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Nichole
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Nichole |
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WhileIWasGone Member
since 2002-07-18
Posts 486
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I remember my papa and I walking outside the door that day, it’s rusting and blackened hinges groaned like a whining and wounded cat struck down by a tire in the street. It wasn’t always that way.... As my papa and I strode down the old sidewalk, it cried silently in pain from its age. It lay wounded, fissured, shattered, and broken in places, a reminder of its’ age. My gaze flitted about, to the ground, and to the trees. The grass lay withered and dead; decayed, and brown like a corpse left in the ground too long and the trees were burnt up by the sun, and wind, blackened and rotting in places. Trees stood like old, and the skeletal remains of a time, and place that had once existed And the houses that once stood strong, megalithic, and proud now leaned horribly from their age, their timbers, and columns rotting away. Wrought iron railings lay broken, and twisted as if some giant creature had rampaged them. They hung loose, snagged upon the porches, and balconies which once held them; and they produced odd shadows that crept along the sides of the wounded, and graying paint that the moisture and wind had flaked to the ground below. Dust and bits of dead grass blew along the walk, and empty street... twisting, and turning about as though they were caught up in some vicious whirlwind. The dust blew into my eyes, and I rubbed them madly to rid them of it while the wind had picked up until it blinded me for a short moment. It blew my long brown hair; tinged in blonde, straight into my eyes. It stung as it blew across my face, until my papa brushed it away from my mouth, and eyes. I heard each soul scream out for a moment. I knew their voice was silent, but still it echoed through my head, and deep into the well of my soul, and heart. Sometimes I heard them and other things I shouldn’t be hearing. Sometimes the voices and cries are all around me, coming from and within the old houses. They scream out in pain sometimes. There are some instances when I see sights, and wonders within my mind as though they are right before my eyes. Often, they involve death. When I was a little girl, I use to dream other people’s dreams. I saw what they saw, and heard what they thought, and felt. It used to drive me mad. The voices were everywhere around me, and at times a dozen sights filled up in my head. I thought I was going insane ... Until one day, I told my papa about these things I saw and heard. He told me I was special, said I had a gift that few others had, said I was lucky. But I’m not lucky...I am cursed! Some of the things I see truly scare and horrify me so bad that I wake up from a night’s sleep before it is over. I was inside of it, inside a book; I think, and inside a fairy tale, and within mirrors. And I saw them, all of them. Those things they hunt down within their mind and with their words and eyes. Those creatures people take hidden stares at, trying to step within their minds to perceive what they are thinking, and what makes them the way they are on the outside. Others try to harm them, mentally with harsh words, and taunts horrible enough to make anyone’ s blood boil like a cauldron set to fire. And physically they assault them with stones, and sticks that in number could beat out one’s soul from its’ fleshy shell. They don’t understand them, and fear them because of the way they look, the grace with which they move, and the elegance with which they speak. They fall back in complete horror, fleeing them aghast from the shadows in which they hide. Some take it upon themselves to be the judge, and executioner of this world; destroying the ones they encounter. But I know they envy their nature, and mind. All mankind destroys that which they secretly admire and desire to be. I was on the inside, looking out; and it wasn’t always so.... The sun, the fiery orb that scalds the landscape was starting to descend to its daily death. Dusk soon swallowed it as it always does, ushering into being the dark veil of nightfall that encompasses our world like a death shroud. The moon shone as but a sliver, and I could see its silvery eye through the rotting and blackened twisting arms of a giant oak; and out beyond and through the black gray mist of fog that covers the land. It wasn’t always that way... I can remember a time when the land was green; the air was cleaner and cooler, and the world safer. Now only clouds of fog fill the air, and with noxiousness. No rain comes and everything dies. The heat comes in a whirlwind, bringing death like a scythe that reaches over the land. The people fade out of existence like a dying candle flame. So many that their funeral pyres light up the outer wastelands in Nicholes dreams. I started down the fragmented walk, as it lay broken in big and small chunks that rose up in an uneven terrain as far as one can see. I was just walking and trying to think about what I had seen while I laid in bed during the night. As papa and I came closer to the beach, where now the sun burned hard and strong I saw a crowd of people gathered on the corner across from me. I saw their reddened faces in the glow of a burn barrel on the corner. They were the types of faces you see in any crowd; adults and children, the elderly and the youthful, prostitutes and the virginal, the wicked and the good; the faces that are easily ignored only because you see them everywhere. But one man stuck out from the rest, like the wolf among a flock of lambs - a priest, but unlike the others I had seen on the street corners regularly. Not a drunk, and not eccentric or crazed yet an evil and wicked man with greasy and blacken hair that hung shaggily over his black eyes. I could hear him shouting about the evil of the world. See and feel his dreams of insane retribution that would deliver his blind and deaf listeners who knew no