We all know what it’s like to have an unhealthy fascination for the darkness, an unclean longing for the sordid contamination that only darkness can bring. Where else would you get it, after all? Where else? We all know what that feels like of course. We’re all aware of the attraction, cogniscent of that yearning. That’s human nature I believe, and it would be disingenuous for us to deny it. We all have that longing to dip our toes in the shadowy realms and no one knows this better than me. We all want to be influenced, controlled and ultimately possessed by horrors so appalling that that the mind cannot comprehend it. Naturally we do. Why wouldn’t we? Let’s be straight about that. Let’s not be ridiculously coy on the subject. The matter needs to be aired after all and I’m the man to air it. Let’s not beat about the bush. I am full of talk of course and that’s my problem, were I to own up to it. Which I am doing. I’m full of talk and little else, where the truth to be known. Which it is – or might be, quite possibly. I’m not feeling the best today, as it happens. I’m not in the best form. My consciousness is murky and it is haunted by many shadows. They whisper to me softly, persuasively. ‘We all know what it’s like to be tormented by the temptations of Satan’, I begin again, keen to resume my theme. We’ve all been there – let’s own up to it. We’ve all been down that road – damn straight we have. We’ve all had the experience of succumbing to the temptations of the Infernal One and I think it’s important to say this. We all like to dabble in a bit of darkness and I know this as well as the next man. How well the next man knows it I can’t really say of course, but all I can do – under the circumstances  – is make a reasonably informed guess based on the best evidence that I have available to me. Which is precious little, come to think of it. I haven’t really got much to go on. If anything at all. I don’t know about ‘the next man’. Or the man after that, for that matter. And in the meantime the theological debate rages on, as it always does – ‘Was God right to create the devil or was this an error on His part? Could it have been something of a slip-up?’ We all know that Satan is evil after all, and that has got to be a bit of a problem no matter which way you look at it…