Pietr awoke from his fear induced stupor amidst the remnants of his comrades. In a one hundred foot radius around him were scattered the broken bits and pieces of his friends. A hand here, a terror painted face there, a leg to his left and everywhere around him mutilated pieces of red meat in every size and shape. Meat; for they were no longer identifiable as human remains and could onlybe defined as bits of bloody meat.

The last thing Pietr could remember was riding in the Hind-E on the way to the landing zone with the rest of his unit when something suddenly knocked the helicopter from the sky. Opposed to the concussion and explosion of a rocket propelled grenade or a surface to air missile slamming into the chopper, it was more as if some unseen force had plucked the aircraft from the sky and then thrown it to the ground like a child discarding a toy.

After the crash, he and his comrades were once again overtaken. As Pietr crawled out of the wreckage on his bleeding hands and knees, the men in front of him seemed to explode before his very eyes; then another man ten feet to his left met the same fate and only seemed to vaporize before his eyes into a chunky, red mist.

Still, as Pietr 'hit the deck' and layed flat to the earth to protect himself, he had heard no gunfire. As the chaos continued to ensue around him that was eviscerating his unit before his very eyes, his ears pricked to pick up the distinct 'rat-tat-tat' of the automatic .50 calibre that the Chechens must be using to beat the hell out of them, yet as Pietr listened, not a single sound came except for the distinctive shattering of bone and the ripping of flesh around him.

When the smoke had cleared and all seemed finally safe thirty or so minutes later, Pietr found himself alone in a field of human dismemberment. Despite the carnage, he himself had been left untouched as though he had been shielded from the chaos by a protective bubble.. As Pietr rose to his feet and wandered the killing field clutching his Kalschnikov, the scene sickened him despite the fact that he had seen carnage before. Afghanistan, Bosnia, BelaRusse and even while serving unofficially in Kosovo, he had seen and even personally rendered humans into pieces. Still, it was nothing like this, as this was quite beyond the realm of typical warfare. Clearly, this was not the work of rebels, regardless of the extent of the tactics employed by the Chechens, be it in the field, inside the shattered city of Grozny or even within the bustling subways of Moscow where the Chechens planted terror into the heart of Russia. Clearly, this was not the work of some political cartoon enemy that appeared on the Moscow nightly news or within the pages of Pravda, but something greater.

A fear arose in Pietr's head as his heart leapt to his throat when the Chechen's protector appeared on the horizon, moving towards him as if moving on the wind.

This was no man, Pietr was sure of that as it drew ever closer, for the thing appeared with an explosion of bleeding entrails and fragmented bone as it rocketed towards him above the wind bent, golden grass. From the bowels of hell, this thing with gleaming fangs and razor-like claws had come. Of that Pietr was certain.

As Pietr raised the Kalaschnikov and readied himself to pull the pin on the grenade still attached to his chest, he could only mutter to himself.

"Today is a good day to die."

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ON THE  INSIDE LOOKING OUT

I remember walking outside my door that day, its rusting and blackened hinges groaned like a whining and wounded cat struck down by a tire in the street. It wasn't always that way... I walked out, underneath a blood red sky as I always did. The air was cool and dry; parched into an immortal death by a lack of moisture. It wasn't always that way ... Black clouds torn into myriads of wispy shreds spread across the horizon like an old and decaying blanket, but no rain from them fell. The fierce wind tugged at my long and dark, heavy, and laced skirt. It tore it about, showing my milky white skin, as it chilled into the heart of my soul like a flurry of a blizzard.

As I strode down the old sidewalk, it screamed silently in pain from its' age. It lay wounded, fizzured, shattered, and broken in places; a reminder of its' age. My gaze flitted about, to the ground, and to the trees. The grass lay withered, and dead; decayed, and brown like a corpse left in the ground too long and the trees were burnt up by the sun, and wind, blackened and rotting in places. They stood like old, and the skeletal remains of a time, and place that had once existed.

It was'nt always so...

And the houses that once stood strong, megalithic, and proud now leaned horribly from their age, their timbers, and columns rotting away. Wrought iron railings lay broken, and twisted as if some giant creature had rampaged them. They hung loose, snagged upon the porches, and balconies which once held them; and they produced odd shadows that crept along the sides of the wounded, and greying paint that the heat, and wind had flaked to the ground below.

