Category: BLOGGING 101

A Nightmare’s Embrace

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101, fantasy

Sliding over your body,

this soiled, reluctant lover

presses its red mouth to your forehead,

and slips its tongue

into your mind.

Your body goes stiff

as the weight of nothing there

presses you down

into the soft mattress,

for now,

soil’s substitute.

Tonight, dear one, no soft clang

of shovels in earth,

no clatter of sod on the

casket lid.

There is only the weight of nothing there.

Your mind, too frightened to think.

Your body, powerless to act.

Surrender.

The scream is defiant, disturbing,

and splits the silent night air

like a hatchet makes kindling

of twigs.

You decide to fight, not lay there

like a newborn lamb,

and with your thrashing.

the nothing that is there releases you

to come back to yourself.

Restless, fightened,

trembling, crying,

but still

alive.

Not still.

Alive.

Alone in the Library Garden

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101

      Ziun was still restless after spending his first week at Novice Hall.

      He was there because some magic user his mother knew saw that he was gifted with a seed of magic, though she didn’t know what kind.

      She told them the school would discover and nurture his talent, so his parents sent him there, where he quickly learned he was not an exciting exception of talent.

      It stung how quickly they bundled him off, but once there he was relieved as the courses progressed because he didn’t stand out, enduring the frustrations they all did at trying to develop and control their gifts..

      But this night….

      He supposed it was homesickness. 

      Donning his robe and slippers, he quietly left the others to their sleeping happens, noxious as some were, and walked down the shadow filled hall.

      The ensconced torches cast soft, dappled ambers, and created some shadows of their own. 

      The moon’s saffron beams were molded into coffin shaped rhombuses by the floor to ceiling windows that lined the east wall. 

      Ziun took a moment to admire the beauty of it..

      At the end of the hall were two floor length doors with glass that opened into the garden, and from there to the path leading to the library.

      There were stories about the library being haunted, and parts of it that were closed.

      He decided to put his walk to use and see what there was to see after hours.

                                                     ****************

      The door sentry was asleep. Even worse, he was sitting with his spear across his lap when he should have been standing watch and holding it.

       It was just as well. He would have brooked no argument and sent Siun back to the Hall to fight his insomnia on his own.

       He found the garden path, paved with stones that were uneven as the earth beneath and between them battled for sovereignty. Siun took his time lest he trip of stub a toe that would make him curse, wake the guard, and get him into trouble he wasn’t looking for.

      As he walked the path, he noted how quiet it was outside too. 

     There were no small creatures rustling the underbrush, no nightbirds, not even an owl.

     No plaintive, haunting howling came from the surrounding hills. 

     No deer bellowed in the night at catching his scent.

     No wonder the sentry fell asleep. 

     No sense of foreboding came over him to make him wary, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be vigilant. Unpleasant things could surprise someone, especially in such a lush garden.

     Stopping for a moment, he decided to try out a sensory spell to see if anything was hidden that meant him harm.

      A warmth spread over him, starting from his hands, and he closed his eyes.

      The warmth left him, pulsing into the high garden trees and over the flower beds, slinking along ivy vines and curling up tree trunks like rambunctious squirrels. 

      Nothing came back to him, and he opened his eyes. 

                                          **************

        As he continued walking around the library, heading toward the back of it, the garden began to change from lush to wild, as if the gardeners didn’t get to it as frequently.

       The moonlight had shifted to where it was now more toward the front of the library, so now     the garden in the back was darker, and Ziun’s arm hairs stood up, though he still saw nothing that threatened him.

       Turning a corner to go back to the hall, he passed an open window a little above his head.

       It had a lit lantern that sat on a small stack of books with others next to it.

       One of them was open to the middle. He couldn’t see the title from where he stood.

       Thinking it might have been another late night student, he waited to see if anyone emerged,

 but no one came.

       “Is anyone there?” 

       The lantern light flared and brightened.

       Ziun. You’ve come at last.

       He shivered. “What?”

       We’ve been waiting for you.

       “Who? Who are you? Why were you waiting for me?”

       He wanted to step back, but found himself walking toward the window. 

      Standing just beneath the sill, he saw the light flare again and felt what he thought might be a hand against his cheek.