better from those who live in the shadows. Saw his past flow through my eyes like a wave of terror; funeral pyres and crucifixes, blood and brimstone, while he ordered his crazed believers who followed his every command to set fire to buildings to flush them out of safety and into the chaos of his blackened flock who quickly seized them and ripped them apart in a holy frenzy. A single tear welled up in my eye and ran down my face and to my breast. I could see his face flushed with angry excitement, as he pumped his bible-laden fist into the darkened air throwing a grimacing shadow on the wall behind him. The angel with scabbed and bloody wings “To rid the world of vermin...” he proclaimed, “and purge society of evil.” It exploded and continued to ring through my head like a siren sounding a coming annihilation. I felt a wave of insanity and chaos surge from his crowd of ignorant sheep. It began like only a droplet and multiplied into a flood - like the angry sea. They had broken into a frenzy of unreasoning anger and anarchy that began to swell and consume the entire neighborhood like a wildfire. The burn barrel was knocked over and its burning contents flung into the streets. A sea of red and frenzied, angry faces became a mobbing riot that broke into the front of store windows past their now broken metal cages that were meant to protect them. People were crushed and trampled in the chaos while I heard the sound of breaking glass, shouts and the occasional alarm blaring in my head so loud that I crumpled to my knees in a sharp pain while covering my ears out of instinct, though I knew that it would not stop. The mass moved up the street like a wave consuming everything in its way and leaving only broken and twisted fragments in its wake. Four broken and bloodied bodies lay on the street, now only broken shells of the life they had once contained with their bruised skin torn and shredded while they seeped blood that looked dark, black and shiny in the hue of the sunlight. For one second I thought I heard a stirring from one, but I saw a dark shadow move over the body like a raven and the stirring in their mind had ceased into infinite nothingness as I saw the shadow dissipate. There are more things in this world that we cannot truly see... I saw him step from out of the shadows with a devious and beaming grin with his twisted black eyes. He looked over the chaos with a delight as his dark eyes swept over the blackened corner that held away the day’s searing heat. He hadn’t seen me until I took a few steps back. He screwed up his face as he stared at me menacingly, and I could hear the word “DANGER” as it pumped and echoed in my head over and over and again. It was only then that I felt his power. Something raw and primal that swirled within his head and rose out of him like a storm in an attempt to invade my thoughts. I blocked him out, but he kept at me like a stabbing dagger that repeatedly lashed out at me with its sharp blade. He grinned for a moment and the attack had ceased more suddenly than it had begun. “Another...” he said with a sly tone. “In all my travels of the world I have never come across another like me.” I said nothing, but only watched him with cautious eyes and mind. His presence repulsed me and I could smell the scent of dirt and sweat and a faint trace of alcohol from him. So faint that only I could notice from this distance. A slight sense of blood, but there was blood on the ground and in the air. “Not much for words are you?” he began. “So tell me, were you born the way we are, or did the perils of life give you the power?” “I was born...” I said coldly, my papa made me what I am. “Ah, what a team we could make, the two of us! Imagine the ones in the shadows would tremble as we put them to the flame! You do know about the ones in the shadows?” he glamorized. “I know about them.” I said, “But I’d never join you and your ignorant gaggle of sheep in your quest to purge the world of everything you fear.” He screwed up his face. “Stand with me, or you oppose me,” he declared. I turned my back and walked away. I felt the anger rise in him and it came at me. Felt it spiral up and out of him as it came at me before I could act. An unseen force grabbed me up and crushed me as it flung me over the fragmented sidewalk and into a brick wall. My head swam with pain and blurriness, and I could feel my blood running down my face. My papa grabbed me up from the ground. I tripped over my feet daydreaming my life away. Papa scolded me as he cleaned my face with his handkerchief. Nichole you have to stop dreaming so much your not going to wake up he would tease. I could hear his laughter in my haziness. It reverberated in my head like an echo and then gradually died into silence. I think I passed out... |
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| © Copyright 2002 Dea_Di_Amore - All Rights Reserved | |||
bsquirrel
since 2000-01-03
Posts 7855 |
dda, i can feel the rage, hate, pain and lost confusion of this piece/excerpt. I don't know how people survive to live a better day, sometimes. Especially when the world is as closing in and dark as Nichole's descriptions -- when lost. Wow. Mike |
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wranx Member Elite
since 2002-06-07
Posts 3689Moved from a shack to a barn |
This....is nothing short of incredible, a thing of great and horrible beauty. I stand in awe from this glimpse within. Thank you allowing it. ~Ed In reply to "which way do we go?", the answer was never "straight", but, "progressively forward". |
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brian sites Senior Member
since 2002-06-25
Posts 1475usa |
DDA you take the reader's mind sharpen it with your life's whetstone and plunge it into your heart make us feel your bloodheat this is what the Greats do stunned |
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WhileIWasGone Member
since 2002-07-18
Posts 486 |
Thanks guys....your kind replies mean a lot to me.....thanks for reading. DeaDiAmore |
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