Legion

The Man That Ruined My Life

He stands before me with eyes bloodshot from too much hard living. Bastard doesn’t even acknowledge my presence so it seems. But I know that he knows I am here. I’m always here. I always come back to him no matter what.
He is aging. Rapidly. His eyes, as I have stated, are bloodshot. The kind of bloodshot that scares little kids when they look up at him as he stumbles along in his perpetual drunken stupor. Lines have formed at the corners of those chaotically enhanced red eyes. Lines that slowly blend into other lines that etch his face as if carved by an angry artist with a chisel gone mad. His hair is fading to gray as well as falling out like soldiers under fire. You can almost hear the crash as the strands that leap to their death hit the ground. He has developed a slight twitch, or spasm if you prefer, in the left corner of his mouth. I also notice the hardness of his unshaven jaw. A hardness that has grown through the agony of traveling through the time of his life. His hands shake even though he struggles to keep that from me. Perhaps so that he will show no sign of weakness in my presence or perhaps it is pride. Whichever, it is irrelevant for I do notice it. He stands with shoulders slumped. I do not even think he can carry them high anymore like he did in his boisterous youth. He has become an enbattled veteran of the war against aging and he is losing said war. Unfortunately.
I should feel sorrow for his condition, but I do not. I only feel a deep loathing. A loathing for all the things this breathing carcass has done to me. It is a disgust so deep that I could rip out his heart and not mind the blood dripping down upon my shoes. I would scream at him, but his hearing weakens daily. I feel like striking him, but the boniness of his body would probably hurt me more than it would him. I could walk away I suppose. However, I do not like turning my back on him. I do not trust him. And besides, I have tried before and failed too many times to count.
He was never really there for me, but he also never would leave me alone either. I think he stuck around just to see me falter. Whenever life’s little tests would come my way, his advice…when he actually gave it….always turned out to be useless. He would always find ways to drag me down into the muck of his tormented little world. No matter how I tried to rise above him, he would grab hold of me, in one way or another, and pull me beneath the waves of despair that he floundered within. My life has become a preposterous fallacy due to his mendacious antics.
I do not know how much longer I can take this. But I know myself, and what he has molded me into, and I will continue to take it. Over and over again.
I stare right on through him and he stares back through me. Neither of us seeing the other. Only seeing what we would like the other to become. Knowing that it will never happen.
His eyes look into mine. I look away in contempt and in shame.

Stupid mirror.