       To help you.

       “Help me? Help me to do what?”

       As he stepped away the hand went from his cheek to the front of his robe, seizing him, pulling him back.

      The light in the lantern went out, and more unseen hands lifted him into the library as the window closed behind him, and the light flared to life again, and he saw all the spirits looking at him.

       One stepped forward, placing a spectral hand on his cheek.

       He saw the nails, and dared not move.

       Set us free. 

The Runes of the River Souls

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101

Chapter 1: Execution
The last thing Niah remembered from her life before now was how cold the water felt against her skin, and inhaling the blackened river water where they threw her bound body.
The fools believed its scum-covered, shadowy hue to be the souls of the wicked it had claimed through the years, bound by the current and unable to escape.
Over the years, the town elders oversaw and executed outright blasphemers, whores, and witches, no matter how mild or defiant. She had seen some of them dragged screaming and cursing to their deaths, made ‘examples of’ disobedience to the whims of the very ones who consorted with them, putting their cracked masks of piety back on their besotted faces.
When those events had run their course, they turned suspicious eyes to the healers, their small homes and herb gardens routinely searched and robbed of whatever things of meager value they owned.
She’d been one of them, and now it was her turn.
They broke down her door, shattered her flower pots, and burned her garden, all the while shouting false accusations over her pleading screams of innocence.
********
There was no reasoning with these inbred townspeople, but they thought she’d been tortured long enough. Her voice was sore from a raw throat that had been screaming in pain for almost an hour.
They only gave her moments to regain her breath, if not her wits, before they carried her down to the river and threw her into it. if she floated she was guilty, but if not, she was innocent.
She floated at first, then began to slowly go under, the scent of vegetative decay strong in her nostrils. The water had a thickness to it from the years of whatever loamy growth covered it like a second skin.
A brief tug on the rope around her waist sent another shock of pain through her, and the weight of her underclothes, now soaked and slippery with black detritus, was getting heavy.
Taking what she thought would be her final deep breath, she disappeared from their sight beneath the flow. She managed to still her thoughts and rising panic as she worked at the ropes on her wrists, hurrying to make anything in the knot loose.
Her thoughts racing with what might be coming for her in the murky water made her had to calm down or pushing herself back up for air would soon be impossible.
Thanking a deity she wasn’t sure existed, she sloughed off the rope on her wrists. Her skin was raw, and a small tendril of blood slithered out and up, curling in on itself in a slow, serpentine dance.
Her body jerked, telling her she was losing time as she involuntarily took in some of the water mixed with her blood. The coppery, briny taste forced her to place the last of her strength into her legs and push off with all her might, not knowing if she’d break the surface.


Chapter 2: Reclamation
She broke the surface, gasping loud, tears and slime blurring her vision, and she wiped them both away as she clumsily tried to swim to the riverbank. She made it, crawling and spitting and crying with gratitude that her nascent efforts were successful.

On the other side none of the townspeople remained.

Did they give me up for dead?
The setting sun was hazy behind graying clouds heralding a storm.
Of course they left me. They want to be indoors when it gets dark. How long was I down there?
Alone on the riverbank, the sky full of sunset shadows and leaden clouds, she clambered to her knees and tried to stand, but the shock of being bodily thrown into freezing, black, rushing water, and the close brush with death combined to make her fall back down and sleep.

Chapter 3: Redemption
When she woke, the rain clouds covered the first of the evening stars. They were distant from her touch, indifferent to her plight, but the evening breeze slipped around her like a lover’s arms.
She coughed up some black water, and found herself covered in the skimmed
slime.
It was most dense on her forearms, and streaking down to dapple her hands, so her first thought was to rinse them off. As soon as the thought came she smiled at the folly of it. Washing up in dirty water…
But something was different. Something was different.
She’d never felt more alive.
It was a curious thought, but there could be no other explanation.
She stopped a moment, the river loam giving way to ankle high grass as she left the river behind. It felt like her skin was drying in the breeze, but it didn’t feel normal.
Putting her arms out in front of her, she saw the black mucus seeping into her skin, and her fingers starting to glow with an eldritch light.
Everything in her wanted to scream as the light crept up, engulfing her, heating her face, drying her eyes and clearing her vision, and knowing it without any formal recognition of it, she knew she was now the thing they feared.
The men were feasting and dancing, the women gossiping and dancing, and the musicians played so lively and well. The Elder’s house was bright and festive, and the wards he’d carved himself on the gate and into the doorframe stood sentinel against the black magic Niah now held.
As the vision faded she heard the whispers of the river souls calling to her: Welcome, Niah. Greetings, Daughter. Sister, we’ve found you at last.
They assailed her mind with violent visions she might inflict on her accusers.
“Not tonight,” she said. “Let them think me dead, carried off by the current and over the falls.”
And with that, as the first drops of rain steamed and sizzled against the blackness on her arms and the runes of magic from past river souls were etched into them as she walked, she saw her desecrated home sitting in the field like an old dog too stiff to greet her, and with the most small and casual wave of her hand, she opened the door and lit a fire in the hearth.

