Prologue

A cold, moonless night. A haunting wind blowing softly, distorting into a scarce whisper in the dark. Above, the clouds have parted to give way to the gentle glistening of the silent stars as they whimsically float their way across the limitless sky; untroubled and uncaring. The space between each of them a mere finger’s width to us, but a lifetime and more for them. It is their privilege to share such an opinion of our own lives. Returning to the horizon, a smear of orange can be seen bleaching the black. Dawn on the rise. 

 

The shouts of drunken men and women, the alarms and horns of cars, the screeches of animals in their unrest, all form the harmony of the night. Overlooking the harmonious chaos is Daniel. A boy of 18 years. He is tall, enough to intimidate the average man. His features are strong, his dark brown hair long and rugged, and his eyes a crystal blue and piercing in nature. Daniel stands on the ledge of a nightclub rooftop, looking out over the cityscape, orange glows seeping through the cracks between buildings, and the harmony of the night ambushing his senses. Daniel simply stands and stares. His face emotionless but not vacant. There is something on this boy’s mind, something distinct enough to deter one from interrupting him or even approaching him. Gently he spreads out his fingers and moves them in time with the ghostly wind. He closes his eyes; his attention directing to the whispers masquerading as the wind. Where better to hide the voices?

 

Through history mankind has divided, conquered, destroyed, built, segregated, wiped out, hunted, and brought divisions to itself and all the creatures of the world. Nations divided by the pencil borders drawn on pieces of paper and land brutally governed by the men it gave birth to. Even with these boundaries, mankind has yet found more ways to segregate and isolate itself: Greed, intolerance, control, hatred, labeling, sickness, class, power, wealth, popularity… all seek to individualize and corrupt the social nature of the human condition. However, despite these boundaries of land and chains of the minds, despite these arrests on the intimate and cages of the social, mankind is bound eternally by one question: “Where am I going?” To some this question becomes relevant to them in times that a map has failed them or they have found themselves in some foreign town or country. But to others this eternal and universal question cuts down to the deepest recesses of the mind and leaves the asker in a perpetual state of unknowing. To Daniel, this question was everything. Without his realizing this question had been plaguing his mind for years and it’s answer had determined his destiny long before he knew an answer existed. Daniel, like countless others through the human existence, have applied this question in such a way as to determine where it is they are headed when the final curtain call is made. Heaven or hell? Despite popular belief, this question is in no means religious, and in no way implies the belief or existence of an after-life. The state in which one dies, physically and psychologically, is ones heaven or hell. A man who takes the knife to his own heart will die in a perpetual state of hell, whereas a man who welcomes death as a release from the mortal bounds of humanity will forever be in a state of heaven. Mankind will spend their entire lives seeking and answer to the question of which realm it is they will be going to. Some will shape their lives accordingly, some will give up and never find the answer, some will believe they have found an the righteous answer where in reality they have found anything but. Mortal and with so little time upon a relentlessly falling ball of rock and vapor, Daniel repeats the question still.

 

A woman’s scream shatters the harmony. Daniel’s eyes open. His eyes dart across the cityscape but the source of the scream, as he well knows, is not to be found externally. His eyes linger down and bring him to face the pavement �" the distance between himself and the hard concrete small but enough to kill �" Daniel knows this. He enjoys this. The ease of one’s destruction so simple and within his grasp. By simply nudging his foot forward, or by closing his eyes and allowing himself to be blown by the wind… his power over life and death an obsession to him. Would he do it? Could he do it? By bringing himself here on a whim and standing on the edge of an insignificant building in an insignificant location, he has given himself the power of his own mortality. Nothing could take this away from him and no-one. He laughs at the thought of this but it is a broken laugh.

 

Daniel moves his gaze upwards to look at the darkness above him. The stars staring down at him and he back at them. He wonders he and indeed all of humanity must look to them. Striving against one another, killing each other and treading ourselves into the mud and dirt all in the name of some pointless trivial conquest for land, or for an idea, or for a love. How futile we must look to the majesty of the stars. If there are gods, then they lie in the stars. Daniel’s thoughts are interrupted by the sudden appearance of a tear in his eye. He does not move to wipe it. The tear is curious to him.     

With a sudden jerk of his body, Daniel is now facing the opposite way. Instead of the cityscape he is now staring straight at a brick wall. A dull, uninteresting, designed brick wall. Daniel is aware of something else in his presence, something out of his grasp and beyond his senses. He has known this eerie feeling before. A shiver runs down his spine. The feeling of being watched by ghostly eyes comes over him. Daniel substitutes his terror  with the readiness to fight and defend himself. He has armed himself against the presence and this time it will not make him afraid, his power will not be overridden by some phantom. A shadow of himself stands opposite him. Staring. Motionless. Unafraid.