Darkness Falls

Plot: Beginning (DF)

1. Rally Witts is one of those interesting personalities who can paint anything he sees with a nearly photographic clarity. Even as a child, Rally could sketch the family dog onto a piece of drawing paper, usually in a half hour or less. He fooled his Mom early on to the extent, that she asked, "Where'd you hide your digital camera? I didn't know you had enough money to buy one. It has an amazing black & white mode." He waited to tell her the truth until Mom had told three or four of her besties. "Mom, it's not a photograph. I sketched that picture this morning." Then, her chin really dragged the floor.

Rally has been such a master at sketching, and painting,...in short, visual realism, since his childhood, that he wins every art competition that he enters. Sometimes his parents have had to gently persuade him, "Maybe let's not enter to competition this year. The organization leaders have told us they are losing money, since no one but you enters anymore."

Rally only needed to mention that he was looking for a job as he was talking with the President of Smithers, Harris & Adams Graphic Designers, when President Smithers rolled out the red carpet for him, giving him a corner office, while changing the name of the firm to Smithers, Witts, Harris & Adams Graphic Designers. Rally literally lifted the firm to first place in their large city of Brightly Colorful, Texas.

2. Rally is an athletic young man, along with being a gifted artist, whose identity is wrapped up in his art. His inciting incident happened rather gradually over the course of a couple of months, "October and November, as I recall. We only lived a couple of miles from the office. So, I'd take my work shoes in my backpack, leaving early enough to walk to work in order to save my shower, and then I'd run home. This saved on the cost of parking, and I finished my exercise by the time I got home. I'd have the whole evening free to be with Jessie."

Pausing to take a deep breath, he removed his dark glasses in order to put his face in both hands, and then pull at his hair in a nervous fidget. "I didn't think much of my dimming eyesight because it was the time of year for the sunset to grow earlier and earlier in the afternoon. Besides, we worked under bright lights at the office because the we were fastidious about every nuance of color in our graphics, that had to be perfect, before we would send them to the printers. However, I started to get alarmed when I couldn't see the sidewalk under my feet as I ran home for the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I got home, virtually by muscle memory because my feet knew every inch of the route, but when I walked through the front door, and couldn't see Jessie's face, I crumpled to the floor, and just cried. How am I going to provide for us? I'm blind. How will I ever paint again?"

Thus, we have the premise of the story, Darkness Falls. Life is the greatest challenge when we see no way out of a problem.