The Gate of Longing

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101, fantasy

In the vision, she saw herself standing at the bottom of the stairs.

To her left a marble sentinel statue held the marble scroll etched with the warning:

“Beyond this Gate, your dreams, fulfilled. Consider well the Fate you willed,”

From the railing pillar to the stairs a raven watched, calling to his companion. 

As he descended, an angry call escaped him. He remembered those who’d cast the spell to confine him in this form. It had been long ago, but the hatred and fear never abated

As for the woman, she was aware of them watching her, but had no fear.

All she desired was to come out of her somber, ashen world filled with shades of black and see the colors of the world denied her when the curse descended. 

They fell silent, gauging her spirit and courage.

Time out of measure had passed since anyone stood where this woman did, but time had no real meaning or substance in a place like this.

The chilled wind was gentle, the fog was thick, the trees bare, and the ground cold and hard.

Above all else, the silence hugged her like an old friend, reluctant to let go and let her start her journey alone. 

The letters of the warning scroll gleamed in the white moonlight, a written whisper of warning that she would get all she asked, and though she never read them aloud they echoed in her mind like a spilled secret that only she would hear.

Choose!

Now!

The ravens spoke in her mind right after the warning faded, their patience at an end.

Dinner awaited them in the corpse of a boar that gored and killed the man who hunted him.

Blood’s copper scent filled the air, and they were loathe to be last to the feast.

One step up will change your life.

All the way, a different path.

Choose, now.

She remembered reading that somewhere, but like the colors, they eluded her. 

Choose. 

Now. 

After a deep breath, looking around at her lead-hued home, she did.

Dead Ringer

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101

       Across the meadow from the new village were the abandoned ruins of the old  one.

       No one in the new had any knowledge of the old one’s history, why it was abandoned, and why they chose not to settle there. 

       No one cared enough to research it.

       They were content to tell their children not to play in there, since it was surely populated by vagrants and vermin, neither of which had good intentions toward children.        

      Of course the children played there almost every day, never seeing a vagrant, and making temporary pets of the vermin, until the first evening stars became visible.

      In the fading sunlight they ran pell-mell across the meadow to show off their treasures to their friends not bold enough to go. 

       At home, they’d end up  taking the scoldings and lashings in stride until the adults in their lives gave up or got too busy.

      After some time, as long as none went missing, and all returned home, nothing more was said.

      Because of that, the children grew bolder, and made plans to stay overnight.

      Scouting their sleeping spaces by day, when the stars came out, the daily run across the meadow didn’t happen.

     They knew the adults would be worried, and maybe look for them, scold them, and give them a lashing, but decided it was worth the adventure.

    They watched as the sky darkened, and a mist slowly rolled over the meadow like a creature exploring its new home.

      With nervous giggles, but drawing comfort from each other, they said their goodnights and took their places.

      No one knew when the dream started, but all of them remembered they had it.

                                                           ********************

      A man of medium build, stripped naked, was surrounded by angry people shouting and cursing his name as they pelted him with rocks, sewage, spit, rotten vegetables, and the bones and corpses of small animals.

     All of his efforts to cry out, get to them, and hear him were frustrated by the sheer volume and force of everything hitting his face, blinding and almost choking him to the point where he dared not risk talking again. 

     A large, bulky old man raised his right hand, and all the cruel merriment came to an abrupt end. Then he pulled the rope attached to the man and forced him to kneel.

