SHADOWS
LOST MAN
The wind blows through the trees as the man walks briskly through the center of his fears. Behind him are the thousands of wandering Nightbreeds, eyes looking at nothing but the future in the past. The man sighs thinking about them and their effortless flight into the blackness of every man and womans soul. The click of rapid moving feet echoes through the breathing walls that stare at the man. The eyes opened on a brick wall to watch the man walk past giving him the erie feeling that the town was much more alive then he had ever wanted to admit. Picking up the pace he pushes to get away from the eyes forever piercing his soul. Who deseves this walk? he wonders in his lost mind. How did I end up on this sidewalk going knowhere? ahead the flowing gown of a fair woman in white steps forth and holds a hand to him. She grabs the shaking hands of the man and holds them. She smiles as she wraps her arms around him and hides him from the peircing eyes of the sullen nightbreeds and the lonlie town. As the man lays his head upon the womans shoulder, thankful of this intervention she has brought, he finds a familiar odor in his nose. First it is the sweetest of perfumes, then the bitter sweet smell of nostalga. Finally he smells a scent that makes him almost vomit. Looking at her face he discovers the rotting flesh of a woman who used to be an essence of beutey. She stares through hollowed black sockets and holds him still. but revulsion strikes the mans stomach getting the best of him as he sinks to his knees. The eyes appear everywhere, surrounding him. With the sigh of an old creaking boat the woman bends down and picks him up. She holds him before the eyes that stare and he begins to feel weak. Out of the darkness the zombies move forward to help the woman hold him up. I AM NOT LIKE YOU PEOPLE!! he screams. But they are as unhearing as the woman who's ears have now rotted and fell off. With a whisper as gentle as a summer breeze on a sunday afternoon she whispers: ahhh but you are dont you see? you chose them as your family and me as your wife on the day you chose not to see your life or your death. You are home. Then the man realized he was being dragged and tried to struggle but could not because he was so week with sickness at the woman and the now thousands like her who had joined the march to wherever this madness would take him. It came to an end in front of a dirty window that could have been a bar or a church, he couldnt tell. He suddenly wanted to just lay down but the woman seemed so strong now. She reached out and wiped off the window and the man almost jumped. There was another one inside the building. LOOK, she shouted out, LOOK. BEHOLD WHAT YOU ARE. The man stared long at the rotting face that seemed so familiar. Its nose was rotted and full of holes, eye sockets black and staring at nothing, ears falling off. suddenly he wanted to cry but could not, wanted to run but had no energy. He understood who he was looking at in this dirty glass window but what could he do? He looked to the woman holding him up and she spoke again: WELCOME HOME.....
GHOST IN THE MIST
Sunrise on day of departure. The time to serve is over...for now. The time as a Soldier of exposure is complete and I am still alive. Distanced from the crew as we ride I am so aware...in pain I am aware. Soon i will be fast passed out awaiting the awakining when i must serve again for a crew who does not respond to their own calls of help. The mist starts slowly forming in the open fields and engulfs the bottoms of large monsters spitting their life upon the ground so that all will live longer. It rolls forth on a cool morning breeze..creeping upon the road in an effort to find an end to its infinite roam. With this comes the destination that none in the crew could think of. They, after all, will still be serving their time of exposure when i am gone. The sun burns into the mist and forces it to reveal the entrance to a destination for a meaning. And that was where it formed. The ghost in the mist seemed harmless enough as it was not much more then a mound of dirt forming in our lines of vision. Stepping upon the sacred soil with the mists swirling around our feet we gazed in secret awe and open dismay. The law that governs the limbo that we concieved and resided in decided that we had lingered to long. The mists swirled in and the orange burn of the mother of morning began its inflicting torture on our eyes. I looked to the sky, knowing, the exit was the only vision we had left. My time serving with this crew had come to an end after we took witness to the Ghost in the mist...but enlisting again is a twist of arm as much as fate. I will return...back to the soldiers of exposure....back into the mists......
SHADOW ON THE WALL
His eyes seemed to stick out most on him...the look of fatigue...the resemblence to the thousand yard stare of a boy who has seen what men should not. He sat in the mans office who spoke in a language he mostly did not understand..using words he had never heard before.
The boy thought back to why he was here. Not sleeping had become serious to his mother so she had sent him to this man. The man asked him and what he said was not at all what the man seemed to want to hear. He told him of the shadow on his bedroom wall...strange in shape with what looked to be a top hat on its head and long fingers that seemed to stretch across his wall in an evil pointing manner. Pointing is what they did...at first..then they changed..changed him. The first time the he had dismissed the shadow as his imagination running wild with him...until he awoke and tried to scream....he could not breathe. There before him was the shadow...arms stretching across the wall to wrap around his throat...sealing all air from his burning lungs. The boy had fought and fell out of his bed, able to breathe after hitting the floor. Looking up to the wall it was in plain site just standing before him..not moving a muscle like a predator waiting to srtike its prey. His window had opened just then and out of the midnight sky came the shadow of some distant angel....there in his room before the shadow in the top hot. It had wings from around its shadow back and it was everything the boy had envisioned in an angel. Then they battled...fought their strange war with the boy as a spectator. For hours and hours they fought and to the boys horror the man in the top hat rammed a shadow knife through the angel...killing it before his eyes. The angel had slumped down the wall and disapeared leaving the boy with the man in the top hot alone again. The fingers moved forward and touched the throat of the boy sealing the air from him again. Morning and the boy awoke to find himself on the floor...sunlight flooding over the wall where he had witnessed so much. SO.. the doctor asked. Why now cant you sleep? The boy explained it just as the shadow had said in his mind....THE FIRST TIME YOU DIE IS YOUR LOSS OF INNOCENCE...THE SECOND TIME YOU WILL COME WITH ME....YOU ARE NO LONGER A CHILD. The man-boy was now awaiting the return of something he feared...dwelled upon...the final battle for his soul...and who would win the next round. Where would he go? These were questions he had asked the man who could only shake his head and let his pen drop to the floor without a flinch of any kind.
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Tours of my mind
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