eternity until Larry’s shuffling and pacing drew their attention.
    “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
    John pulled away and looked down at Abigail. His eyes were wet, she noticed. He had been crying. For a moment, their eyes locked, exchanging some unspoken truth between them, something she could not yet give voice to, perhaps a kinship in their curses.
    “Okay,” John said, turning to Larry, “we’ll get in the back. Let’s find that safe-house.”
    Larry took a moment to say his goodbyes to Lydia, or what was left of her, and Abigail felt a sting in her heart as she watched him kneel beside her. Traces of Lydia’s feelings for Larry still lingered in Abigail, and she wanted to comfort him.
    She approached him from behind, waited for him to turn.
    “I’m sorry,” Abigail said, knowing no words could heal the wounds she inflicted.
    Larry turned back to her, his eyes wet, meeting hers for the first time since she’d been revived.
    He nodded and turned his attention back to Lydia.
    Abigail crawled into the back of the van, mentally exhausted, and quickly fell asleep, swaddled in the strength of John’s arms.

    * * * *

    John

    As John slowly drifted to sleep, he thought about the look in Abigail’s eyes right before they crawled into the van. There was something there, something that whispered only to him. Perhaps it was the incredible sadness within them, he thought. John knew better. Two had become one. His darkness had swallowed her light, like cancer that spreads through the body. He grieved for her loss. All he could do now was be there to help her.
    How can I help her when so much of my life is a mystery, though?
    His mind circled on the missing pieces of the puzzle that was his past. Who was he? How many people had he left dead in his wake? Why did he have his mind erased? What was he running from? Who was Jacob? What secrets did John harbor that so many people were willing to murder to get?
    Where is Hope?
    Too much to contemplate, he felt his mind would soon crack beneath the pressure. Then, as he slept, something clicked inside the vault that kept his memories.

    John remembered.

    TO BE CONTINUED…

* * * * * * *

PART TWO: INTO THE PAST FORGOTTEN

    “Man… cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.”
    — Friedrich Nietzsche

    * * * * * * *

::EPISODE 4::
    CHAPTER 1 — John

    Twelve Years Ago
    October 2, 1999
    St. Augustine, Florida

    John woke from a nightmare, shivering.
    His sopping shirt was sticking to his chest again.
    He’d had the same dream nightly for nearly two weeks, killing innocents across his dreamscapes just as he once had in real life. The monster within him, the one he’d taken so many measures to bury, was clawing its way to the surface.
    Not again.
    He rolled across the empty bed to see the soft blue neon face of their alarm clock — 2:07 a.m.
    Where’s Hope?
    He slid from bed, the cold hardwood floor greeting his bare feet like a shallow pool of ice water. For the hundredth time, if not the thousandth, he reminded himself that he really needed to get a good pair of slippers.
    He opened the bedroom door. The mostly dark hallway was bleeding with a thin sliver of light seeping from beneath the door to Hope’s studio. She’d been having her own sleeping problems lately. He wondered if his nightmares and restless sleep was waking her or if it was just the artist in her, feeding her muse when inspiration struck, no matter the hour.
    He pushed her door open quietly, not wanting to surprise her in mid brush stroke. She wasn’t painting though. She was sitting on the floor, wearing his navy and yellow tee shirt, face in her hands, and crying.
    “What’s wrong?” John dropped to one knee and put his arms around her.
    Hope’s cry approached a whispered shriek; she shrank into the hollow of John’s arms.
    “What is it?” he brushed the hair from her forehead and kissed her brow.
    John searched the studio for the source of her tears. The room was well-stocked (or cluttered, in his words) with paintings, blank canvases, and a small store’s worth of art supplies, but it had no TV, radio, or even a phone, which ruled out a sad song, TV show, or phone call heralding bad news. Hope preferred to work in solitude. Whatever it was, she had probably kept the cork in