Darkness. What's the thought that accompanies the word? Maybe it's about a person, about how brooding and mysterious they are, and how they might be potentially dangerous? Or maybe it's a basement, most horror movies use it as a setting for something scary. Those are just the things that are always associated with darkness, isn't it? Something scary and potentially dangerous.

Maybe it's not the basement, or the person. Maybe it's an abyss, where it seems like a person can fall forever surrounded by darkness. Infinite. To others, it might seem like an ending. A finality. After all, most people close their eyes when they die. They can't see anymore. So, can it be said that darkness is nothing? An end? A finality?

Children are afraid of the dark, or more specifically, what's IN the dark. Monsters, vampires and bogeymen, ready to tear them apart. Admittedly, some of us are too, afraid of the dark simply because of the things we think thrive in the dark. Monsters with elongated claws and sharp teeth, ready to tear us apart once we turn off the lights. That's why we run to our rooms or beds once the remaining light is switched off, so they don't get us.

Or is it because we are simply robbed of one of our senses, and that leaves us feeling vulnerable? We live our lives guarded, using our eyes to assess people, what they think about us, what we think about them, our first impressions and our lasting impressions. Robbed of that, how will we know who wouldn't strike us first?

It varies, the meaning, and the indent of fear it leaves us in. But of course, this isn't a story about how some hero is trapped in perpetual darkness or tries to fight his inner demons and gets the girl or something. In fact no one has to travel to faraway lands to help people in danger. No one is sucked into some kind of alternate universe and certainly no one is going to fall in love in this story.

That's because this story is about you.

You came into the world the usual way, fist clenched and face scrunched up. Your mom was healthy and your dad certainly wasn't a drug dealer or an abusive father. In fact, you've lived a decently normal life with a normal family. You were the youngest and you were showered with love and affection from both your parents and your older siblings.

You went to kindergarten and made many friends. Teachers described you as curious but otherwise manageable, you had your moments where you threw fits simply because you couldn't get the toys you wanted. You fought with your siblings and you played with your siblings.

You move on to grade school, forgot about your kindergarten friends, as they did you, and made a decent amount of friends and had decent grades. You weren't on the school's track team or anything. You just hung out with your friends, your mom carpooling all of you in her minivan. You didn't stand on, you blended in, a background in someone's heroic life.

Your dad works as a banker, a fairly normal job. He leaves the house at 8.30 in the morning and comes back at 5.30 in the evening. A 9 to 5 job. When he gets home, he'd mess with your hair, kiss your older sister and high five your older brother. He'll dump his briefcase on the couch, get reprimanded by your mother and asked how each of you did in school today.

It would be terribly cliché to say that your 16 year old brother, was popular and adored by girls. He was the star of the some school team (you couldn't be bothered to remember) and he was bringing trophies home. Your older sister, a year younger than your brother, was doing very well in school and always managed to get the first in everything academically related.

Growing up, you talked about the same things every kid probably talked about with their friends. Who you liked, what is the meaning of the universe and ghost stories. What were the latest movies and TV shows and who's music tastes were better. You asked the same questions as everyone. “Why am I here?”, “Is there a meaning to my life?”, “What happens after death?” and “Why am I me?”. As a kid, you seek the answers to those questions, but your parents would always say “I don't know” or “You'll find out one day,”.

You stopped asking those questions a long time ago, but sometimes, after you stepped out of the shower, you'd look at your face in the mirror and ask yourself, “Why do I look like this? Why am I me, why am I in this world? Why do I have thoughts?” and then you'd leave, because you've seen enough ghost movies to know that staring at mirrors too long might result in unfavorable consequences. It might not be true, but frankly, you're weren't going to risk it.

Your take on death was the same. You knew it was inevitable, of course you do. You see people die all the time in the news or the TV, but you were always detached from it. After all, it wasn't you. They were just pictures from a paper or moving things from a screen. For you, it had always been this sort of “I'm special, I'm me. No one around me would die,”.

Of course, that illusion was shattered the moment your grandfather died. The weight that death could descend upon your family anytime weighted on you because at that moment, you realized your family wasn't special at all, not really. Maybe to you they were, but in the grand scheme of things, how can a kid's family be spared from death when billions aren't?

However, you still hung on to the mentality that you were you, and maybe, death will skip you, because after all, you're the main character of the story here. How can the hero die? You had the idea that yeah, maybe you weren't going to live forever, but you sort of figured that you'd live to like a hundred years old, maybe older.

So it came as a shitty surprise when you find yourself in the way of a bus that didn't seem like it was stopping. You closed your eyes and shielded your face. The pain never came.