Darkness

The symbol of darkness consistently is the stand-in or representation of nothingness in multiple stories and poems in this collection. In “Invocation,” the darkness consumes Farfal’s world, creating a place where there is nothing to go back to. At the end of the story, he wants to travel to the beginning of time, before darkens started consuming time periods. In “Nothing O’Clock,” The Doctor brings the Kin right before the beginning of time. Before time crashed into existence, there was nothing. This means that since the universe without time is filled with nothing, there is no method of escape.

Diaries

Diaries, which appear in several works in this book, represent things that are personal or secret. In “Nothing O’Clock,” the contents of the diary are so important that she is driven to go to her old home, now owned by the masked people...