No Angels

.prologue.

Sometimes innocence can be the greatest destruction.  

***

There is light, and there is darkness.

Some say the two can't exist side-by-side; some say they can't exist apart. There is darkness in light, and light in darkness. That's how it works. Every bad person has a good side. Every perfect person has their demons.

And yet, there's me.

Everyone's either more good, or more bad. You can't be both.

As for me...well, I don't know what I am. I pride myself in calling myself a good person, but I'd be lying if I said I was all innocent. There's some part of me that's all dark. No light down there. I don't travel that far - I'm afraid of losing my light, my goodness. Yet I feel...attracted to that darkness. It sounds insane, I know. Maybe I am.

Don't you ever have that voice in your head that tells you to jump, when you're somewhere up high? Don't you ever find yourself leaning forward, when you're teetering on the edge of a cliff?

There exists a psychological phenomenon in which perfectly sane people, with no desire to die, find themselves faced with a steep cliff and experience a strong desire to leap. To jump from their safe vantage point into the unknown. This phenomenon is so common in fact, that the French have a term for it: L'appel du Vide – Call of the Void.

In our heads, we're all sadists.

But that's not exactly right, either.

I'm not a sadist. I don't enjoy inflicting pain, or seeing others in pain.

However, I enjoy feeling pain. I enjoy being beaten. I like the sting. The hurt. The thrill.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't even know who I'm saying all of this to. Maybe I just need someone to listen, to tell me I'm not crazy, that I'm not the only one.

So many question marks.

You probably won't know me. Hell, I don't know me.

Sometimes I feel like I'm looking out of eyes that don't belong to me, like I'm trapped in somebody else's body. It's like I'm an extra soul in a foreign cavity, and I'm not supposed to exist.

I know everyone, yet they don't know me. I'm that familiar face you see in the crowd, that strange sense of "I know you", but in reality, you don't.

I'm a phantom, I guess you could say.

That's how I live my life.

My name's Leo, but for some reason, I can't remember if that's my real name, or if I made it up.

I don't know my purpose, and I'm not sure I want to.

There's light in darkness, and vice versa.

But for me - I don't know which will triumph.