There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after.
For me, one came a couple of months after a jury deadlocked in the trial of the man who assaulted me. We were waiting for a retrial, the date constantly being changed at the last minute. It was frustrating, and I’d had enough. I was tired of being at the disposal of the defense, of the court system, and of him. The idea of confronting him seemed like the natural next step. The justice system was keeping me a victim. Not allowing me to face him and show who he really was.
When I told my father that I was going to confront the rapist, he was very upset. “Why do you need to do this? Nothing but harm can come to you. You’re dealing with forces too large to contain.” He thought it would make things worse. Maybe he was right. But I needed a chance to take my power back. I needed to look directly at something that had changed my life and not only prove that my power was bigger than his but also to understand why he did what he did.
Sitting across from him in jail, I expected many things. Anger. Coldness. Power plays. What I did not expect was conversation. Ordinary conversation. A human being sitting in front of me—not the monster my mind had created to survive what happened. That realization unsettled me because if evil always looked monstrous, we would recognize it immediately. Sometimes darkness wears familiarity. It charms and humors. Kindness shown in moments where kindness should never erase cruelty.
Years later, when I created the entity in The Darkness, I realized I wasn’t writing about monsters. I was writing about persuasion. Rationalization. The quiet ways darkness finds its way into human choices. Not through force but through permission. Some conversations end when people walk away, but some stay with us. They become questions and stories, and sometimes they become books.