Like A Scroll Upon My Deathbed
There's whispers coming from the nearby cemetery. They are audible, frightening, real whispers. The wind carries them upon it's wings, spreading them, bending their timbres into a reverberating pitch. These messages are not like a man-made creation meant for entertaining the willing hearkener, not so like a performance that they fall dull upon those that hear. No. These terrible phrases are meant to tell us things that couldn't amuse the most dismal of men. I'm convinced that the beings that are lurking in the far recesses of the dead garden are telling truths better unknown. I'm sure that what they are yearning to reveal is nothing short of the nature of damnation itself.
And so I sit as lifeless as a mortal man can, stricken with paranoia. Yet, this feeling of merciless dread is not unfounded. I've made out enough of the messages that have ridden the atmosphere's sighs to know my fate. I'm just a corpse that is still twitching in futility. The lessons that have been passed through centuries upon the tongues of madmen and upon the pages of the holy have only served to solidify my fate. I have not yet seen Heaven, haven't tasted salvation's wine. The hell that I've fashioned meticulously from the hour of my birth to this moment has grown too strong, as it seems that I am to take it with me, unfolding it like a scroll upon my deathbed. Dear God, can you not erase my memory?!
They are interrupting me again. But it does not matter. The condemned speaking to the condemned changes nothing. They interject with a semblance like a mirror's reflection of my own ghoulish disposition. They are just confirming my own nightmares. And as the branches of the trees lightly scratch my window, prompted by the very wind that carries my mournful story; I close my eyes. The darkness of nothing is brighter that the hours I have spent in haunted isolation this night. So with this newfound comfort (poor as it may be), I drift into sleep. The macabre and hysterical colours of maddening sentiment I shall undoubtedly find on the other side are no more something to look forward to than an execution. At this juncture in my struggle, however - it happens to be the lesser of the evils.
The welcoming party in the netherworld of night's restfulness is a bewildering one, to say the least. In the forefront of the group stands a lady, tattered, withered with age, yet beautiful still. She has no mouth - just a flat canvas of skin where lips would otherwise be. This somehow comforts me, most-likely because I am not doomed to hear her story. Behind her is a child. This little boy is in a robe of burlap, bowing his head, and in his hands holds a raven. The animal is nearly as big as the boy's head, sitting securely and content in the child's embrace. Next to the ravoner is a figure that my turbulent mind will not allow for identification. The "figure" appears to be tall, if the blur of what I behold allows for the vision to be truth. The grotesquery of the silhouette is it's extreme emaciation. If the being before me (behind the woman and beside the boy) ever needs to eat, it's apparent that it does not get to do so often. I'm suddenly overtaken with a wave of sadness. The boy raises his head and looks directly into my eyes. He tells me that it's fine to weep, yet never moves his lips in the slightest. I do, in fact, weep outwardly toward the gathering of strangers. The old woman holds up her hand in a motion not unlike a redskin chief giving a greeting. I hear her (of course, without usage of a mouth) tell me that my cries are valid, yet they should soon cease. I am not sure whether it was a commandment or a prophecy. The tall, blurred figure seems both still and to be convulsing in two dispositions at once, like two motion pictures played atop one-another. I am not able to harness any sort of serenity, thus crying more and more. With this sea of uncontrollable sentiment, the beings slowly fade away. I begin to make out the sort of landscape that I was missing with the wonder of the group's presense. It seems their dwelling is nothing more than a vegetable garden, complete with tomatoes, roses, sunflowers, and bell peppers. I find it angering that I was not at liberty to perceive them when my welcoming party was amongst them.
My mind chooses to walk deeper into the garden of red, yellow, and green, yet my legs do not allow me to do so. This sudden hinderance causes me to yearn for the comfort of holding in my hand one of the beautiful roses. Wiping tears away from my eyes, I look down. My legs have become a stalk, fleshy like the rest of my mortal frame, yet singular and cylindrical; longer than before, and rooted in the (what appears to be) earth. My longing makes no sense to me, given my situation, but acquiring the rose becomes mandatory. Looking up, I notice something beautifully strange and unlikely. One of the roses trembles, and after a few minutes of the tremors, turns slowly in a clockwork rotation, only to pluck itself free! Willingly, as if to meet a lost family member, it floats toward me, jovially bobbing slightly back and forth in the air it rides. The next thing that happens...is not something I find pleasure in describing.
The rose blurs, spreads, flattens into layers of fuzzy page-like walls of crimson force. A grotesque face appears somewhere in the static mess before me. The face is like no other I have ever seen. The part that stabs my soul the deepest is that - despite it's inhuman and atrocious countenance - I know that it is me. The reception. The absurdity of it's miniscule representation. The element of surprise. The terror of the monstrous face-like spectacle...and the altogether disappointing outcome of doom upon my motionless transformation...they are all me. Something tiny and desirable has become my death. And so the crimson demon of revelation swallows me in a burning hell. Yet, I know I shall escape into another doom after the torment has reached an apex. I shall awaken.
