It was a sheer drop, fifty feet at least. He did not go easily; he had to be
dragged by the shirt collar, kicking and squealing, with a cuff and a curse
added for good measure. The bottom of the gorge was deep and dark, with
no way out save to scale the vertical walls.

He didn’t like the dark.

“I want some light around here!” he called. His voice was needle-thin. It
barely penetrated the thick, stifling air. The echoes laughed, and there was
no light.

“Light!” he repeated, beginning to grow a trifle annoyed, “I asked for light!”

“Asked?” said a voice.

“Yes, asked,” he repeated angrily.

“Asked?”

“You heard the first time! I asked!”

“You didn’t ask.”

This was an unforeseen obstacle. He tried to peer through the darkness, asthough to cleave it with his very gaze.

“I asked,” he ventured eventually; in what he thought was a winning tone.

“You didn’t ask,” the voice persisted.

He sank into thought. He had never been compelled to think before,
accustomed to having everything served up on a silver platter the moment he
lifted a finger.

“OK, I didn’t ask,” he said finally. “I’m asking now…I want light.”

“You demanded, you whined, you moaned, but you didn’t ask. You didn’t
and haven’t asked. I don’t call that asking.”

“Well, I do! I want some light and I want it now!”

The echoes laughed merrily along with the jeering voice.

“You call that asking?”

“Yes, I do, and you’d better get used to it!”

Silence.

“Light!”

Silence. Not even the echoes chuckled now.

“I—want—light!”

He was getting afraid now. Every time he spoke, his words splintered and
scattered away like slivers of glass, and the silence came rushing back in
waves.

There was something uncanny about that voice: he had heard it before. It
seemed to be a part of him, and yet…so completely alien to anything he
remembered.

“Please give me light,” he whimpered, throwing his head back, trying to
catch a glimpse of light from where the walls of the gorge fell back to admit
the sky. Even up there the darkness was complete.

He was devastated. He began to scrabble at the unyielding stone walls,
feeling along the cracks, begging, pleading.

A terrible laughter exploded in his ears, and it was not the echoes’ laughter
this time. It was the voice, laughing without mirth, enjoying the spectacle,
unfeeling, unheeding.It was the laughter that jarred his memory. The laugh ringing in his ears used to be his not long ago, not very long ago, before he had been pushed into the
gorge. How often had he laughed like that, and at how many people, he
could not remember. He had laughed at the very possibility of himself
scrabbling in the dark, believing that the eternal light was his forever. He
had laughed—scorned, even—at the very idea of himself battling that which
he had never feared before…

That voice—that voice! How often had he spoken like that, in such
unyielding tones?

Was it possible that he was facing…himself?

Himself as he had been—as he had been, and would be again, if he ever
escaped from this gorge. For human nature is like a rubber band, springing
back to its true essence when there is light, and straining to its humbler form
when bent by darkness.

Laughter again. Louder this time, threatening to drown him, envelop him,
tear out his eardrums.

“You couldn’t beat me.”

He didn’t reply.

“You never could. Your good side was always your weak one.”
“I could!” The words shot out of his mouth before he knew it.

“That’s exactly the problem, you little wimp. You could, but you never
will.”

He couldn’t answer. How could he overcome the challenge of self? The
challenge the darker side always presents to the better one. Beat me, or
submit to me. He had submitted. His heart, mind and soul.

But there was a third choice. There always is. Beat me, submit to me, or stay
quiet. And the good side replies, “Yes, I’ll stay quiet, but when the darkness
without is greater than the darkness within, let’s see which side triumphs, me
or you.”And here he was. Reduced by hardship to his meagre good side. His
willpower was in such a poor state, it couldn’t cope with his dark side, being
used to being propelled by it instead of challenged.

So he chose to remain quiet. Chose not to answer the challenge posed by the
voice, his dark side. Beat me, or submit to me. I won’t give you any external
light. You must beat me with the light within. First he had begged, pleaded
—his internal light couldn’t handle his dark side. This was what he thought.
But the flickering flame within him just needed the fuel of his will to spark
up and engulf his dark side, and swallow it forever. But he would not
provide that fuel. The fuse was inches away from the flame, but he wouldn’t
let it light.

It was a battle lost before it had even begun. It was as if the enemy had flung
aside its weapon in a bid for him to show his strength, but he, having
depended on power instead of strength all his life, couldn’t—wouldn’t—take
up the challenge.

When he ventured to look upward again, he sensed a change. Maybe it had
all washed over and the challenge was no longer standing? A light kindled at
the top of the gorge. A flickering little flame. His heart leapt at the sight.

“I am here to help you,” the light called. “I will lend you my strength. Defeat
your dark side. Then you can climb out.”

But he was already on his feet, scrambling up the wall of the gorge.

“Defeat that part of your self!” came the cry. “Don’t use my help to escape
—use it to conquer!”

He was almost there…he’d made it. He sprinted away towards the faraway
glittering lights on the horizon.

The flame nearly fluttered out with exasperation. “If he had stopped for two
seconds…but he didn’t. He thirsted for the attractions his darker side
offered, and wouldn’t defeat it.” It blinked, shivered, and winked out.The gorge waited silently. Don’t wait for your turn in there to think yourself
out—is your better side your reigning one or your suffocated one? Only you
can tell. Or the gorge will certainly teach you.

***

Originally published in Us Magazine, The News International.