Monday, February 25, 2008
Ever been alone? Truly alone? in the dead of the night, when the whispers of your own soul creep up to your ears, rendering sanity and peace to naught.
when not a slivver of memory can save you. not of friends. family. anyone or anything you love. nothing. you are bared to yourself. to a torture you yourself devised, even though you be not aware of it.
you can shiver. you can tremble. you can shake. these small comforts are allowed you. but it's all you have now.
you pull down your own defenses, your own barricades that you set up against yourself. ripping them with a vehemence almost bestial in nature. just a short while ago, you set them up.
she walks into your mind. briefly. almost like a passing flame in the shadow of your mind's depth. tip-toeing on the very edge of your consciousness.
you can see her. breath takingly there. standing right before you. beseeching you with an all to familiar hand that you have memorised. you need her. and that need aches from within. permeating.
and with a suddeness almost cruel, she's wiped away. torn asunder. by you.
and the same hand grips the pommel of a dagger, only to stab the source it originates. say goodbye to you, from you.
it's burning like a fire within. unquenchable and beyond all chance of extinguishing. whenever i see them about, it leaps foward from the very depths of my charred heart, like some monstrous imitation of the guard dogs of Hades. It takes all the strength of my soul to rein it in and hold it, however painful it is, close to it's cage. because i know, if i release it to the world, hurt and pain will follow. something a part of me might still regret.
but in the dark of the night, when the rest of the world is quiet in slumber, im not alone. no. im never alone. the beast in me never sleeps, it never rests. ever and anon it prowls the deepest hauntings of my tortured soul. and so, i write now, a recount. A recount of a time past that i shut out the world from my physical being, and spoke to the beast within.
it wasn't difficult. silence is paramount to the night's domination. with silence as my crutch, i still my soul's motion. and as such, i hear the beast's growl as if it was within my very ears. but i hear without hearing. rather, a sense. i sensed, almost simultaneously, the beast's image. a vision made up of dark thoughts and an underlying current of energy. the beast stared as i stared. breathing with an innate growl in it's deep chest. of wolf-shape it was, and yet, not. for it's shape was ever changing, shifting like dreams into nightmares, distorted and bent. the light of my mind seemed to drain into the very depths of this monster.
for a while i drifted, between sleep and the dregs of awareness. waiting. i feared to initiate. for a reason i cannot identify, even now. and then, the beast spoke.
as a human it did. with moving lips and tongue. so amazed was i by this occurence, that i barely understood it's words, few as they were.
"i can give you power."
moments more was it before i could respond, by thought that melded into speech.
"What sort of power? and why?"
the beast responded immediately.
"The power to vanquish fear. to turn the dark into light. to seize weakness by the throat and throttle it until it is no more. to wipe out thine enemies, big and small, for all foes regardless of ability, fall by my power."
then there was silence. except for the beast's guttaral respiration. utterly bewildered and shaken from the passage of it's malevolent voice, i questioned in my quivering voice,
"but you have not answered, why?"
at this, it's eyes glowed a red glow, red as of blood that fountains from a hopeless wound. red as of rubies in the riches of the oldest kings. and it replied,
"because you, amongst many others, have need of it most."
my will bent to his. i could feel it consciously, like a metal pin twisting inexorably from a greater force. and i broke. with a strength in my voice that was not mine, i answered,
"i will take what you have to give."
almost immediately, it dispersed into wisps of darkness. for a while it seemed gone from me, and i despaired. then new vitality soared into my limbs. a strength of sorts i could not imagine. and i was empowered by the darkness that was the wolf.
and my soul has been jailed ever since.
