The Night was Dark.
And Stormy.
Of course it was.
When was it ever not these days?

The sheets of rain slammed into my skull like spears of freezing obsidian, piercing straight into the bubbling cauldron of regret and despair sloshing around in the bony cavern.

Why?
Why?
WHY?

The question pounded in my temples, an unrelenting drumbeat. Why am I
alone
alone
alone...?

Religion, that sickly-sweet opiate, had whispered honeyed lies: “You’re never truly alone, my child.” Ha! What a cosmic joke. And Family – oh, they promised the moon and stars, swore on stacks of Bibles I’d always have someone.

Well, where are they now, hmm?

I’ll tell you where. Nowhere. They’re gone, vanished, wisps of smoke from a extinguished candle. Poof!

One day I slipped you see. Slipped on a patch of sadness and fell fell fell down down down into the deepest depression, an endless void, a yawning abyss that swallowed me whole. No human hand could reach me there. No choir of angels could sing me back. Not even God Himself bothered to throw me a lifeline as I sank into the bubbling tar pit of isolation.

They say “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Well ain’t that a hoot! Stronger, sure, like a gnarled old oak, alone in a barren field. I adapted, evolved, mutated into a creature capable of utter solitude in a crowd, an island unto myself. No friend to be found. Not even amongst the imaginary figments prancing about in my hollowed out skull.

And you'll love this - even my reflection, my supposed twin, abandoned me! Turned its back and faced the mirrored room, whispering in sibilant tones: "You've always been alone. And now you'll die alone, as you lived. All
alone,
alone,
alone..."

At this revelation, at this unvarnished truth laid bare, the floodgates burst open! Torrents of crystalline tears gushed forth, electric blue and violet, etching lines of purest sorrow into the bone-white landscape of the most forlorn visage ever to grace this wretched earth.

And the Night remained Dark.
And Stormy.
An echo of the tempest within.

The tears,
they flowed
and flowed,

an endless river of despair, carving canyons into the alabaster plains of my face. And then, a peculiar thing happened. The tears began to… change. Transform. Mutate.

They crystallized, hardened, morphed into tiny, glistening diamonds, each one a miniature mirror reflecting my shattered visage back at me a thousandfold. A million fractured eyes stared back, accusatory, mocking.

You did this, they whispered. You brought this upon yourself.

I tried to scream, but my voice had fled, a frightened animal seeking shelter from the storm raging within me. And then, the diamonds began to move, to skitter across my skin like insects, leaving trails of icy fire in their wake.

They swarmed, coalesced, formed a glittering, pulsating mass that slowly, inexorably, began to take shape. A figure, a form, a being born from the depths of my despair.

It towered over me, a colossus of sorrow, a golem of grief. Diamond eyes, twin voids, stared down at me, unblinking, all-seeing.

“I am the manifestation of your loneliness,” it intoned, its voice a symphony of shattered glass. “The embodiment of your isolation. You cannot escape me, for I am a part of you, now and forever.”

I opened my mouth to protest, to deny, but the words turned to ashes on my tongue. For deep down, in the darkest recesses of my being, I knew the truth. This creature, this avatar of anguish, was me. My creation, my burden, my constant companion.

And so, I embraced it, welcomed it, let it enfold me in its glittering arms. And together, we danced, a waltz of woe, a tango of torment, there in the eye of the storm, the dark and stormy night bearing witness to the birth of a new kind of loneliness, a loneliness so profound, so all-consuming, that it transcended the boundaries of the self and became something… other.

Something new. Something terrifying. Something beautiful.

And the Night, it watched. And it wept. For even it, in all its darkness and fury, had never before borne witness to a spectacle such as this.