Dust, and bits of dead grass blew along the walk, and empty street; twisting, and turning about as tho they were calight up in some vicious whirlwind. The dust blew into my eyes, and I rubbed them madly to rid them of it while the wind had picked up until it blinded me for a short moment. It blew my long, and dark hair; tinged in purple, straight into my eyes. It stung as it blew across my face, until I brushed it away from my mouth, and eyes. It shone only slightly purple in the setting sun. It was losing it's color...

I heard each hair scream out for a moment. I knew their voice was silent, but still it echoed through my head, and deep into the well of my soul, and heart. Sometimes I heard them, them and other things I shouldn't be hearing. Sometimes the voices and cries are all around me; coming from, and within the old houses. They scream out in pain sometimes. There are some instances when I see sights, and wonders within my mind as tho they are right before my eyes. Often, they involve death.

When I was a little girl, I use to dream other people's dreams. I saw what they saw, and heard what they thought, and felt. It use to drive me mad. The voices were everywhere around me, and at times a dozen sights filled up in my head. I thought I was going insane ... Until one day, I told my grandmother about these things I saw and heard. She told me I was psychic, said I had a gift that few others had, said I was lucky. But I'm not lucky, I am cursed! Some of the things I see truly scare and horrify me so bad that I wake up from a night's sleep before it is over.Sometimes..., Sometimes I am awake.

I walked down over the walk. I didn't know where I was going, I was just walking. Sometimes it helps me think about the things I saw, and heard up in my head. Today it will, I hope...

I was inside of it, inside a T.V.; I think, and inside cameras, and within mirrors. And I saw them, all of them. Those things they hunt down within their mind and with their words and eyes. Those creatures people take hidden stares at, trying to step within their minds to perceive what they are thinking, and what makes them the way they are on the outside. Others try to harm them, mentally with harsh words, and taunts horrible enough to make anyone's blood boil like a cauldron set to fire. And physically they assault them with stones, and sticks that in number could beat out one's soul from its' fleshy shell. They don't understand them, and fear them because of the way they look, the grace with which they move, and the elegance with which they speak. They fall back in complete horror, fleeing them aghast from the shadows in which they hide. Some take it upon themselves to be the judge, and executioner of this world; destroying the ones they encounter. But I know they envy their nature, and mind. All mankind destroys that which they secretly admire and desire to be. I was on the inside, looking out; and it was'nt always so...

They were in there; sitting on an old and mangled couch; deteriorating, its stuffings hung out in places, adorned with torn and shredded fabric. Above them hung an old and fallen in lamp of the pull string type. Its fiery bulb gave off an eerie glow that scurried off into the corners, attacking the darkness that eats away at the day. They were both huddled there staring at me, as I stared back at them in awe. But they saw me not. They stared, eyes wide at the T.V. screen, drawing in all they saw upon it. They seemed hypnotized by the strange waves that bounced and made like violet upon their skin.

But they weren't human. They were children of the night; once so mighty, yet now locked in by their own fears. I heard one whisper to himself within his mind.

"Do you remember?", he began. "Do you remember the vampire I once was? I was so strong, none could refuse me."

I don't know what they watched, but perhaps they were watching others as I watched them. I could'nt gather it at all. They just stared, eyes wide at the screen.
They didn't even look human anymore, tho I knew they once were, long ago. The one who regarded himself as a vampire, he looked mostly human, but the life seemed gone from him. His mouth pouted slightly and in his eyes were contorted sadness, and a boredom enough to drive one to suicide. Of course the immortal cannot die, only dwell inside their tortured shell for all of eternity. He looked more human than the other, tho his skin was blotched with grey, and it peeled in some places. He was falling apart with time, I think. A pair of old, grey eyes hid behind a youthful face, and dirtied blonde hair which fell in matted clumps to his shoulders. He was young once; in body, and heart, but his eyes told a story of centuries of torture, and pain.