Legion
01Dec07

Glyphs and the Horror THEY Bring

Legion
18NOV07

It permeates the core of my being, mangling my mind with its macabre madness. It has twisted my form into an incoherent mass of what once was and should not be. These visions have darkened this soul once strong and proud, deeply rooted within the world. The world weeps as it moves on and, yet, I still remain as a monument to these villainous, murderous moments. I have stood for ages slowly absorbing these atrocities of the unhindered. Of those that desecrate the covenant of God and Gaia. I curse them with the foulest blasphemies, but my voice goes unheard. Even the zephyr will not carry my decrepit message now. It, too, is weakened with its own struggle for survival against the onslaught by the constantly mobile. I pray for peace of mind, but instead find only pieces of time squandered. But what can I now do, for it is much too late and I have no strength left. Winter comes early for me this season and I feel I will not survive. Perhaps I shall join my fallen brethren if there is any mercy left in the Creator.
My story…oh, if it were only a story for I would close the tome and put it back on the shelf never to be read or heard of again…begins many seasons ago. It was a time when I was young, proud, and strong. The gales that swept across the land could not bend nor break me. I stood victorious and defiant. The earth was my strength and bearing. Nourishing my center and keeping me balanced. The creatures of the forest would come to me for comfort as well as bask in my grandeur. It was a wonderful time full of mysticism and enchantment. Of life and living. All was one and life was lived with that concept to guide us.
But then THEY came. Their strangeness immediately fell at odds with all that was sacred. THEY spoke not our language and knew not the ways that were our ways. THEY did not even try to learn those ways, but only brought their own. THEY followed the path of chaos. Of death and destruction. In our peaceful ways, we knew not how to defend ourselves and so our submission was inevitable. If only we had had the means and the momentum to fight, this story would never have occurred. But, alas, it was not our way. And now we have paid the ultimate price.
As I have stated, THEY came. THEY brought their world into ours. THEY brought their mechanized contraptions. THEY dug into the soil of the earth. I could hear the Mother cry and could do nothing. THEY razed an area near to my home on the hill and then constructed a vast wasteland that I could spy into with chambers for purposes I had not fathomed at that time. THEY placed some sort of placard before the place. It looked ominous and dismal. I did not understand the strange figures upon it. It would become horribly clear to me soon after, even if I could not comprehend what the glyphs meant.
Shortly after the completion of this wasteland, strange noises began to be heard throughout the land. Loud whirring noises and deep rumblings as their contraptions moved to and fro, fouling the air with their toxic breath and tainting the ground with their noxious leavings. My world began to tremble and crumble apart.
I began to see what the unhindered were doing. My brethren, wounded in their captivity, were being loaded into those rolling behemoths and transported to the wasteland that THEY had created. My brothers and sisters huddled together as they were herded into holding areas. I could hear their screams and cries of agony and fear from my vantage point, but those voices fell on the deaf ears of THEY and thus, were ignored. Soon, some of THEY came out of the chambers with more mechanical beasts and began to grab members of my tribe pulling them, against their will, into those chambers. Those that went in, well, their screams were legendary for the few moments that those horrific sounds existed. Their wails were louder even than the buzzing noises that came from within those same chambers. My brethren never came out. Only thin, yellowish things carried on yet another rolling contraption. A breeze carried the smell to me of those items on that contraption. I shuddered. It was the smell of my brethrens’ life force. Their blood. Those monsters had killed them!
THEY killed them! And then, THEY had corrupted their bodies into something hideous and deformed. It was unfathomable!
I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. But I was rooted to the spot. A terror filled my being and I could no longer stand proud nor strong. Weak and feeble I had become. THEY had poisoned my will to live as well as my will to give life back.
Now, many years later, I stand upon my hillside all twisted and withered. Blackened inside and out through ages of disturbing visions that I can neither stop nor control. I have no leaf left to produce. My limbs are weak and, I fear, will break at the slightest provocation. My roots ache with the heavy burden that has been thrust upon me. I have grown old before my time and am now weary. As I stand, stooped, still gazing down at that terrible place with its terrible placard from my home on the hill, I pray for my final winter to come and relieve me of the sight of these continuing nefarious moments. I can only warn any ear that will listen until that time and hope the message is understood and carried on. Perhaps your ear will do and perhaps not. Take heed. Take note.
The glyphs on the placard you ask. What are they? As I have said before, I do not know what they mean, but they look much like this:

L…U…M…B…E…R…Y…A…R…D.