     “Is this what you want?” He pulled the man’s head up by the hair, forcing him to look at the crowd through swollen eyes.

      They cheered in affirmation.

      He looked down on the man. “Bell ringer, you stand accused of having the preacher’s wife in adulterous carnality. Do you deny it?”

      “I’ve done so from the beginning. It’s she who seduced me, using the ways of witchcraft.”

      Yells, screams, and peltings until the large man held up his hand, again calling for order.

      The preacher came forward, his wife beside him, but he held her arm in a vice grip, and she was wincing.

         “This is my wife, bell ringer! Guard your tongue. Take back your words, and all will be forgiven. My wife will be restored to me, and your life to you. Say it.”

      The bell ringer looked at them all, but spoke to the preacher. 

      “Was it not you, preacher, who told us to speak the truth no matter the circumstances? Would you now have me lie to spare your own?”

      “We’ve been betrothed, man, long before this date, and she did not bewitch me. We spoke our vows in this very church, before our gods. You yourself rang the bells for the nuptials, and now you accuse her not only of adultery, but witchery?”

       “I swear it by my soul, preacher, she did make it so I could not help but look at her whenever she passed. One night I rose from my bed and stood in a forest clearing waiting for her, and at the hour of midnight she came, her clothes falling about her as she moved, and bade me kiss the mark on the inside of her thigh.”

      She paled, as did the preacher. 

      The burly man noticed this too, and as the crowd gasped and quieted, he looked at the preacher.

      “Is there such a mark?”

      “No.”

      “He lies,” the bell ringer said. “Pull her skirts.”

      The preacher punched him in the jaw, and a string of blood fell from his mouth.

      “Preacher…” the burly man warned.

      “You’ll do no such thing. Hang him.”

      “What?”

      “HANG him! Drape him from the bell itself, that he might make a double clapper and ring his lies through the gates of hell itself.”

      The burly man turned to the crowd. “What say you?”

      “Lift her skirts, Elder!” 

      “Leave her!” 

      “Don’t you dare! 

      “Test her!”

       The preacher put her behind him. He wanted to run, but their backs would be turned, and they’d be overtaken. She clutched his body so they’d have to pry her off him.

       The Elder’s uncertainty grew, and the preacher once more spoke through the silence.

       “Hang him. See it done. We are leaving.”

                                                                 ********************

       The children woke at first light, quickly gathered, and too fearful to discuss what happened, began to make their way across the meadow, but the mist was still there.

       They hesitated.

       Behind them, on the gentle rise at the other end of town, the bell began to ring, alternating between soft and loud.

      “Don’t look,” the older kids told the younger ones. “Don’t turn around. We’ll wait here until the mist clears.”

       They never crossed the meadow anymore, and from that day on, at first light they always heard the echo of the tolling bell.

Forbidden Invitations

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101

Nature does its best to shield us from the world of spirits and soul hunting fiends,

but we have an unhealthy fascination with living forever, fearlessly self-indulging with no fear of consequences.

That is the very essence of damnation.

Remove the promised threat of being consumed by vermin while roasting on a spit,

awake all the while, the pain so great that screams clog your throat, while the demons surrounding you baste you once more in filth of their own making, and laugh as you suffer.

But you viewed the possibility of such a penalty unworthy of you, only of others.

They fool you every time, these beautiful, succulent demons…

So we stand at the shield, pulling ourselves up to peek over as into our neighbor’s yard to see if they’re available to chat a while.

They answer us when we call with our spells and incantations, wishes, and rituals, bound to them by blood. Blood is the most sacred thing to heaven, and the most desired in hell.

Our soul-snatching, flesh eating neighbors don’t just respond.

They climb over the fence, and charge through the open doors and windows we so willingly, foolishly opened with our candles, crystals, cards and boards, diagrams of pentagrams, and animal sacrifice.

And at the darkest level, without a flicker of light, the bones of mankind are mired in the gory blood of their own sacrifices.

They come at our invitation, these fiends, and take us.

They slip over us like cold, clinging wetsuits, and snatch our minds and wills in clawed fists to bend us to their service.

