Humans fear the dark. It’s in our wiring ancestral, primal, clawing at the back of the brain like a locked door rattling in a storm.

But some of us… we seek it.

Not for answers. Not for power. For peace.

The light’s where the lies live. Politicians in pressed suits. Lovers with plastic smiles. Friends who talk in daylight and forget your name at dusk.

But in the dark? No masks. Just silence. Just truth.

I’ve made a home there half-empty whiskey bottles, the hum of a dying fridge, and shadows thick enough to drown in. I like it that way.

The girl who walked in tonight, though… she brought light with her. Not sunshine neon. Flickering, dirty, and dangerous. She had that look, like she’d stared into something black and it blinked back.

She slid a photo across the table.

“Found this in my father’s desk. He’s been dead ten years.”

It was a picture of me.

Taken yesterday.

I didn’t move. Just lit a cigarette and watched the flame vanish.

The dark always calls its own.

Some of us just answer faster than others.