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ＴＥＮＥＢＲＩＳ ｜｜ ＭＡＬＥ ｜｜ ＣＨＡＮＹＥＯＬ．
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- He fears the monster hiding under the bed.
A handful black widows or the breeze from way up high couldn’t compare to the shadowed grin behind the closet door. Ever since he first came across the suffocation that darkness could be, he’s been running. As fast as his legs could take him he’s crawled away from the blackest of corners. If darkness were his fear then the demon lurking inside was the fire that fueled it. All memory of childhood has left his distressed mind. Only one word remains; Tenebris. Sometime’s he finds himself wondering; in the spare moments where demons don’t infect his thoughts. He writes out the seven letters with a claw and says the word aloud.
Tenebris.
And then it returns to him. That's his name. Whoever gave it to him was gone. Everyone was gone. He doesn’t remember feeling loved but the emotion resides deep within his bones. It was there once. He’s been loved before. In a way, the jet black Viscet wishes such a feeling had never been present. He couldn’t long for it if it was never there. The opposite of love is not hate, not for him at least. Fear resides in the darkness he’s been running from and love is settled in the distant but ever fading light. In his life of cat and mouse, he's determined one thing that can never leave his shaken mind; the opposite of love is fear.
He fears the monster hiding under the bed.
That’s why he runs. He hopes that someday other viscets won’t run when he nears. He wishes that light didn’t fade when he approached it. Tenebris would have called out to them, he would have begged for help, but even words have slipped his mind. All he can think about, all he can say is darkness, darkness, darkness.
Then there is always that sparse moment. It has happened several times before, but of course, he could never remember. In the midst of his escape, there always comes a sort of crimson glimmer. His substantial discovery is always found in the reflection of a stream or even once it was through broken glass. The only light nearby comes from the serpent-like eyes that glow back at him. While fear pounds in his heart, the monster a few feet away seems to be expressing something different. Ragged teeth, as black as the nighttime sky, point both up and down. The creature's fur is always disheveled except for the glorious draping tail. Tenebris learns rather quickly that the luminescent eyes that captivated every shaking nerve within him belonged to no other than himself. That moment fades the moment he runs. Tenebris always runs. Denial wracks in his core as darkness, once again, starts to fog his memory. If his life were a book then the sequel would be a repeat. His climax was always the same. Tenebris was stuck in this loop to rediscover one thing:
He is the monster hiding under the bed.
Story 1: 500/500 words
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- Calling his endless cycle through darkness redundant would be an understatement. All he’s ever known were tricks to getting further away from himself. He often wonders what it would be like for that darkness to fade. He wonders what it would feel like to remember something.
In his never ending spiral there was once a sharp change in direction. It all started with a back turned the other way. He wasn’t sure if he had been extremely quiet or just gotten lucky, but for the first time someone didn’t run. The moment had been surreal. He felt that energy to run suddenly halt in place like his own shaken limbs because there she was in shining color. Her hair, as thin as his own tail, was cascading over one side of her face so perfectly. It wasn’t love, oh no, it was something more. The feeling coursing through him as he watched her linger from the others was comparable to someone on a mountain or someone seeing the ocean for the first time. He was awed. It was then where he discovered his favorite color.
Purple.
Her pelt was purple. He’s never seen such a thing before. Other than black, white, and every shade in between, his world was devoid of color. In his galaxy of black, the purple flower in front of him stood out like a supernova. For a split second he forgot about darkness all together. The only thing, settled in his blurred mind was how he could communicate with her. Would she be patient with him? Would she run the moment she got a glimpse of his face? Tenebris felt the need to reach out to her, to call some sort of greeting but as always he didn’t have one. As quickly as she came, she was leaving. One snap from underbrush had her darting away without a glance behind her. He assumed it was because of a shy nature since she didn’t not get a chance to see the monster behind her.
After that he did what he was best at; he panicked. The viscet’s pelt that matched the sweetest of plums was gone. Ever since then he has been running once again. The memory was wiped from his memory, but every now and then it returns. The sights he saw and the feelings he felt resurface in the form of a cloudy dream. While everyone else can instantly recall their first love, Tenebris is left to constantly wonder if he’s even had one.
Story 2: 419/500 words
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- Tenebris looks terrifying, but the Viscet he is inside is quite different. It’s almost as if the light he runs for is hidden within himself. He is most definitely shy and skittish. His memory is a little weak but that's only because of the darkness that takes up most of his thoughts. If he had someone who wouldn’t run from him then all of that would disappear. His mind would focus less on the fear of darkness, but more so on the fear of losing them. Episodes of black halls and shadowed corners would quickly fade away and alongside that would be his memory. It would all come flooding back to him. After that, Tenebris’ personality would change drastically. His shy nature would remain but happier and uplifting personalities would surface.
Personality: 191/300 words