Jacklyn

Legion
5Dec07

She has gone out the door again. Like a silhouette within a shadow, she goes silently into the cover of darkness. The hunt has begun…again…and I can not stop it…again.
I mourn for her and her loss. I curse my own and what it has wrought.
Every night, the memories flood back as the door quietly closes behind her. The moments remembered clog my conciousness with a septic disposition that I can never forget but wish to not relive again. But that is a pipe dream swallowed by a nightmare of my own making. I often think that Frankenstein and I have dipped our ink in the same well, but with greatly different results. He created his monster with the purpose of creating a life. I, however, created mine by destroying one.
When she was a young girl slowly turning into a woman, the wonderous age of thirteen, something dreadful happened. Something that would change both of our lives. The day started out like so many other rainy spring days. It was a Tuesday so cool, wet, and with the wonderous hint of a beautiful summer to come. School was almost out and she had a headful of lazy, summer days planned out. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
I had left for work that morning leaving her mother and herself alone to get her ready for school. Everything went normal as usual as my wife drove the joy of our lives together to the building where she spent many hours of each day learning and wondering about boys and chatting with her girlfriends. After she was dropped off, my wife began to make her way back to the house we called home. The rain had become a bit harder. According to the police report, my wife had lost control of the car around a curve and slid off the road down an embankment into one of those large concrete drainage ditches. The car, once hitting the bottom, rolled twice before coming to a stop. By the time the paramedics and police had arrived, my beloved soul mate was gone. I received the call that changed my life forever at 9:13 a.m.
Funny thing those phone calls. It is like a hidden trap waiting to explode everytime you pick up that receiver. Or a contest where the prize is hidden behind a closed door. You answer it and it can change your life forever. Once you take that call, there is no hanging up and starting over. How I often wish, for her sake, that I could do such a thing.
The funeral was a fog of tears and sympathys. I was numb, but I had to stay focused for our daughter. She had lost her mother. She didn’t need to lose her father through self-pity as well. It came and went and we moved on in grief.
Time has a way of changing things sometimes. Not always for the better. As the weeks went by into months eventually turning into a year, the realization of loneliness began to creep into my soul. I had my daughter, it was true, but no one I could share myself with in those deep ways that lovers are capable of. The isolation from that connection was beginning to take its toll on my mind.
It was shortly after the first anniversary of my wife’s death that the horror forced its way into the shattered remnants of our lives and took root growing into what it has become in the present. I was in a dark mood (as was occuring more and more of late) and I began drinking myself into a state that I would never have believed I could concieve. Alcohol is an amazing and dangerous beast. Coupled with depression and loneliness, it is quite capable of achieving the most terrifying deeds known. Something I never imagined took life and then took life.
My daughter…almost fifteen now…had returned from a friend’s house for the evening and noticed my condition. I saw her frown and then quickly move up the stairs to her bedroom to prepare for an evening’s slumber. How much she looked like her mother now. “How much she looked like her ” soon became “she was her “. That soon became “I want her “. It was the end of what was left of us and I could not see through the liquored haze to realize the implications of what I was about to do.
I slowly made my way up to her room. I did not knock. Quietly, I opened the door and gazed upon my angel. Which one though? I could not tell the difference anymore. She was changing into her bed clothes. The beast, aroused by the sight, raged below as I, within, screamed in terror of what would soon transpire. She glanced in my direction. Startled, she pulled her pajama top up to her exposed breasts to cover her nakedness. Her precious mouth began to open, but before she could speak, I staggered forward and….
I will not speak of the next few moments. I have to live those horrible memories over and over. She has to as well. You should not.
In the short time that came abruptly after, I found myself sitting at the foot of her bed sobbing uncontrollably. I glanced back at the devastation I had left in my agonistic ecstatic wake. She, too was sobbing uncontrollably as she lay there in a bed she would only find nightmares waiting from now on. She said only two words to me softly through her sobbing.
“Daddy, why? “
I lept to my feet and staggered out of her room. Almost falling down the stairs, I made my way to the front door and out into the night air. The stars were a blur to me. Partly through my tears. Partly through the alcohol. I ran over to my car in the driveway, jerked the door open and jumped in. My key, which I had pulled out of my pocket in the yard, found its way into the ignition. The car fired and the engine roared with the same fury that I felt within my heart. I peeled out of the driveway and down the road with no particular destination in mind. Life did have a destination for me however.
A few miles down the road, my anger (infused with alcohol and horror) took the wheel and I ran headlong into a telephone pole at over 70 miles per hour. The car careened off the pole, which broke, after collapsing the front end sending the engine into the cab crushing both of my legs. The car came to a halt after spiraling several yards away from the point of impact. Not only was I a mess mentally, I now was one physically. My dash to the car was the last time I would walk.
Now, years later, my daughter has grown into a woman. It wasn’t easy. She never spoke to anyone about what happened that night. She came to the hospital (with her grandmother) every day to see me until I was well enough to come home. By this time she was fifteen. She became the parent or guardian at this point. She would help take care of me in my invalid state while trying to live her life, shattered as it was, as well. I do not know why she did it, but she did. Maybe she thought I was no longer a problem anymore stuck in my chair like I am. Perhaps she had blocked the episode out of her mind. Whatever the reason, she stayed with me. Of course we had lots of help from my parents and my dead wife’s parents also. They all felt sorry for us with the loss of my wife and my terrible, tragic accident. They saw my drunken crash as a cry for help. I let them believe it. Little did they know the truth.
She stayed, but she was now so cold and lifeless and I knew no way to change that. It crushed me to see and know this. Like the night my body crushed hers, I could find no way to stop this or change it.
About the time she turned seventeen, I began to notice things. The way she dressed. Seductive and alluring. The slight squint in her eyes. The squint of a predator searching a great distance for prey. Her tone. Always calm and soothing but with a hint of sarcasm. She began going out late at night and I could not stop her. She would return in the early morning and I could hear her sobbing quietly as she made her way to the bathroom and then to bed. She would hide in her room the whole day. Sometimes days. She became even more distant as time progressed.
I soon began to hear of strange events on the evening news. Things horrible. Things that began to make me question. To make me wonder. Tales of death. Of men found in dark alleys mutilated and murdered. Of men caught with their pants down and now having nothing to hold those pants up. Of police searching for a serial killer…possibly and, later, probably a woman. The one they would soon begin calling “The Ripper “. I shuddered. Two and two became four and four in the morning mornings began to give me thought of who that infamous murderer might be. There were too many coincidences and too many past consequences to leave me any doubt.
And this is where I find myself now stuck in this chair in this house where the door has closed once again for the evening. She hunts again. How do I stop it? How do I change it? Could Frankenstein destroy his own monster if he loved him more than life itself? I would trade places with her, but I can’t. I fear for her as well as fear her now. What do I do? Tears are no answer, but tears are all I have left.
I beg of you, what would you do?

