Darkness crept in through the sharp, pulpy crevices … clinging to the inner walls of my sanctum, which fluctuated and fought with the flickering light caught within — as a stormy, kaleidoscopic maelstrom of heat and light, shimmering and fluttering — culminating in my mind and cloaked body as an oceanic tapestry of unnerving emotions, through which we could not see. The golden hearth stood alone in the center of this cavernous lair as a lone source of desire for darkness, to burn. To burn as a symbol, as a clear message to those all around … as an everlasting emblem, as a deliverance, of that notion of tangible acceptance of one’s surroundings, burning light that sparked into creation long ago. That light now lingering and wavering with swirling, tumultuous breezes, hallowing a spirit of its own…
As the graceless chair beneath me slowly rocked back and forth, pendulous and raw in its own ethereal sway, the slow collapse of creaking planks continued to ravage one another. Unregenerate in their scraping, while tearing away at one another — splintering their essential nature into shards of forgotten dominions … as figures began to appear … wisping phantasmal spirits that could not — for as hard as they strained — grasp and sustain a familiar form. Not yet, I murmured. Their misty streams, devoid of color, of undefinable translucence, crawled up, down, and around a draining emptiness, without whisper, or cry, snaking their claim on the indecipherable articulations found amongst the branched, labyrinthian entanglements that began to outstretch from the ravaged trees, that surrounded my sanctuary … slithering as hungry, shrouded-in-mist beasts across, and within, the crookedness of their captive, sylvan scepters. These fingerlike directives acted for those who could see them, to proceed further into the deep darkness that lies beyond these obscure horizons.
Tremoring, whispered screeches began to merge with the disappearance of smokey air, while I felt the echoes of shadowed reason give way to an implication of their intentions. It could now be minutely understood that their creaking articulations were pointing toward a devouring, shimmering sky of cloudy moonlight above — slashed with the black-and-white strands of a colorless rainbow, a sign of convergence to those that live in shadow. I dared not look, for remaining still in this oscillation of silent being, gave me concealment … I had mistakenly believed.
The winds for which this urging phenomenon had drawn and fathomed, had no name here; for the essential nature of ancient mythologies and long-forgotten traditions was known only to me to be a veiled morsel of taste, for a human consciousness, under the blackened cloak of night — an offering, if you will, to those who might wish and feel a sense of harboring a task of concealment from the invisible beams that emanate from the sparkling pins of distant light. Light that mysteriously peers back down upon us all, remaining at a safe distance, as untouched sources of their gift. Then, as the amorphous-like, floating tatters of hazy spirits began to form more definable figures, fluctuant glows of light began discharging from within the thickest layers of their being, for a purpose of their own, here on earth.
The winds began to intensify, growing stronger with each flicker of light, the shapes gradually began to disperse into nothingness — almost as if to, quietly, slither away into the blackest shadows of darkness. Why?
As if birthed from the ordered confluence of celestial harmonies, distant screeches grew to cackles, which began to draw upon my presence. Light and darkness began to burn stronger, together with their approach. Soothing warm droplets of history, sacred recollections of our shared deliverance, lingered as untouchable havens on the edge of my soul, while their asunder seemed to converge. Grotesque screeches slashed through an awakened cacophony of labyrinthian tempests, as thunderous storms began to gather around us; shielding away any witnesses of discrete recognition to what was about to occur— a bouleversement of my calm suspension to any known reality to mankind.
Generable hollows filled my every conception of what was occurring. Permeating screeches drew nearer, the shapeless obscurities fought to take shape, battling fractured throes and endeavored declivities — basins of lost souls scraping together any possible sense of being, screaming to regain vessels of this unknown plane of existence. Unknown to them…
Before me began to hover an unfolding draw on my own eyes, a faceless figure, bodiless … and, yet, agonizingly delivering harsh, searing creaks from the crippled stairs of ancient days. Those stairs that had lain abandoned for so long between us … at my cold, boney feet, depressing down and down harder, clawing against its frame and form. Each step an ascension for an unseen force … creaking, louder and louder, echoing within a frenzied gravity that spiraled as a fractalization of unreason, a replenishing insanity wrapped and layered with pained assuredness. Suddenly desperate, spasmodic grasps from the encroaching smokey, sylvan beasts that lay before me began to determinately stretch through the vaporous pulsation of tormented souls. Demonizing the air between us, these shapes were now forming more familiar, homogenous figures … familiar to those who walk and breathe along the earth. At last, my eyes, remaining open — for there was no choice — gave witness to their approach and claim, as their gathering encompassed my entire vision and devoured the last of the air that lay between us.
Then … their ripping … tearing … and razing of my hallowed domain, my familiar, my sanctuary … I was brought on high, risen above … and ferociously carried down the scratching, clawing steps towards a strained mortality of staggered divisiveness and eminent execution — all the while, the trees began to circle, following, clamoring, draining the last of my light, my source of divinity to something greater, higher towards the fading memories of a shadowiness worthy of omniscient reflection by way of shared understanding. The trees would remember — I held onto — as the cackling ensued, ensnaring, alchemizing to the deafening calls of savagely snarling animals; while the clarity of my demise was painfully becoming more evident … that this reckless parade, this processional trudge of hardened visitants, were forcefully moving with a unified, intentional deliverance of me … to the culmination of their renegade causes — of which I still could not yet define.
Screams led to murmurs, murmurs led to screeches, as candlelight led to a glowing shelter for the last of my thoughts, my own intentions while on this earth. Reddish hot, and redolent for those near, my horizons were turning to phantasmal memories, as the light began to dim further … the hardened ground, so grey and sparkling, started to reveal itself to me, unadulterated with its presence, as a slight tilt of my consciousness allowed for the spectacle before me to reframe as an all-encompassing canvas to my world. Then, as their screams reached a pinnacle of unrestrained disbelief, the ground before me raced closer, faster, closer and closer, faster and faster, as the quickened rush of air around me pushed my light away … gone, gone, gone
It was later written in the inky sacred texts that I was cherished; that I was enchanted by youthful imaginations; that I was worthy of destroying hunger; that I was a golden, orange, yellow source of light for those creative figures hidden behind their masks; and, especially, for those who bravely sought to question the realm of secluded personages, that cloistered themselves behind hinged doors. All the while, their sacrosanct intentions simmered, as they eagerly, fanatically approached the gateways; before their clenched fists knocked a roving reverberation of their driven ambitions, hallowed enticements, and sense of place, sweetened by their holy deliverance of a question from each and every one of them: “Trick or treat?”
Days later, heavy, turbulently falling water from a darkened, moody, blustering sky, eventually washed the splattered remains of my decapitated head from the asphalt. Slowly, indolently flowing across the crystalized conglomeration of a gentle, sloping surface, toned by an orchestral dance of splashing droplets, I eventually disappeared through a cast-iron grate into the maze of tunnels below … only to be reborn, again, in the nearby fields.