It was dark.

The kind of dark that goes beyond the kind of dark that comes when you close your eyes. The kind of dark that the blind know and then again, they don’t. Blindness doesn’t see darkness but darkness sees blindness. It was that kind of dark.

Her eyelids were heavy with the soft drizzle that fell from the angered sky – the kind that masked the coming rain – and soft whispers radiated from her skin. It were the ghouls that danced around her head, now playing with the emerging fog, that hummed their hushed hymn so that only those already on the brink could hear.

There, there were stories crawling under the skin, violently traced by her veins, folding themselves into her bloodstream where her scratching nails could not go.

It was still dark.

In a world of grey, between the lands of black and white, she wondered, listening to the rugged edged of rose petals, allowing the grass to creep up her calves and the earth embraced her footprints like a beggar would caress the gesture of a rich man.

There, the earth – the dark soil – seemingly whole yet crumbling in the palms of her hands, it was like her mind, her head spinning with desire, memories and dreams. Her feet lie intertwined with the roots of mother nature.

It was dark.

Her hands were dirty, little ghosts clinging onto her wrists like scars, awaiting a flood that none knew would come. She laid her faith upon bare forearms and kissed the wind that carried religion away and away. So far, far away.

There, there. Away.

It was still dark.

Her eyelids were heavy. Darkness – the kind of true darkness – would soon fall upon them. Unless the waking of the sun would beat them to it.

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‘Tales from a distant past’ is a series that features pictures taken in England, 2012 – a series I still regard as some of my best work. It was created in the hopes to bring life back into those pictures taken the summer of 2012, both through visual as written work. Each picture is accompanied by a short story that revolves around the image.

co-written with Andy Ending.