In the late hour...

Seated high on a tower...

Is a creature of the night..

Ready to give a nasty fright..

One being moves in the dark,

Walks past the park~

The monster hears the heart beat, his favorite part.

Wings not too far sway-

They head towards the human’s way....

In one swing~

Of the gargoyle’s wing...

The human is taken,

It’s body shaken.

The Sun rises....

Gargoyle goes back to sleep....

In a pile of dead bones-

Not just a pack, but~a heap.

you...

yes you

who says later

...I SEE You...

later

after awhile

splitting this grimace

a while

as if longer

claws and fangs grown

longer

to delay me

from killing time

not me

me...

#ChillingDarkSinister #Challenge

<font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="silver">01.11.2018</font>

Breathe in the intoxication,

Take your medication,

Prepare for the initiation,

Savor the suffocation.

Are you crazy? Join the club.

Gotta be crazy to rise above.

Listen to the voices, lose control.

Become your inner animal.

These are the beautiful voices,

Showing you how to make your choices

Let us control your body.

Now we've made your blood stop clotting.

We may drive you crazy,

Voices so loud, make you dizzy.

But we're your only family,

And without us, you're so lonely.

You try to resist, we give a tug.

We feed off of your soul, and your blood.

Your illness is all of us,

And your sadness is so, so delicious.

Do what we tell you. Cut yourself.

Put body parts on your closet shelf.

You can't speak, you can't tell,

Your eyes are burning, and your face has started to melt.

I am the voice

Inside your head.

Can you hear me?

Do you want to be dead?

We know you're scared

Not like your other family had cared.

Look, they dared to leave you,

Because our teeth we bared.

WE are your demons,

But we love you, give in.

Into temptation.

We'll control the nation.

WE are your demons,

Your brains are seeping.

Give into temptation.

This is damnation.

Hold your breath.

Refusal is instant death,

Trying to escape is a dead end.

We're a gaping wound that'll never mend.

You are bound,

In chains.

Out your head,

Seeps your brains.

Don't fight.

We're always right.

Taking the night.

Losing your sight.

Fill up the bathtub.

Plop in it with a thud.

Feel the danger in your gut.

You are out useless mutt.

Defy, we'll make your head pound.

Throbbing and aching in angry sound.

You're in chains, in a prison cell.

On your way to our hell.

Try to say no, we'll make you feel senile.

Up your throat rises the bile.

Blood and instestines laying on bathroom tile.

Here're the keys to insanity, turn up the dial.

You're starting to give way.

Listen to what we say.

Do what we tell you today.

Your will has FINALLY decayed.

We gave you what you seek.

We fed and you became weak.

Strong will became meek,

Blood from your eyes leak.

And.....

Breathe in the intoxication.

Forget your medication.

This is your initiation.

We love you.

We love you.

We killed you, because you savored the suffocation of these

Beautiful voices.

I drank in his heat

and gave him my warmth

guzzled his rosy potions

blind to my fate.

I swallowed him whole

wings unfolded inside.

Insidious darkness

spilled twisted love

time bombs ticking

cold stone slab of my belly.

Frostbitten, forsaken

wires crossed

timed to explode.

Fingers of fear

knife blade fingernails

clawed my soul.

Wicked hands

smashed my bones

rendering shattered shards.

Slayer of truth

sinister hands of time.

Death lurking around corner

fetid breath stench,

wicked laugh, bitter taste.

Devil’s toilet bowl

spews sinister spawn

new generation,

budding within.

She hunts in the dark. It is her realm. In it she is queen, empress, death incarnate, and god undisputed.

When she takes someone, all you hear is their scream cut short by the splatter of blood and the snapping of bone. Come morning, you find not but a pink smear where she licked up their fluids. That, and perhaps a shoe. The rest belongs to her.

Darkness is her realm and so we keep to the light.

There were more of us in the beginning. Now, there are only as many as the light can shelter. Enough light to keep the night at bay, to keep her at bay. It usually works.

We hear her pacing beyond our dim courage. Hissing lies, whispering truths. Offering threats and deals and promises. We are safe in the light, but frightened men do frightful things.

We threw Jermey to her. After what she told us he did to that little girl, it was as much as he deserved. Only later did I come to wonder if it was true.

She drove some mad, whispering of their misdeeds, telling secrets she couldn't possibly know. The others she taunted without mercy. Picking at imagined faults. Undermining their resolve. She did neither to me. I was special. She told me as much.

Our conversations began during an unremarkable twilight. She had been silent to me for so long. Morbid curiosity prompted me to speak to the woman in the night. Her voice was gentle, reasonable. Try as I did, I never got an answer on who or what she was. She always guided the conversation back to me. My dreams, my desires, my hopes, my fears. I told her all.