The other was scarcely human, tho I knew she once was. She stood over the other, her arms folded upon the couch back; and her head clutched in her hands. There was a beautiful air to her that seemed as peaceful as little brown doves mourning in a low tree branch during the dead of night. She had a fantstic feminine form to her that I envied greatly. Her body ran down in long, and perfect lines like that of a mythological goddess. But her skin was grey, and scaled like that of a lizard, and mentally I felt the fierce heat of white, hot flame that surged within her head and chest like a hot furnace. Deviant green orbs hid within her sockets, and behind long, and wavy auburn hair. What she was I don't know.

She toyed her long, and curved nails through the vampire's dirtied, golden locks; and stared at the image flickering within the computer box.

A third sat huddled in fear in the corner of the room, as if affraid to look at the T.V. screen as tho he knew I was watching him. He hid his eyes in the corner, and covered his ears with his hands; but occassionally glanced hidden looks my way, like a child hiding his eyes from a nightmare on the screen, tho sneaking curious looks here, and there. He seemed almost childlike. He, he who was a mighty child of the night was affraid of the world outside the door. Affraid of the looks of hatred we give him, and in fear of the stones, and sticks we throw. Affraid because he felt the pain more than any other, and the fear. He felt them more than any other, even more than the two on the couch; only because of what he was. Within his mind, and heart was that, the innocence of a child which is shocked to such lengths by the violent, and intolerant that he hides away his eyes.

On the Inside, Looking Out; I saw myself...

TWO

Freaks, We All Are ...

The sun, the fiery orb that scalds the landscape was starting to descend to its daily death. Dusk soon swallowed it as it always does, ushering into being the dark veil of nightfall that encompasses our world like a death shroud. The moon shone as but a sliver, and I could see its silvery eye through the rotting and blackened twisting arms of a giant oak; and out beyond and through the black grey mist of smog that covers the land. It was'nt always that way...

I can remember a time, over fifteen years ago when I was a little girl of five or six; when the land was green, the air was cleaner and cooler, and the world safer. Now only clouds of smog fill the air, and with noxicism. No rain comes and everything dies. The heat comes in a whirlwind, bringing death like a scythe that reaches over the land. The people fade out of existence like a dying candle flame. So many that their funeral pyres light up the outer wastelands on Friday nights.

I started down the fragmented walk, as it lay broken in big and small chunks that rose up in an uneven terrain as far as one can see. I was just walking and trying to think about what I had seen while I lay sleeping during the afternoon. That is me, as always, thinking...

As I came out of the suburbs and into the edge of town, where now the streetlamps burned like phosphorescence and stood like obelisks casting long shadows into their own glow; I saw a crowd of people gathered on the corner across from me. I saw their reddened faces in the glow of a burn barrel on the corner. They were the types of faces you see in any crowd; adults and children, the elderly and the youthful, prostitutes and the virginal, the wicked and the good; the faces that are easily ignored only because you see them everywhere. But one man stuck out from the rest, like the wolf among a flock of lambs - a priest, but unlike the others I had seen on the street corners regularly. Not a drunk, and not eccentric or crazed; but an evil and wicked man with greasy and blacken hair that hung shaggedly over his black eyes. I could hear him shouting about the evil of the world. See and feel his dreams of insane retribution that would deliver his blind and deaf listeners who knew no better from those who live in the shadows. Saw his past flow through my eyes like a wave of terror; funeral pyres and crusifixes, blood and brimstone, while he ordered his crazed believers who followed his every command to set fire to buildings to flush them out of safety and into the chaos of his blacken flock who quickly seized them and ripped them apart in a holied frenzy. A single tear whelled up in my eye and ran down my face and to my breast. I could see his face flushed with angry excitement, as he pumped his bible laiden fist into the darkened air throwing a grimacing shadow on the wall behind him. The angel with scabbed and bloody wings.

"To rid the world of vermin ..." he proclaimed, "and purge society of evil." It exploded and continued to ring through my head like a siren sounding a coming anihilation.