Still, we take no heed of the rising pyres, believing ourselves the exceptions, beating the odds to live forever with no guilt as those around us scream at the vast, black abyss.

Me and mine, you and yours.

All of us.

Welcome.

Empty Alms

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101, fantasy

  “One coin to tear the veil between worlds, my friend,” the blind beggar said. “I’ll tell your future for a coin or two. The more you give, the bigger the tear, the more I can see what will become of you.”

     He was always around, this beggar. 

    The weather didn’t matter, nor did the amount of people on the streets.

    For him, there was only darkness, only the shimmering specter of the void.

    Or so it was told to me.

     “My sight for this world was shut off so I could use what remained in the next, you see?”

     He grinned at his own bad humor, but the explanation in and of itself made sense.

     It wasn’t something I’d want for myself.

     “Do you have anything to spare for me, sir?”   

     “I do.” I put the coin in his cup.

     A moment later he gasped, and blood trickled from his mouth.

     He licked at it, then smudged it with the back of his hand.

     “Why are you bleeding?”

     “I bleed for you, good sir. Your end is violent and sad.”

     “But why? I’ve made no enemies.”

     The beggar laughed. “Don’t be foolish. We all have them, real or imagined. You see, their hearts are poisonous and rotten, a briar patch alive with shimmering, wriggling clusters of worms. 

     “Their dark thoughts stoke the bonfires of dread nightmares, and so I say for you, sir, a violent end.”

     “Is there no way to avert it?”

     He shook his head. “It is an ending, sir. How does one avoid the end of a thing?”

     “Perhaps another coin…”

     He shook his head, put his cup away inside a pocket somewhere in his robe, and looked at me as if he could see right through me. 

     “You don’t have another coin. My time here ends. Be vigilant, sir; you’ll not see me again.”

     As he turned to go away, I felt a warm, light stream on my chin and wiped at it.

     Blood. 

     Why is there blood in my mouth?

The Moaning Trees

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101, fantasy

Mark me here, children, and take a look at the forest around you. 

  For time untold, whoever once lived here used the trees for gallows, and every type of body was hung there: men, women, children, foreigners, criminals, those who practiced magic, or were believed to be doing so, and those who renounced it when the tables turned.

   Rabid and diseased animals were not spared, butchered where they were tied to the trunks.

   And as the spirits drifted and the flesh rotted, the tree bark grew paler, and the spring blossoms stopped growing.

   Tree roots grew twisted, with a reddish tint to them, and the pale bark flaked away as the corpses dried and swayed in the wind like old companions in rocking chairs on a porch.

   The last explorers that traveled through and briefly tried to settle here wrote that the soil was infertile, the turned earth littered with the broken bodies of predator and prey alike. 

    An odor of decay became omnipresent, a patina of corruption clinging to the air like sweat on a hot body.

    And when night falls, children, one can hear the trees moaning. The stories and songs say it’s the cries of the condemned mingling with the screaming pleas of tortured bodies long before they die. 

    In autumn, the wind stirred leaves echo the sound of snapping necks and fluttery sighs of death.

    On nights of the full moon, the very trees seem to wail as the collected burden of their grisly growth overwhelms them. Others say the weeping, restless spirits cry as they wander, lost to time and memory.

   And when the seasons change, children, the spirits of those condemned in that time return to tell their stories to one another, again and again.

   Every night, no matter how fierce the weather, now empty the land, if you listen you can hear  the cries for mercy, then the raucous, mocking laughter from the hanging mobs that cheer on the savagery.

     Other nights, when the moon is new, among the trees you can hear the laughter of children as they run after each, their footsteps rustling and cracking the detritus beneath them..

    Daring campers have fled, hearing snarls and low, deep growling as their bodies were rolled over by unseen paws, their faces probed by wet, cold blots feeling very like the noses and tongues of canines they couldn’t see, and their chests suddenly heavy with weight they couldn’t get off before they woke up screaming, as if an animal had settled on top of them.

     Still others shared a sense of dread, waiting in thick silence as something watched them, but despite their risks in calling out, nothing was there. 

      No one answered. 

     All things considered, children, it’s best to avoid the moaning trees and travel the long way around these arbors of evil and grief, if you can. 

     You see, they have long memories, and don’t mind sharing them with you. 

