'Til the Darkness Takes Us

Each new spring seems to bring with it the sense of a new beginning. Everything is once again sunny and bright, as if the past did not have to matter anymore at all, if one simply chose to wash it away. That past is often replaced with the feeling that anything would now be possible-this time, this year, this brand-new day. However, that belief may only truly be the case in the bright and shiny world that is known to most as "reality." What of another world beneath that so-called reality? A world that only exists in the shadows, a world that most would never believe existed at all. That is a world where those new beginnings may never bring any real hope or light at all. What may look like a new beginning in that world may actually even bring a less-than-happy ending to many of its denizens. For those that inhabit the world that is hidden in the shadows of the human world, if they survive their world at all, that survival may bring them nothing but darkness . . . of one kind . . . or another.