I felt a wave of insanity and chaos surge from his crowd of ignorant sheep. It began like only a droplet and multiplied into a flood - like the angry sea. They had broken into a frenzy of unreasoning anger and anarchy that began to swell and consume the entire neighborhood like a wildfire. The burn barrel was knocked over and its burning contents flung into the streets. A sea of red and frenzied, angry faces became a mobbing riot that broke into the storefronts past their now broken metal cages that were meant to protect them. People were crushed and trampled in the chaos while I heard the sound of breaking glass, shouts and the occassional alarm blaring in my head so loud that I crumpled to my knees in a sharp pain while covering my ears out of instinct, tho I knew that it would not stop. The mass moved up the street like a wave consuming everything in its way and leaving only broken and twisted frangments in its' wake. Four broken and bloodied bodies lay on the street, now only broken shells of the life they had once contained with their bruised skin torn and shredded while they seeped blood that looked dark, black and shiny in the hue of the streetlamps. For one second I thought I heard a stirring from one, but I saw a dark shadow move over the body like a raven and the stirring in their mind had ceased into infinite nothingness as I saw the shadow dissipate. There are more things in this world that we cannot truly see...

I saw him step from out of the shadows with a devious and beaming grin with his twisted black eyes. He looked over the chaos with a delight as his dark eyes swept over the blackened street that held in the day's seering heat. He hadn't seen me until I took a few steps back. He screwed up his face as he stared at me menacingly, and I could hear the word "DANGER" as it pumped and echoed in my head over and over and again. It was only then that I felt his power. Something raw and primal that swirled within his head and rose out of him like a storm in an attempt to invade my thoughts. I blocked him out, but he kept at me like a stabbing dagger that repeatedly lashed out at me with its sharp blade.

He grinned for a moment and the attack had ceased more suddenly than it had begun.

"Another..." he said with a sly tone. "In all my travels of the world I have never came across another like me."

I said nothing, but only watched him with cautious eyes and mind. His presence repulsed me and I could smell the scent of dirt and sweat and a faint trace of alcohol from him. So faint that only I could notice from this distance. A slight sense of blood, but there was blood on the ground and in the air.

"Not much for words are you?" he began. "So tell me, were you born the way we are, or did the perils of life give you the power?"

"Iwas born ...", I said coldly.

"Ah, what a team we could make, the two of us! Imagine, the ones in the shadows would tremble as we put them to the flame! You do know about the ones in the shadows?" he glamourized.

"I know about them." I said, "But, I'd never join you and your ignorant gaggle of sheep in your quest to purge the world of everything you fear."

He screwed up his face. "Stand with me, or you oppose me." he declared.

I turned my back and walked away. I felt the anger rise in him and it came at me. Felt it spiral up and out of him as it came at me before I could act. An unseen force grabbed me up and crushed me as ii flung me over the fragmented sidewalk and into a brick wall. My head swam with pain and blurriness, and I could feel my blood running down my face.

I could hear his laughter in my haziness. It reverberated in my head like an echo and then gradually died into silence.

I think I passed out ...

THREE

And then suddenly I awoke from my false slumber with not the slightest conception of how much time had passed while I had lain in a state of torpor. It could have been only seconds, or minutes or perhaps even hours, but as my eyes came back into focus I began to realize that it had only been a few moments in time for the embers of the strewn burn barrel from the corner still glowed on the dark street like one hundred eyes transfixed in the light of the blood red moon. The bodies still lay broken and fixed with their darken blood in the street and looked for a moment as tho they had been there for eons with their shrunken sockets and cold stillness.

The preacher was gone ... Had vanished into the dark shroud of night like a ghost; but someone or something else was nearby for I felt their mind and soul. Waiting and watching...

The pain in my head throbbed and the blood felt sticky and alien in the tangles of my hair, and as I arose I grew dizzy and the street spun beneath me. After I had regained my senses I went for home; unaware or who or what it was in the shadows, but the presence followed and as I would occassionally peer into the darkness for it, it too seemed to stop and wait; seemingly to study my every move as I scanned the streets and alleys for it. And for one moment, just one short moment that is inconnceivable to time, I saw him standing there in the dark shadows of an alleyway with his childlike eyes meeting mine in transfixtion.

And then he was gone like an appirition, as tho he had simply blinked out of existance and had left me alone with but the hot and lonely purple sky and the blood red moon that ebbed in the western abyss.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

INSIDE CLOSED EYES