A Portrait of Death

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101, Uncategorized

 Part 1: A Late Arrival 

    The night sky was obscured by a hard rainfall.

      No thunder, but it felt imminent.

      Everything had been laid out for my guest, but he was late, and given the fact that our meal had gone cold and gelid, I stopped expecting him and enjoyed a cup of dark red wine that held a gem of amber firelight in its ruby hues.

      I sipped, savoring it, and was drifting toward sleep when the knock came, rousing me out of a drifting dream state.

     He’d used the heavy metal bar curved through the jaws of a badly sculpted gargoyle knocker I’d taken a fancy too and purchased; it looked more irritated than menacing, which is how I felt at receiving guests in general.

    But all of the servants were in bed, and in a flash of beneficence I decided to let them sleep, and went to answer the door myself.

                                                           *************

    He’d taken a human face for this session, an affectation for which I was grateful, but it was the shimmering black robe that caught my attention. For all the millenia he’d worn it, it wasn’t tattered, frayed, dirty, or worn.

     It seemed made of liquid obsidian, and rippled with his movements, seeming to surround him instead of adorn him, for when he sat down it didn’t spread out.

    “No scythe?” I asked.

     He grinned. “Not needed. It’s symbolism, mostly.”

    “Then how do you…?”

    “It’s fine, don’t worry. Are you prepared to start?”

    “W-well,” I stammered a bit, “it’s just that people are used to seeing you with it.”

    “There are countless pictures of me holding one, but tell me, do you really want to do what everyone else has done?”

    I started to answer, but the question in and of itself gave me pause.

    “I…I suppose not.”

    “Good. Are you prepared?”

    “Yes.” Then I clarified. “To paint you, that is, not to…”

    Again the small grin. “Of course.”

                                                      **************

    He posed himself just so, the gentle hues of candlelight reflecting off his robe as if underwater, clear and flowing, not obscured or murky at all.

    There was pristine quality to him that belied his calling.

    I chuckled as I sketched the outline. “Flowing robes.”

    “Pardon?”

    “Oh,” I said, flattered he was even listening, “I said, ‘flowing robes.’ It’s a term used to describe–”
    “I’m aware of its use. I just didn’t hear you.”

    “Well, the thing is, yours actually does, or seems to…”
    He didn’t answer, leaving my unspoken question drift into the air.

    In the distance, I heard the first roll of thunder herald the storm.

Part 2: An Early Departure

    The mix of the wine and lateness of the hour, and the patter of rain and low thunder began to wear on me.

    I thought I saw drops of darkness start at his sleeve, falling and coming to rest on the floor like ink, and slowly spread.

    I blinked, put down the brush, and rubbed my eyes, thinking it to be an illusion, but when I opened them again, they were still there, now drifting toward me.

   I ignored it, and looked at Death’s face.

   Nothing had changed from the time he walked in; his skin hadn’t paled, his countenance was still, and there was an emptiness to his gaze that brought to mind this was more of an annoyance he was doing as a favor to me than an honor. 

   Indeed, it was.

   The obsidian color never lost its shine as more of his robe dripped and pooled, spreading across the floor like an ebon fog.

   I was rooted to the spot, no longer painting.

   “W-w-what’s happening to me? I don’t understand…”

    Again, the grin. “The longer you paint me, the more of me you capture, I also capture you.”

   “But if  you take me, the painting will be unfinished!” I heard the plea of rising panic in my voice as the fog coiled around me and began its slow ascent.

   As the thunder rolled, closer than before, lightning flashed and the rain fell harder.

   His obsidian robe and human guise sloughed from him, leaving only his alabaster bones.

   He rose and walked toward me. 

   “Do you not yet understand, dear painter, that all the portraits of me were finished by me?”

  The flowing obsidian was cool against my flesh as the brush and paints fell, and my vision, as its color began to match his robe, was undisturbed by starlight, save for the amber firelight suddenly captured in the void of his eyes, and on the blade of his shimmering scythe.

Unkindness

by smithaw50, posted in BLOGGING 101, fantasy

The courtyards of the castles and the keeps of the forts were the roaming places of my friends and I when we were young enough to be fascinated by the thoughts of battle and glory, hearing the stories of the old soldiers they told by the bonfires, and seeing the eyes of the women glaze over with something akin to adoration, and the eyes of the men’s fathers full of pride.

