This was fun.

When he looked in the mirror, he could see him. Or it. Whichever. When he closed his eyes, and lay in his bed, he could feel it inside his body, digging and clawing away at whatever it could find. Sometimes, he would look at someone on the street, or even someone he knew, and he would start to see that person age. Hair would be lost; skin would droop. Eventually they would die, all in a split second before his eyes. He would know then that the darkness had taken over. It wouldn’t last long. Soon he could be normal again. Soon.
But it was coming more and more. Rapidly. Growing. There was the day on the bus, when he had the sudden urge to grab the throat of an old lady with kidney cancer. He knew she’d be dead soon anyway, why not help her out a bit? Give the other people on the bus a bit of a thrill?
He yanked the cord for his stop and ran as soon as he realized what he was thinking.
But it was always worst in the mirror. He sometimes wondered if anyone else could read the swirling clouds behind his pupils, the bags under the eyes that gave away his lack of sleep. Sleeping was too dangerous for him now. The last time he had slept for more than two hours, he had awoken naked, with all the knives in the house laid out on his living room rug. Some of them looked a bit less clean than they should have been, by his judgment. He had quickly shoved them all under his couch then, and scrambled to put on some clothes.
It had been months since he had answered the phone or been to work. Probably didn’t even have a job anymore, actually. No matter. It was for the best by now.
The darkness was claiming him.
The mirror revealed more. There were the cuts on his arm. When he did allow himself a few moments of rest, he always had a new wound or four when he awoke. The first were from a steak knife set that had been shoved under his couch. Five deep cuts on his chest. Those were healed now, and all the knives in the house tossed into the garbage. Last night he had passed out for two hours. He had twelve alarm clocks, each set to go off every two hours, to assure he never slept for longer than that, should he pass out. He had fallen unconscious just as one had finished ringing. By the time another woke him, the picture frame containing his favorite photo of his family had been shattered. Eighteen new cuts up and down his arms. He had found a piece of glass lodged deep in his thigh.
This brought him happiness. He figured he was at least as likely to destroy himself before he could hurt anyone else at this point.
And he was going to hurt someone else. The picture of his family had been disfigured. Their eyes were x-ed out. He had removed his brother with glass.
Killing himself would make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but he had never been that brave.
When had the darkness started to appear in his reflection? After he lost all of his stock money? When she left him? Perhaps it was just a fluke, unrelated to anything. He probably hadn’t noticed it at first anyway. Not until it was too late. Too late was now.
He broke the mirror this morning. There was nothing new to see.
Would it really be so bad, in the darkness? He knew things about people when it took him. Bad things. Everyone was so evil anyway. They deserved to die.
From what he had seen, there was no good in anybody. Why should he resist his own darkness?
Hell, even that little girl he had seen while walking to the market this morning was having sex…nay, fucking, her father. Willingly. Her idea. Couldn’t have been more than 10. So much for innocence.
The darkness had wanted to take her. Would it have been so bad?
No one ever would have known. The darkness knew how to do it. How to do it well. He could trust the darkness. The darkness didn’t want to hurt him.
It just wanted to make things right again. The way they should have been. It was up to him to fix it all.
He seems to have broken his mirror. How inconvenient. He needed that to shave. No matter. The glass would be useful. There were many more cuts to make to purify the skin. To bleed out the last of that heathen thing. It was getting in his way. Stalling his progress. If it wasn’t in his body, he would have purified it outright.
Didn’t he just go to the store this morning? Why the hell was he out of everything again? Ah, that’s right, the girl. He’d had to take care of the girl. Sinner.
They’re all sinners.
But that can be fixed.