Nyctophelia

A Story by Zen

The word for people who love the dark is Nyctophilia. The love for the dark could also be described as hatred for the light. This is what these people are, they live in the shadows because there’s no other place they’d rather call home. This is why, in a cheap motel on the outskirts of town, John No Last Name showered with the lights turned off. The water felt like it was coming from the dark itself. He was submerged. Both in hot water and the love of the world’s natural state.

The world was supposed to be dark, light was created only by the influence of outside beings like the sun and stars. People should have adapted to the dark of the ever going night but they fell weak for the sun and the warmth of fire. How could they not feel the adrenaline laced heat of darkness, it could warm you everywhere at once. Imagine what people would have evolved to if forced to live in a world of perpetual shadow. The monsters they would become.

John stepped out of the shower and felt around for a towel. He pulled one around his waist. The motel had spared every expense for this dry and crusty welcome mat. John flicked on the light and looked at himself in the mirror. As much as he thought about the world belonging to the dark he knew it needed light to survive. It made his life sort of poetic.

In the mirror there was a big man with a face framed by brown hair and a beard of the same color. His eyes glared woodsman but he had never spent much time in the woods since he was a kid. Now he was a lot older and a lot bigger. His muscles had grown over the last couple decades he had roamed America, doing manual labour for short stretches at a time, doing whatever he could to work at night so he never had to see the sun. Now with his beard and his size he really did seem like a lumberjack from the woods.

He toweled off and laid on his bed in pajama pants. The lights were off, the curtains were closed over the open window and the table fan was on, facing away from the curtains. John liked the dark, it made him feel good and pumped adrenaline through his veins when he wasn’t relaxing. The day was too crowded and messy. At night he was able to think clearly. He had heard some people couldn’t even stand dimmed lights and shut themselves off from humanity. John couldn’t do that, he was still human and he liked the small comforts of his world.

It was about 9:30 on July 4^th, John didn’t celebrate anymore. Fireworks lit up the night sky and threw away the darkness. It was barbaric. Usually he rented a room closer to the mass of the city, never directly in the center but close enough to find work near his room, but tonight he had to stay away. He needed to liberate himself in darkness.

To some people it was not the love of the dark but the love of the night and consequently the nightlife. Party animals, the big cities were full of them. The things you could do at night were different to things that happened during the day. Like a seedy drug deal happening outside a cheap motel. Happening outside the open window of John No Name. Party Animals could perhaps argue over the agreed price of some pills to pop to enjoy the festival even more so. The Animals outside John’s window were definitely causing a commotion over this.

John was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and let their argument run its cycle but neither of the men were willing to back down so they were going around in circles. To most normal people, drug dealers and users were nothing more than oxygen thieves, not contributing to the world that let them get away with whatever they wished. John knew a lot more about the world and in his broader world, the men outside his window were similar to him. A lower class version of Nyctophelia contained inside them. Or perhaps they were better at it than he was, they lived in the night yet they did not fear the day and could function like everyone else. Either way, this was a night John needed to rest and these men were only getting louder.

John got up and stuck his head out the window. Both these men were younger than him and probably didn’t have enough muscle mass between the two of them to reach John’s powerful frame. He began to tell them to sort their s**t out somewhere else but the night hit him in a bad way. The street lights were on and polluting the night sky, John had been forced to deal with that his whole life. He disliked them but they were no more than an annoyance. The real trouble was the gigantic full moon hovering over the adjacent building.

The sun John tolerated because of the Earth’s need for it to survive but the moon… The moon was different. It lit up the night sky for no reason. It broke the spell of the calm darkness for no reason other than to be there. The day was for light, not the night. John hated the moon, it made his blood boil. Why did it have to exist to ruin his dark nights? The world did not need it. It supplied nothing to the people of this planet yet it stayed there high in the sky tormenting John and ruining his train of thought. The moon corrupted the night and spoiled his darkness, the only thing John held dear. It corrupted his night the same way it corrupted his mind whenever he saw it. He could never think of anything else when it came into view, only the hatred he had for it. The hatred for the moon turned him into a different man.

