“Mommy, can you read me a bedtime story?” There’s a book of bedtime stories that is sure to send your mind into a realm of ghastly figures, unpleasant domains and twisted terror. Well, actually this collection is not a bouquet of bedtime stories, but rather a twisted garland of spine-chilling stories that will make your skin crawl and your mind beg for more. That book is M. Amanuensis Sharkchild’s repertoire entitled The Dark Verse, Volume I.

The first passage of this sinister compilation is called “The Unlike Light.” This passage grasps you up from your seat and lifts you into murky obscurity, utilizing in-depth descriptions and precise verbiage. The book has twenty-six unique passages that grab the reader in various ways, carrying their mind into the volume. The author employs everything from sinister creatures to captivating possessions to hypnotize he audience. In this way M. Amanuensis Sharkchild’s book has been compared to the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

The Dark Verse, Volume I originated from The Dark Verse podcast, which shares the bizarre creations of M. Amanuensis Sharkchild. He creates a unique world of horror and fantasy. New episodes are released every two weeks on Thursday mornings. The podcast had an immense following, which directed the tales into a book.

One of the tales in the book, which is quite unique, is “The Changing Feyth.” It is broken up into two parts throughout the book. These stories are centered on creatures called Feyths, which are regarded as demigods in their realm. Their race is described in one passage: “Our flesh is ash gray and its texture is that of leather. Our eyes are as black as coal and our teeth are as sharp as swords. Our ears are large and so are our noses. We grow to be as tall as giants, but our bodies always keep the same slenderness, no matter what our strength or what we consume.” In much of his work, Sharkchild creates whole existences, and “The Changing Feyth” is a perfect example of his ability to paint a world with words.

Though grotesque and gloomy, a lot of the Dark Verse tales have a moral. They leave you in thought in the end. Not only does the reader crossover into the dark worlds of the book, but also the worlds seem to come to the reader. Sharkchild does this by relating grim subjects and thoughts to everyday life.

This all relates to the mechanism of coping—how well we deal with challenges, responsibilities, and situations of stress. Why do some people cope better than others? Why does one person lose his or her leg and can still live a full and happy life while another person that loses his or her leg falls into a depressing, stagnant life. Is the way we cope learned? Gained through experience? Genetic?

This topic has come up in my mind because I am facing my own challenges at the present time. The only answer I have to these questions is spiritual, but even within this realm of thought there is a hierarchy of the ability of coping. Therefore, I really don’t have the answers to the above questions.

The Wikipedia article on coping states that there are three main coping strategies: appraisal-focused, problem-focused, and emotion-focused coping. Appraisal-focused coping occurs when a person modifies the way he or she thinks about a problem. Problem-focused coping occurs when the cause of the problem is dealt with. Emotion-focused coping occurs when a person releases buried emotions, or uses meditation or other procedures of relaxation.

I can’t say that the methods I use even fit within those categories. And these strategies still don’t explain the degree of success one person will have versus another—why does one person cope better than another even with the same strategy?

Well, I think that’s enough to get the mind working. Try and observe the people around you and see how they cope. Also, pay close attention to how you cope. Perhaps you’ll learn something with regards to how to live a better life, because that is a given: the better we cope, the better our lives will be.

When is enough, enough? When can we finally say that we are fully satisfied and not one more item or cent will make us feel one ounce more fulfilled? We never can and it is never enough, and this is why: there is no such thing as permanent ownership. Therefore, when I say enough is never enough, I mean that it is impossible to have enough because no matter how much we have—how much we have “conquered”—we have or will lose it: every penny, every article, every inch. This is no myth or hypothetical gesture of thought; this is reality. Death escapes no one.

I caution everyone’s agendas in life. What matters? What is meaning? I deny that meaning is garnered by the size of your wallet or the immensity of your home. While such materials are beneficial and objects of temporary happiness, I believe that our journeys here on this ever-so-slowly dying world are our candidacies for a potential election into roles of a different kind of power (not the power to change the world or the power to own a piece of it): the power of joy, which is far removed from the ideals of happiness. Joy can be happy, but it can also be sorrowful. It can be empathetic and encouraging, and it can be giving and selfless. The right question to ask yourself—if you are serious about this path of life you walk—is: Do you have joy? Joy cannot be found in possessions and it cannot be earned. If you have joy, then I believe you are making the most of your time—for the focus of your life is not on things, but on life itself.

