Dark Literature: A Truce with The Wrathful Creature of The Soul

There are whispers in the night that everyone is scared to listen to.

When we look into the mirror, it’s not always our reflection that we see. Sometimes it’s a being we do not recognise, sometimes our grief, other times our rage, our cruelty, our thirst, our madness.

And finally, when they all merge and become a creature of no longing and excessive anger, they form the beast, the inner monster.

The powerful yet lonely,

Cruel yet sorrowful monster.

Through dark truths written on paper, I have come to find a friend in this monster, dear reader. ‘Why do people lie to themselves?’ My demon asks me. I have no answer to give to it.

It is so angry and yet it is calm, like a patient and gentle being. It uses no violence, It is only a slave to my boundaries of control but oh, when I lose myself, it takes over so beautifully, it is like the perfect abstract piece of dark art.

It is a philosophical and critical creature. It looks at life as it is. When someone hurts me, it is cold and silent and it takes me away. It protects me from love. What could it know, this unloved grieving creature of the healing that love can provide?

It likes to read and to be alone and to think. When I don’t indulge in its desires, it makes me lose all control and I am filled with its rage over the world. I become a selfish and unlikable being who cares about none but strangely, during this time, I find a most interesting friend in myself.

“It is true, we shall be monsters, cut from the world; but on that account, we shall be more attached to each other.” (Frankenstein, Mary Shelley)

Through Frankenstein’s humanising of a cruel creature, I was able to give a face to my inner monster and more so, deduce it to have a soul of its own. Perhaps all of our souls are divided into two. One of the demon and one of our own. Perhaps by default, we are born good. But life twists us and turns us and harms us and burdens us and eventually there is a second birth within us of a demon, who is a collection of rage and solitude. To preserve its rage and find peace in its loneliness, it will go to any lengths of destruction.

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde)

The curious fact about the beast’s destruction is that evolves, if we let it. It might start with physically harmful substances but once it’s had its fill, it can go towards working like a madman and then perhaps, endlessly travelling and suffering. With pain, the demon gets its fulfilment. However, through the demon, we learn that pain does not always have to be bad. Pain can also be towards a greater good, a broader sacrifice contributing towards the future.

"My friend, healthy and normal people are only the common herd... Exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy—all that distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs for the idea, from the common folk—is repellent to the animal side of man—that is, his physical health. I repeat, if you want to be healthy and normal, go to the common herd." (The Black Monk, Anton Chekhov)

There are many whose monsters are not cultivated enough to know where their rage is best off being exploded and those are the kind who suffer and remain miserable all their lives. Yet, through reading and confronting the darkest possible conceptions of mankind, one can help the monster understand and get to terms with what sort of destruction is best to be unleashed by it. To resist the destruction is a healthy way to live, but out of destruction only, one can hope to create something new.

“I am a body and I have a soul,

But humanity is far from me,

You have crafted me,

I am yours, a pawn seeking a story,

A pawn seeking to progress

or to destroy,

You have crafted

Your little creation

With rage that holds

And love that consumes,

If the end of the world comes,

She’ll be here as a reminder

Of all the cracks that didn’t fit together,

She’ll be here as a reminder

Of what you couldn’t control,

She’ll be here to remind you

That some creations are immortal

And immortality can have many faces.”

(Silly Little Lover Silly Little Demon, Yashika Vahi)