The light that shines, It glows, It blinds
This darkness, this darkness is like
traveling through a tunnel with no brightness at the end.
The air hot like a fire that puts off no light, only heat and smoke to choke on.
It twas night, though it twas always night. Not the kind that comforts you with blankets of promised dreams in sleep,
of the beauty beyond the living of day,
the spirits of wondrous fairy tale creatures that were only found in the books read at the bed time story.
Spirited away to lands of old, lands filled with gorgeous entities of light, love,
and that cherished the youth in the souls they guarded.
Nay these were nights that scared you from your bedroll,
to fling spear and sword at the absolute nothingness that pervaded the thoughts of fearful men.
Of God fearing men, but now in the days of no light what was God? or gods?
the evernight prevailed, and pursued us into fear, the evernight, all hail, but none praise.
The evernight, our new ruler, our new god, our new muse. There was nothing left of light,
there was only evernight, and the beasts out of man it created.
And the accursed it crafted out of the minds of good men who had nothing left but,
wandering (as if there was else to do) wandering,
(as if there was an escape for you),
wandering
(as if to find some way through.)
wandering....
As I too wander, I think of missing the sun,
with all its burning hatred beating down upon our bodies,
and our lands, and our children’s glowing beaming faces.
All we think about it as it has left us now is in anguish and anger.
It's all we have left inside our sweating, star hungry vessels. It's said,
the reaper came for our star and took it for a penance,
a pound of flesh to sink us into the evil we had allowed,
the evil we concocted in our minds and seeded into those we loved.
Berthing dissonance in the songs of the heart and the mind,
not even to mention the soul. What we had left of it.
But these are only stories, and all I've known is the evernight,
I was born on the last day of light, that day I was cursed to traverse the darkest pits,
and the lonely walk. My mother died days after my conception,
as the sun hid away from us for the rest of our lives, and possibly our children’s.
They call it "the dawn of the stars" for all we see is the distant glow of our neighbors light.
Torches as we call them, light our path so that we do not lose full hope.
But those do die one day, and if we have no means of rekindling them, we too are lost.
Lost in the vast darkness, the evernight, our god, our sentient one.
It feels us, it fills us, and the fear takes hold and we drop to our knees and beg for mercy.
And then once more we are lost, lost in hope, lost in soul, lost in mind.
And that's when it comes and reaps us. But only taking the parts we hold dear most,
what we have left inside our tar coated shells.
Lost
(like a ship in the mist),
lost
(like a longing lovers kiss),
lost
(like our reason to exist),
Lost....
As I was born into the dark, it’s not as if I knew the dark was there,
but over time I learned of what it’s existence meant.
My eye’s; adapted to it.
My mind; unafraid of it’s lingering touch.
My heart and soul; resilient to the fire of demon eye’s that burned within it.
I was a man who wore darkness like a mask.
I journeyed in it at a young age,
stretching myself over miles of terrain.
Farther and further I walked until the halogens and small shacks were but a star burning in the distance.
As I walked into the unsafe zones, covered with signs of glowing neon paints.
I crafted my first weapon,
I protected our little zone with sword and spear from unspeakable horrors that wandered too far into my zone,
our little slice of the atramentous heavens. The dark beings,
nay the mindless devils that watched from the wild lands and struck when they noticed opportune times in patterns.
Starving for the warm blood we had still running through us.
Envious of the humanity we had left in our beating hearts,
in which the adrenaline flowed through on the nights we heard their screams of terror,
their intent to scare us so when they drank our blood through our freshly removed heads from our necks.
Holding us up in the air draining out red life water into their foul mouths,
onto their fearsome faces, coating them in our essence and getting their rush they so hunted in their precious evernight.
With damned eyes burning in the darkness like stars, their putrid flesh illuminated,
and their;
Claws
(hearing their fearsome calls),
claws
(scraping at the tin walls),
claws
(on four legs they crawl),
claws
(eye open sleep deprivated terrors of our blood flowing like waterfalls),
claws....
I’ve heard legends of men, mere tales of how they wandered the dark lands,
hunting for something to restore the light unto the land.
Or hunting for something to restore their lives.
Men and women who were born before the reaping of our star.
Traversing terrain with the glow of lanterns and torches that were made by men of old,
men who could engineer and craft devices that never ran dry of life source.
I hear most of them never slept, never dreamed, never attempted to escape the reality,
nay dungeon that we live in. But I’ve heard many things about these dark walkers.
I have heard they hunt the monsters like me, but in attempt to extinct them,
I hear they are treasure seekers, I hear they are giants, or gods.
Men who defy the urge to simply survive in lighted area’s with uv halogens,
praying their almighty lights will defend them from the beasts that starve for life in just past the makeshift gates,
that prey amongst the beast gods for more blood to fill it’s aching phosphorus flesh.
That’s what I always remember,
the scent
(like sulfer in the veins),
scent
(like the tracking of a sweat soaked, fear invoked man in the plains),
scent
(like the pile of guts as devouring the white washed brain),
scent....
There were many types of creatures, nay; monsters.
Creatures entails that the being was alive, and these entities were animated but not autonomous.
Their name, was like poison on our tongues and barely were these words uttered
Illumi-mortem
or
Lyman-mortem
which in meaning is dark and definitive of their entirety.
The first meaning brightened-death, the second being even more revealing; glowing-death.
Our simple term for these damned preying souls spoken most often being The Illuminated.
Some of these entities had beaks, some of them had snouts, some of them had no jaws at all.
They all had claws sharper than any sword, like small blades that could rip you clean in half and they would too,
just to feast on the precious fear inside your blood and brain.
They had scales, they had pieces of rotting flesh, they had extra limbs hanging off their bodies,
usually useless, some say caused by the cannibalism of their own kind;
but these were speculations and guesses. Not many science artists lived in these dead, dark lands anymore.
They were not just mindless killers, to say so would be minimalist.
They were sadistic, vicious, and ruthless. They craved only what they could cause, they ruled by it.
The Fear the destruction of the mind, the loss of control, the absence of love, or courage.
The full effect of what they desired, hopelessness.
They preyed on it, they soaked nights of stalking humans to weeks even,
instilling more and more adrenaline and fear into the brain and blood,
it’s as if they could see if filling the being. They had a heightened sense, and could taste the fear before even pouring raped, tortured, and ripped vessel of it’s victims blood down it’s gullet.
“Sometimes I wish I had a bullet”
(the words rang through the dingy dirt floored tin room),
“bullet”
(the loud crack, the singing boom),
“bullet”
(the light in the evernight, smoke in the gloom),
“bullet...”