Your statement to me at this point may be: If what you say is true, then under such an argument nothing really matters, since we lose it all in the end. On the contrary, everything matters: choices, relationships, actions. Making a mark matters, but not making one of ephemeral material. Make your mark in joy. It influences, its sets an example, it leads, and it brings about peace.

Until we stop conquering, the world—our lives and the lives of those after us—will never be safe.

As fast as the Wriggle from Within would come, it would leave. I had no control over its whereabouts, or comings, or goings. I knew little about it other than that it wriggled from within. When it came, I wished it would leave. And when it was gone, I wished it would come.

It toyed with me—that thing that wriggled, that thing from within. It was what I wanted and hated, and what I loved and loathed. Oh, how I wished to tear at my head, to rip it in two and find inside what might have been mine or might have been lost in membranes of time.

On my deathbed I sang to the blue of the sky and the brown of the earth to hold inside my death the Wriggle from Within. But Death told me sternly that I could not bring with me such a nuisance of discord. It would move on, Death said, to new lands and new things. I defied those words and held on tight, but when the light came to take me, I could not go. So I stayed with the Wriggle from Within long into the deep, dark night.

in a very forthright and often disregarded designation, with its non-present consciousness, is a demonstration of chance. But how can chance—the same chance applied to rolling the dice or buying a Lotto ticket—be applied to the self, when the mind and its inner workings are indisputably separate from any other sciences and natures of the world and universe that would have a cause and effect? How can chance writhe, convulse, and vomit in your own head, independently?

Your dreams are you, but they aren’t. You didn’t think of them consciously, which really means you didn’t think of them at all. But your brain, as it exists as a machine apart from your consciousness, still functions, and with its functioning apart from your consciousness, it reveals a second existence lingering within you—a second self, a raw, uninhibited second self that pays no heed to right or wrong, good or evil, ethics or immorality; it gives into passion, it gives into lust, it gives into abysmal, terrible, carnal actions that make you say it can’t be you. I agree with you. It’s not you; it’s your second self. Either that or it’s something else that joins you while you sleep and dances in your mind.

Sleep deeply.

What I write of goes beyond all of the operating pieces of your body—beyond the genetics in your blood and beyond the neurons in your brain. All of these pieces are what they are—a fully functional human being—but they don’t make you. Even the personality you contain is like the theme on a computer—an appearance limited and influenced by components and by history; it still doesn’t give you the authorization over what you now control and the life you now live.

I bring this matter up to elicit curiosity, and a curiosity further reaching than the dismal trap of either cherishing or not cherishing the origins you come from. I am asking you to delve deeper. Genuinely think about the essence that is you. The real you is hidden in the domains of interpretation that only come with active pursuit. Ponder it: Is it arbitrary? Is it luck? Is it fate? Is it placement by a higher power? I am asking the questions, but you have to come up with your own answers. The answers aren’t concrete or comprehensibly absolute, but they are worth scrutinizing with your piercing intellect, and more, your heart beyond hearts.

Lastly, do not place all of the focus on the how, although it is important and the core of my philosophical jab; also place focus on the control of the you you are—the choices you make and the future you prepare.

It may be an instantaneous reaction or a well-thought out plan, but it is what it is: evil. And it is an inventive choice. No one raises a child to hit when angry; it’s the child’s own secret wish, boiled to the surface by consequence. The extremes of adult behavior within this category need not be marked amongst these words, but these actions, too, are casualties of imagination gone wrong, gone real.

There is a strange death in following through with the decisions of wickedness. We lose pieces of ourselves to things lingering beneath the surfaces that are not ourselves. Then those pieces that we lose grow on their own and erode elsewhere: a crack that becomes a canyon. And we all say I could never do that. But you can! We all can. It is potential versus actual. The thoughts—the imagination of it all—cross all of our minds, but do we all act?—no. Only the weak. And I say weak because to act means to lose self-control.

I encourage everyone to be patient and to give resolution a chance. There is a monster in all of us, but it is a monster that can easily be subdued. Pursue your dreams, however dark they may be, but only as fictitious landscapes. Let not those demons of chaos trickle through the gateways of our minds to the actions of our hands.