And so I sit as lifeless as a mortal man can, stricken with paranoia. Yet, this feeling of merciless dread is not unfounded. I've made out enough of the messages that have ridden the atmosphere's sighs to know my fate. I'm just a corpse that is still twitching in futility. The lessons that have been passed through centuries upon the tongues of madmen and upon the pages of the holy have only served to solidify my fate. I have not yet seen Heaven, haven't tasted salvation's wine. The hell that I've fashioned meticulously from the hour of my birth to this moment has grown too strong, as it seems that I am to take it with me, unfolding it like a scroll upon my deathbed. Dear God, can you not erase my memory?!
They are interrupting me again. But it does not matter. The condemned speaking to the condemned changes nothing. They interject with a semblance like a mirror's reflection of my own ghoulish disposition. They are just confirming my own nightmares. And as the branches of the trees lightly scratch my window, prompted by the very wind that carries my mournful story; I close my eyes. The darkness of nothing is brighter that the hours I have spent in haunted isolation this night. So with this newfound comfort (poor as it may be), I drift into sleep. The macabre and hysterical colours of maddening sentiment I shall undoubtedly find on the other side are no more something to look forward to than an execution. At this juncture in my struggle, however - it happens to be the lesser of the evils.
The welcoming party in the netherworld of night's restfulness is a bewildering one, to say the least. In the forefront of the group stands a lady, tattered, withered with age, yet beautiful still. She has no mouth - just a flat canvas of skin where lips would otherwise be. This somehow comforts me, most-likely because I am not doomed to hear her story. Behind her is a child. This little boy is in a robe of burlap, bowing his head, and in his hands holds a raven. The animal is nearly as big as the boy's head, sitting securely and content in the child's embrace. Next to the ravoner is a figure that my turbulent mind will not allow for identification. The "figure" appears to be tall, if the blur of what I behold allows for the vision to be truth. The grotesquery of the silhouette is it's extreme emaciation. If the being before me (behind the woman and beside the boy) ever needs to eat, it's apparent that it does not get to do so often. I'm suddenly overtaken with a wave of sadness. The boy raises his head and looks directly into my eyes. He tells me that it's fine to weep, yet never moves his lips in the slightest. I do, in fact, weep outwardly toward the gathering of strangers. The old woman holds up her hand in a motion not unlike a redskin chief giving a greeting. I hear her (of course, without usage of a mouth) tell me that my cries are valid, yet they should soon cease. I am not sure whether it was a commandment or a prophecy. The tall, blurred figure seems both still and to be convulsing in two dispositions at once, like two motion pictures played atop one-another. I am not able to harness any sort of serenity, thus crying more and more. With this sea of uncontrollable sentiment, the beings slowly fade away. I begin to make out the sort of landscape that I was missing with the wonder of the group's presense. It seems their dwelling is nothing more than a vegetable garden, complete with tomatoes, roses, sunflowers, and bell peppers. I find it angering that I was not at liberty to perceive them when my welcoming party was amongst them.
My mind chooses to walk deeper into the garden of red, yellow, and green, yet my legs do not allow me to do so. This sudden hinderance causes me to yearn for the comfort of holding in my hand one of the beautiful roses. Wiping tears away from my eyes, I look down. My legs have become a stalk, fleshy like the rest of my mortal frame, yet singular and cylindrical; longer than before, and rooted in the (what appears to be) earth. My longing makes no sense to me, given my situation, but acquiring the rose becomes mandatory. Looking up, I notice something beautifully strange and unlikely. One of the roses trembles, and after a few minutes of the tremors, turns slowly in a clockwork rotation, only to pluck itself free! Willingly, as if to meet a lost family member, it floats toward me, jovially bobbing slightly back and forth in the air it rides. The next thing that happens...is not something I find pleasure in describing.
The rose blurs, spreads, flattens into layers of fuzzy page-like walls of crimson force. A grotesque face appears somewhere in the static mess before me. The face is like no other I have ever seen. The part that stabs my soul the deepest is that - despite it's inhuman and atrocious countenance - I know that it is me. The reception. The absurdity of it's miniscule representation. The element of surprise. The terror of the monstrous face-like spectacle...and the altogether disappointing outcome of doom upon my motionless transformation...they are all me. Something tiny and desirable has become my death. And so the crimson demon of revelation swallows me in a burning hell. Yet, I know I shall escape into another doom after the torment has reached an apex. I shall awaken.
TTSNSN, May 24, 2013