The two men involved in the drug deal got to witness this change. They saw John hunching out the window, his face locked in an expression of pure hatred with his gaze solely on the moon. His muscles were violently twitching and his teeth began to grow out of his mouth. One of the men ran when this began but the other couldn’t find the strength to look away. John’s teeth had grown into fangs dotted with blood dripping from his gums shining in the moonlight. Fur was coming out in patches all over his body and his eyes had turned gold.

He howled at the moon. Not the way a wolf howls to its pack but the way a prisoner screams at their captor. John leaped out of the window spraying glass over the ally, his shoulders had grown too big for the frame. The glass tore at his pajama pants so the dealer could see fur sticking out of his legs. John howled again, this time louder and with more fury. The dealer fell back to the wall at the power of his roar.

Some of John was still up there, his head wasn’t completely corrupted by his hatred for the moon but the white giant in the sky was still hanging above causing a migraine. John looked down at the dealer and raised his clawed hand, ready to cut down the cowering man. He had no real problems with the man but he was so full of anger he was hardly himself. Besides, if not for these men yelling, he would have never looked out the window and seen the moon. It was his fault. Entirely his fault. John brought down his hand in collision with the dealers throat. It was like running his finger through cream.

The head rolled down the ally and hit a trash can. The decapitated head’s eyes stopped rolling and landed their sight on John. Now there were two things staring at him. He couldn’t handle this. He would have to leave but he couldn’t think straight with the f*****g moon there. It was too light in the ally to figure out what to do so he took off on all fours heading in any direction. As he ran, the moon followed him every step of the way. It was impossible to keep track of where he was, heading into the brighter and brighter city.

The fourth of July celebrations had kicked off hours before and were in full swing. John was lost. He could hear and smell people. He hadn’t run directly into the city, the human part of his mind tried to get him away from all the lights and sounds but most of what he was running on was fueled by hate. His instinct was in pieces and he could not escape the light but instead he drove further into it.

The event workers were loading the fireworks as John came close. At 10 o’clock the show was set to begin. They would light up the sky in celebration of their country. John was running in a strange gallop on all four legs. He wasn’t exactly imitating an animal, the leaps were too awkward as his legs were not fully developed for it. Doing his strange run trying to escape the sight of the moon while the street he was on was full of echoes. It might as well have been day. The street lights were on full blast and John could hear people talking and shouting from all directions.

Then everything went quiet at once but John kept running. He staggered through a commonly used ally way onto Main Street. The crowd gathered there to watch the parade did not see him as he stepped out in front. Fire burst from parade floats all down the line and rose to the sky in a stunning display. They twirled and flew and lit up the whole sky, even putting the moon to shame. John was ahead of the parade. No one had seen him because like him, their eyes were on the show. Watching something that can even dim the moon. Something truly terrible. At this sight, John began to change again. He had found something even more dreadful than the moon. His fur started to grow again. Filling in all the patches and getting longer and thicker than it was before. His muscles grew as well, making John bigger than he already was. A bone shattering howl came from his throat as his face distorted into that of a wolf’s.

The howl put an end to the show. Every face turned to look at the animal that could create such a deafening sound. Instead they saw a beast from legend sprinting at them. John’s mind was gone. In his beastly form he was completely out of focus with all the lights shining and the fireworks still gliding from the sky. He would run one way then his hind legs would twist and he’d throw himself in a new direction. The chaos with in his mind did not allow him to strike anybody. To the onlookers he was fighting invisible enemies. To anyone else with Nyctophelia, he was attempting to hurt the light.

All the parade-goers fled the street and soon it was empty aside from John launching at nothing and a lone man at the other end of the street. The lone bystander wore a black trench coat swaying free in the gentle wind, a top hat upon his head and a loose tie around an unbuttoned collar. He raised to his eye a modern, polished musket. It gleamed in the light. Setting the sight on the out of control Nyctopheliac, he said “You’re too wild here. This will send you back to the real darkness, you’ll like it there.”

He pulled the trigger and sent a silver bullet soaring down the street. It seemed to borrow a touch of light from each lamp post it passed. It broke through John’s fur and had a brief, fatal meeting with his heart.