In the Trenches

Legion
16AUG08

Prologue
The smell of dirt and death is an old acquaintance for Afanasii. His whole life he has danced hand in hand with the two. They are intertwined in his memory like lovers that have nothing in common but their lust for one another. He smiles at that thought, confusing his captors. Afanasii moves his eyes from the barrel pointing down at him toward his dirt encrusted hands. Hands that have helped carve history, although he does not understand that concept. In the last few moments of his miserable and simplistic life, he remembers.

Youth and War
His back has grown stronger through his labors. Digging and digging and digging. All those days spent digging. Trenches for miles to see. He was a soldier with a shovel, but not much more than a boy. Sixteen when this began by some standards, but he is unsure of his exact birthdate. Like his family and generations before, a simple potato farmer with hands in the dirt who now has found himself pulled into the machinations of monarchs. An assassin’s bullet and historical tensions have ignited the world afire.
“Princip, you instigator of hell on earth. Look what you have done. “, he curses under his breath so his brothers-at-arms will not hear him. For several years now, a stagnant war has defined their lives and ended many. The stench of blood and mud encompasses every aspect of their existence.
“Great War indeed. What is so great about it? ” Another thought muffled.
So much death and destruction about him. Water saturating everything causing discomfort and ailments. Food is scarce as well. Starvation is as much a reality of death as bullets and bombs are. But not for the rats. Rats eat the decaying flesh of the dead, spreading filth and disease.
So many men lost. Good men. Friends. Men whom he would never have met if not for this overblown fracas.
He reflects that this war is not going well for the tsar. Mother Russia is faltering. Nicholas does not live in the trenches, so he does not understand. Does not know the hardships of this type of reality. It has alienated him from his subjects. But Afanasii understands. He knows this first hand. Lives it daily. He prays that it will end soon, but he puts no faith in mankind so he holds no hope that it will.
There is rumour from behind the trenches that things are not going well for the tsar back home either. Trouble seems to be brewing. His authority has become useless and the people contemplate revolution. Perhaps it will bring much needed change. Perhaps it will end this conflict. Perhaps.
Afanasii turns his attention back to his every day routine of survival.

