Feel free to add your own response to the prompt in the comments and I will post it on my blog.
Everybody needs a name, you say, but do they? When one lives in the shadows there is no need for names. Living in shadows is a solitary profession; what need of a name when there is no one to speak the syllables? No one to understand or know or care. You want to call me something, call me Silence and that will be my truth. Call me Shadow and that will be my truth. Call me nobody and in that truth I will drown.
I used to have a name, used to belong, used to be a creature of the light, but one step into darkness begins the fall. Sometimes, in brief flashes upon waking or sleeping, I remember those days, but they are not mine any longer. They belong to another, to the one who filled the vacuum of my space.
Yesterday, I went down to the dark river to drown, but how can one drown if one is nobody, nothing, memory? There is no escape from the shadows. In here, one is always drowning.
If, in the dead of night, you feel eyes upon you, know that is me. I have watched you for centuries and I will watch you centuries more. The Light will never escape the darkness, just as the darkness will never escape the light. So who are we, these creatures of the Dark and Light?
I am dark and hate and fear and death. I am the monster under your bed, the feel of eyes on your back, the sliver of darkness piercing each soul in the light. Teasing, tempting, oh subtle and beautiful shadows.
I am war and torture and despair and plague. I am you looking out from innocent eyes. I am the dirt in your soul just waiting to be free.
I live in shadow. No one sees me. I don’t need a name.
Do you?
A Writer's Life 