Darkness

[Guest Lord Ishmael]

You do not recall what ill taken pass, what dark comedy of fate brought you to this.... place, this Darkness. Suffocating all that might allow you some measure of solace or comprehension of what has befallen you, it seems somehow alive with an alien malevolence. It's caress, a cold and empty hate. Rationality escapes you... what mind could grasp reason when even it's connection to it's body can not be confirmed? The silence becomes an intolerable thunder, carrying on as an incessant death knell. Unsure if you float weightless in it's grasp, stand firm against it on some unknown shore, or accompany it in the gut of some great beast, an immeasureable time passes.

 

The suddenness of the sound that breaks through your entire reality is explosive. A sound of utter resolution, of calm, of ancient fixation. A sigh, a human sound, as you have known it. You struggle against yourself to listen... are you even able to hear? Might that sound have originated not from without, but from within? Slowly, as if enrobed in a vacuum, a great tearing suction seems to rend away all that surrounds you. You feel yourself moving, in flight, towards the unknown. Your head swims as light brings colour where there was naught but emptiness. At the fringe of your hearing thrums some distant beat, as if hearing the waves lap the shore from the deep void below. It grows louder even as you feel a sort of coalescence accelerating spectral images into a diorama before you.

 

All of a sudden your mind jerks to a halt and you spin out of control until the ground rushes up angrily to meet you. Slowly and deliberately you rise to all fours, your vision trapped in a clumsy spiral as though you were overcome by an abuse of that firey repast. You close your eyes momentarily and feel a screaming pain stab through your head, rising in a crescendo until it fades into a dull ache. Willing your legs under, you rise, and take in the fantasy of a madman that surrounds you.

 

Jagged peaks and blasted plains surround you on all sides as far as you can see. Pits and twisting canyons mar the land so as to make you think of the skin of one tasted by the flame... And flames there are, great sweeping tongues that lick the broken rock of this world. As you watch enraptured by one great light, your eyes focus to what appear to be insects dancing in the flames... But just as you grasp their existence you realize the impossible distance at which you perceive them. Glancing left and right your gaze is met by such beasts as to defy any doubt of your presence in this most damned of places. Their movements an affront to all that is reasonable, leaping from rock to rock, landing into a slithering, skittering denial of all you previously held to be real. Such wanton comfort do they possess in this forsaken place... such utter surrender to it's damnation. They are those cut from this very evil, molded in rock and flame, and despite your nature, they pass by you as they would another of their own ilk.

 

There is a shudder, as if something within the very womb of this place stirs from it's slumber. Starting in a crawl, a moan of discomfort, disdain, disappointment. The cretins in whose midst you hid, pretending to be one, are utterly welcoming of this song. From the heart of this abomination echos a deep low cry of derision aimed solely at you.

 

You are stripped bare by it's power, it's honesty. You who would be it's judge and jury. With your illusions shattered you touch an ancient conciousness and know it's pain. You who would claim insight into it's designs and purpose. With no place to run, no place to seek shelter from it, you face it's impossible eye. You who would bring it some light of your own, some goodness. With no more sanity to defend yourself you begin to understand.

 

Only now do you hear the sound of your own screams. And they comfort you. You know that you chose this path, this destiny, which none that cherishes the mortal coil could know. A demonic smile touches your face.

 

When the truth is seen, the path is clear.

Edited April 29, 2004 by Alaeha