She listened. She was so very good at listening. I poured out my soul and she lapped it up.

There are others like us, other camps. Strongholds of humanity. We talk to one of them over a CB radio we scavenged. They are holed up in a factory in Ohio, hiding from a similar terror. Best we know, the whole world belongs to her kind, whatever the hell she may be.

I lost something in our conversations. Some part of me faltered, as if my soul had turned to smoke and ash. My mind was no longer my own. She told me what to do. And I did it, for her.

In the middle of night, bright bulbs burning, I flipped a switch and invited the night in.

Screams and gunshot. Cries of terror. Shattered bones. Then she found the children.

She savored them.

I listened from a distance as my mistress worked through them, mindful that their shrill cries should distress me. I wondered at that, how she had changed me, how she had made me more. It was nearly dawn before she was through.

She slithered to me in absolute darkness.

"You," she caressed my ear with a voice as sweet as honey. "you too will hunt in the dark."

I felt her kiss, tasted the sweet blood on her lips. She took me, body and soul. She poured in the darkness and I was reborn.

In the arms of midnight,

I cannot fight,

I fall,

When the dark comes hungry.

As silence ensues,

The broken muse,

I lie,

When the dark comes hungry.

Here whispers hell,

A soul to sell,

I weep,

When the dark comes hungry.

But tears will dry,

And heart will cry,

I am not I,

When the dark comes hungry.

For when soul dies,

The cold will rise,

I tremble,

When the dark comes hungry.

No flame burns,

Nor soul yearns,

I feel not,

When the dark comes hungry.

Here I stand again,

And recall not the times when,

I felt a fire,

When the dark came hungry.

Now I know no pain,

I am not sane,

I am dead in living,

When the dark comes hungry.

For if I feel I know,

The terrible truth of soul,

I flee the light,

When the dark comes hungry.

And embrace now the shade,

Feel not but the blade,

I smile,

When the dark comes hungry.

Here I rest in the darkness,

And know I am heartless,

For I am the dark,

Whent he dark comes hungry.

Chilling, twisted darkness with sinister intent,

no time to argue exactly what was meant.

Recently, something in you snapped and bent,

and if nothing changes you’ll never again feel content.

Chilling.

Launch a swift attack,

or you’ll never have a chance to fight back.

There’s no one else who can pick up the slack,

so it’s up to you if you ever bounce back.

Dark.

To engage the enemy you can’t see,

there’s no place you can hide for safety.

There’s never any certainty,

but no time to tread carefully.

Sinister.

It’s an internal war,

a battle without the blood and gore.

Still, you won’t return to who you were before,

but no one else will understand this metaphor.

Sitting on the porch watching worlds collide

And wondering if the truth will be classified

Sipping a mint julep; knowing I should be horrified

Though I would consider that undignified

Gazing at the players moving their pawns

Fighting against destiny to become icons

Listening to the warriors singing their songs

And to the clanging of iron and bronze

I, the master puppeteer, watch with glee

As I make the once civil act so beastly

I have made them eat the fruit of the poison tree

And bent their will to suit my idiosyncrasy

I am the dulcet whisper in your ear

That tempts and beckons you year after year

I cajole with lies and caress with fear

I am the master puppeteer, the vile engineer

The room lost its candle light. “What?” I voiced my confusion. From what I remember of the grimoire, there were no elements of dark magic at play in this spell, nor did I chant the incantations for such a thing. Yet the room before me continued to deteriorate. Light, breathable air, the sense of comfort: all stolen.

The center cracked as a dark energy shot through it. Searing pain tore through my chest. It felt as though my heart were scorched by a very literal heartburn. I was forced down to a knee. Moments later, through a fissure of my pain I saw the forming of a small, pitch black hole. It dragged away the floor and bloomed outward at a sped up pace. I fell back on my rear in a failed attempt to distance myself. It was too quick. I plummeted before my brain could make sense of it.

Every corner of my body felt as though it were being poisoned by black nothingness. Whether I was still descending into the abyss or the darkness was slithering up towards me, I couldn’t tell anymore.

If only I were stronger, this wouldn’t have happened.

I closed my eyes and before I knew it my body was coiled in a strange ropey substance like a chair made of webs that spiraled around my limbs. I was strung above a stony crypt. The air was dusty and rustic as though whatever once lived here had perished long ago. All around, hovering in the soot, were floating glyphs like the ones on my magic circle, except 3D and asterisk-like. They were this room’s only source of light - a purple glow with much too little to show.

“You look so scared, so confused. ‘What happened? Where am I?’ I can practically hear your thoughts screaming up at me.” I whipped my eyes up to a voice much closer than I would have liked. A shiver and cringe rang true when I saw her.

A monster.

