January 7, 2009

• This is why I nap

  I won't share my scariest nightmare with anyone - your head would literally explode.

  So instead I'll present...another.

  I'm leaning over my sink and staring into the mirror. My eyes are sewn shut with thick, black thread. I carefully clip the threads and slide the thread free of the stitching. Behind me appears a pale woman.

  "Do it." I say.

  She slits her wrists and I hold her as her temperature drops. Sitting on the edge of my tub, we watch as a woman with raven hair, dressed in a sanguine dress, pulls herself free of the mirror. I let go of the first woman and grab the one from the mirror. She struggles with me and attempts to reenter the mirror - eventually she gives up and smiles at me.

  "How about a kiss?" she asks.

  "It isn't wise to kiss death." I reply.

  I drag her into a hall of mirrors. None of the mirrors sit within frames and they float in the air. One of them shatters and thousands upon thousands of ravens erupt from the space it once possessed. Their numbers blot out the sun and they plague humanity, harassing them whenever they set foot beneath the open sky. People travel here and there, lanterns lighting their way, but they all eventually gather at a railroad station connected to everything. Next to the station is a warehouse which I enter to escape the ravens.

  Inside I am approached by two black men in tailored suits - on dressed in black, the other in red. The one in red means to kill me because he deems me a threat. He understands what I do - the mirrors in that room of mirrors each represent an event that must come to pass to usher in the end of all things. A war within a war has begun and powers that interfere with the lives of men and angels are killing to be the last one to die.

  "I've captured death." I tell the man in the red suit. "When the last day comes there will only be us - there's no need to send one of us there today."

  "I agree." he smiles and snaps his fingers and his body bursts into a flurry of lidless eyes and black feathers.

  I leave the warehouse and the black of the Raven Sky tears apart and is replaced by a scarlet canopy that drives the living and the dead mad. Great and small kill and are killed and the Great City's streets are quickly filled with dead.

  At my desk again, everything is as normal as normal can be. I frown because I am alone. A midget enters my room with a long scroll and hands me a feather pen.

  "How would you like to be god? I can free you!"

  I take the pen and parchment.

  I'm returned to the scene of carnage and I'm swept up in it. I take a crazed man by the hair and bash his head into the ground until his brains spill out. Another approaches and with a snap of my fingers his entire body is engulfed in flames. I'm wounded again and again with knives and bullets but I just laugh. Well, I'm lying - I laugh and I kill my attackers.

  But then my eye is caught by someone whose eye I've caught. It's another blood-thirsty human but I know this one. My heart sinks because I know she has been swept up in this because I signed that parchment - my best intentions weren't enough. As she charges me, my blood her only interest, I snap my fingers and I'm returned to my desk. My last act as god is to erase everything I've done and return myself to mortality.

  But that wasn't the end of it. I was still being hunted by The Host That Must Die. In my mind I see a beach littered with the dead and dying. As if tethered to my vision, I'm drawn there and I'm placed within a burning building on the water's edge. I burst through the roof and take to the sky on white wings. A hunter on a winged horse fires at me with a bow and I go into a free-fall to reach the ground more swiftly. As the tree reach up to take me I burst my human skin and become a beast the size of a rhino but the shape of a wolf.

  I pounce on the rider, break his mount, and tear him apart with my jaws. The stars fall from the crimson sky in droves - everyone of their countless number tallying a death amongst the warring hosts. The ground shakes with the pounding steps of a black beast born from nightmares and nursed on real abominations. The footfalls grow faster and louder as it moves closer to me and I brace myself because I know I must face it before I can even fight it. When it sees me it releases a wail that fills my heart with panic and when I see it my mind retreats from the image and all I can do is scream in terror. Instinct kicks in and I fling myself at the creature - I desperately maul it.

  Mirrors continue to fall to dust as reality shreds. The ancient words holding all things in check are gone and now all that remains is destruction. Time unravels and long dead peoples fight along side the last generations born to man. In a galaxy not entirely unlike our own sits a black tower which is constantly besieged by mortals hoping to reach the top. A god of pure darkness and a god of pure light built the tower to test mortals. Neither god is evil, neither god is good, but they and their monstrous hordes are locked in a near-eternal struggle.

  As all things fall apart, all rules are broken save one - all things must end. But I, amongst the little racing towards nothing, stand to see the very second before ending all because I've got an ace up my sleeve. Death wished to be mortal and in sharing my life with her I became immortal up to the end of days.

  Spoiler alert: Death dies in the end.

  • 6:35 am
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