   Others would turn away, aware of the blood price paid for victories, and the soul crushing pain of ruin and defeat at the hands of gloating victors. 

   It didn’t matter to us children until the land went bad, the money ran out, the jobs were gone, and hunger sat like a dozing toad over the place I called home.

   For our many crimes of survival, taking no joy in all we had to feed ourselves, the King had those of us caught in the act tied to stakes, and placed in the very courtyards we once roamed freely. 

   His guards placed us in the ones that had the longest stretches of summer sun, and no one was allowed to feed us or give us anything to drink, on the peril of joining our line of questionable criminals.

   As the days and nights passed, the flies came as our bellies emptied the last of their contents.

   They laid their eggs, and moved from waste to skin, then laid more eggs.

   We felt the maggots writhe as they feasted, seeming almost to dance.

                                                              *************

    The bindings never slipped. 

    The blindfolds never slipped.

    Rendering us helpless, the kingsguard had been thorough in their work. 

    Those who died from exposure were spared the worst that was yet to come, and in another day or so we heard them, made all the more terrifying because we couldn’t see them:

    The ravens came shortly after. 

     We heard the calls, felt the wind when they flew onto us to pull the blindfolds down, then fly off to a safe distance. 

     Every day, more came. 

     The screams were random, and horrifying; the blindfolds were tied anew every morning, but the ravens were relentless. 

      In the silence between screams, the sound of their beaks knocking against the eye sockets echoed in the yard as the sun set and darkness brought some relief.

                                                               ***************

     When my turn came, the scythe shaped beaks tore into burned, chapped skin that parted like gossamer at the hammering blows. 

     I screamed from the pain my nerves registered, and such tears as I had left inside of me never rolled out of the blindfold. 

    Floating in and out of consciousness in an ebon-shadowed dreamscape, I could see the bodies that still clung to their stakes, their sundered flesh gory and terrible. 

   And every day, more birds came and worked until I screamed myself hoarse. 

                                                       **************

     In the heat of the noonday sun, after days lost to pain and numbness in their dance macabre, I felt the fading of life.

     Footsteps approached, and the small clink of armor made me hope a soldier’s weapon would make a quick end, a hope that was dashed when I heard who it was that spoke the last words I’d hear. 

    “Give him water, I will speak with him now.” 

    “Yes, your grace.” They lifted my head, parted my lips, and poured.

    I didn’t know if the gods would grant me the time he wanted; I was fine with whatever they chose.

    “You understand why I imprisoned you so?”

    “No, my king. I would think you would see all your subjects fed.”

    “You feel I’ve done you an injustice.”

    “I know it.” 

    I heard the drawing of a sword. “His tongue grows overbold, sire.”

   “Stay your hand, Captain. Sheathe your sword.”

    I heard it go back inside the sheathe. 

    The king spoke to me again. “You knew the risks of stealing rationed food.”

   “It was not rationed fairly.” 

   “How so?”

   “Kings make war or trade to feed their people, You did neither, and gave the best to the nobles of your court to keep favor and avoid assassination.”

   He was silent for a time, but so was I.

   After a while, he spoke again. “For your words, I will not let the captain of my guard grant you a merciful end, and may the gods judge you harshly for your crimes.”

   They began to walk away. 

   I no longer wanted to linger, and I knew the bristly Captain would be the key to my departure. 

  “And may they judge you equally for your cowardice, ‘majesty.’

   I heard steps running back toward me. 

   “Captain, no!”

                                                 ***************

    After so long a time of piercing and bleeding slowly, the blade proved nothing more than the jab of a larger bird, and my body arced toward it as the captain pushed it hard through, breaking the stake in half, and sliding the sword out, he let me fall with it.

    What few ravens remained made a brief, excited racket, and then the darkness of the cosmos blended their feathers together, and blinded my heart to life, as my eyes had been to nature.

    The spirits of my fellow prisoners waited, greeting me, and together we left the fortunes of the generous earth to the tyrannical, childish whims of petty men, and went in search of Paradise, wherever it may be, by whatever name it calls itself.