That was the easiest way to describe the woman before me. She wore an X-shaped black dress that draped in elegant bags over misty skin. Horns, larger than that of any creature I’ve heard of, protruded from her skull and crossed behind her head, twisting down, around, and curving back out in front as a sort of demonic headress. Her eyes too, were exes, slitted, and yellow, and deadly, and scary. Atop her head were long, wicked, shadowy, tangles of thread.

What was she? Her skin seemed like a clutter of clouds confined together in the frame of a human body. Maybe she was a ghost or an illusion. That thought was much more comforting than admitting I was staring at a demon.

I didn’t want to look at her for long. At the same time I didn’t trust her current inaction enough to look away.

With her arms folded neatly into each other, she looked down at me as if judging my soul.

“Did you know,” – I flinched at hearing her voice again – “when you call for magic, using your petty symbols and circles, you are opening a gate to another world and taking what you please… stealing, essentially.” Her eyes narrowed in a deathly manor. “I’m not judging though, every once in a while I like to steal from your world too.”

She’s going to kill me.

Simply being in her presence told me that. Her eyes, her tone, her oppressive pressure acted as a silent message of incoming doom. I ground my teeth.

“If only…” my voice cracked under her crushing demeanor.

The demon woman smiled. “If only.” she repeated.

Next, she streaked a hand through her frizzy hair, starting from her forehead, to the back of her crown and onward. Her arm passed narrowly between her cheek and the horns at her side as she tucked the gathered locks behind her pointed ears. In a faster sweep, she practically threw strands of her hair at me. The stroke she made turned her nappy hair into a straight and silky elegance.

As the ends brushed my face I breathed in the smell of ashes, and then I didn’t breathe at all. I was given an instant and brutal reassurance that her body was not an illusion.

Shortly after running her hand through her straightened hair, she drove it towards my neck, strangling away at my windpipes. The moment she did, all the strange tendrils that shackled me in place, disintegrated, but a far greater threat now trapped me.

I grabbed at her wrist and fingers to get her off, but she was ridiculously strong. Where my grasp shook, hers was firm and secured.

She mocked my efforts: “If only I had magic life would be easier. If only I had money, life would be easier. If only this enemy wasn’t in front of me, life would be easier. Oh, if only, if only, IF ONLY!”

With every shout she brandished, I felt weaker and she seemed bigger. Her previously average-sized nails stretched in length and dug into the back of my neck. I felt the blood trickle down and seep into my collar. Aside from her raising voice, there was a terrible high-pitched ringing in my head now.

She spat her next words: “All you humans say the exact same thing.” – The odd lights in the room began to pulse off and on. – “If only I could see! If only I could breathe!” – The hand I had wrapped around her wrist dwindled back. – “If only I could live my dreams! Life would be oh-so-much easier!”

She wasn’t getting bigger; I was infantizing.

“You people just take and take and even get, and yet, you’re never satisfied. When will you learn nothing you ransack from this place will help you? You could run to any realm you please and steal everything you think you need and still find the same answer. Life will never be easier.

Monica was shocked when she had read the headline. The President had "won" a fourth term. She couldn't bring herself to put his last name with his title. Of course, she hadn't voted for him. She couldn't. Her race had lost the vote nearly ten years ago.

At least they were free. Most Islamic people were now kept behind high walls for the "good of public safety", her boyfriend included. It wouldn't be long before the remaining Muslims joined the rest of their people, and others who posed a threat to national security, in the "Patriotism Retraining Facilities." All of them were required to wear crescent pins on their clothes. When they had proven their loyalty, they would be given American Flag pins and released. The few that had already been returned to society swore that The Facility had been a wonderful retreat, and that their leader possessed the wisdom of God himself. Monica wondered if they said that due to brainwashing or fear.

The current Head of State had wheeled and dealed until unlimited terms had become the law. This President was just like his father had been, a chip off the old block. No, he was much worse than his father. He was far more open about his beliefs, the beliefs shared by all that loved their country.

He had recently let the words, "conspirator cleansing" cross his lips. Many of Monica's friends were quietly outraged. There were others that had attempted to protest, but they were arrested as they arrived at the hastily scheduled rally.

The President had used racial slurs and the bluest curses, referring to the caucasians that had gone to the park, to describe to those who had joined the "uprising." He had nothing to lose. The First Amendment had been repealed long ago, so the press would only praise the leader's great insight. The Commander-in-Chief said that the "solution" was only in it's beginning stages and would serve only "the most noble purposes" the nation. Monica had no clue what that meant.

She turned off her computer, and prepared to leave for work. She couldn't read anymore about what the government was up to. She needed to refocus so she could appear to be a loyal "Stateless-Citizen." She checked her purse to ensure that she had remembered her travel pass, and she pinned her flag to her blouse. With a heavy sigh, Monica left her apartment and began her commute.