Digging During the Great Terror
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had brought Afanasii back home, but what was to come in the following years he deemed worse than the war. At least in the war, the enemy was not his own government. Lenin, after the overthrow and death of Nicholas, had slowly put the country back together again with much struggle. There seemed to be hope (dismal or not) for the country.
But, unfortunately, Lenin died.
The tyrant Stalin took control with a ruthless hand. The communist party now infiltrated every aspect of life and Stalin used that to his advantage. His paranoia grew and soon incorporated the skills of Afanasii. With shovel in hand once again, he began sculpting the trenches for the burial of the purged “enemies of the people “. A job he despised, but it was better than the gulags or handing his shovel over to someone else to be used for him.
Afanasii wept for his Mother Russia. He wept for his comrades. But those hands, his hands, continued to dig as he lived on.

Captured In War
Time rolled on and another great war had come. Operation Barbarossa delivered Afanasii into captivity under the Einsatzgruppen. The Germans had been marching across Russia hell bent on destruction and conquest when Afanasii reluctantly crossed their path.
He was captured on his farm west of Leningrad. They were not kind. He was assaulted repeatedly and then herded, along with other prisoners, towards an imminent doom within a nearby forest. The cold that raked his body was bitter. As bitter as the thought of what was to come. The group halted in a clearing within the wooded area. Shovels were passed out among the prisoners. Orders given to dig were expected. Along with the others, he once again put shovel to earth and moved so-called mountains. He knew the routine.
Once the trench had been dug, the prisoners were ordered down into it. He followed.

Epilogue
Beaten and bloodied, Afanasii once again stands against an old enemy of his beloved Russia.
Staring down at his dirt encrusted hands, he ponders his life. So much time down in the dirt. So much shifting of soil. From gardens of potatoes to gardens of decomposing flesh. What was it worth and who will remember his work?
The crackle of gunfire ensues and he falls further into the trench, mixing blood and earth once again. Falling into his legacy.

It stands before her beckoning, dark and ominous. A blackish, hellish creature that calls her back into a moment she wishes to forget. A lapse of reason she had hoped would fade
away into the grayness of insanity. Moments of clarity play through her corrupted mind like a melody embedded in the recesses of memory that floats through the aether between rememberance and thoughts longing to be forgotten.
She can hear it. Snarling and snapping like a dog gone rabid, searching for a target to let loose upon and render to shreds. To share in its agony and fury. It stands there in the half-lit darkness of the conservatory, grinning the grin of madness with purpose. Its smile unnerves her and, yet, stubbornly she stands against the onslaught of those bared teeth of the wounded beast. Those ivory fangs drip with vendetta and it waits. It waits to leap upon her with a ferocity reserved for those that only hatred unleashed can absolve.

“Come to me. “

It speaks to her within. A gutteral, throaty deepness sends chills throughout her convulsive body. It captivates and she feels she no longer controls her guilt-stricken body. She steps forward, losing her strength and nerve, through the archway into the room. One step closer. Another. And another.
Memories pour forth into her cornucopic mind. The moment of realization of a man she could not turn an eye from. How her heart had pounded like a drum to the notes off the page he conjured his magic with. His spell bedazzled all within ear shot. She was captured by the tenaciousness of his gift.

“Come… “

The evening that followed and all that was spoken between them was captivating. He mainly spoke. She, becoming more enraptured with each minute that passed, was unable to form complex sentences. She assumed that he must have thought her a simpleton throughout that first conversation. He later had told her that he had not.
That first encounter led to two and then three and so on. She had fallen. Fallen harder than any seraphim cast deep into the abyss. She was lost within him.

“…closer… “

Days became weeks and weeks into months and those turned into years. Within that time they had married and began a life shared. Her happiness could not have been more complete. She lived amongst the clouds soaring with him beside her and she beside him.

“…to… “

His career continued and blossomed. Always in demand. Always on the move. His perfection transcribed onto the page and then was let loose upon the stage. His fingers danced across the keys with the relevance of God creating the beauty of Eve. Admiration was his sustenance and applause was his ambrosia. He had become a living legend. But alas, in his shadow, she soon became a shade.

“…me… “

Her mind began to question perfection. Her grip on reality was loosened. The clouds they once rode upon began to darken and the rains came. Rains brought purification and damnation. She began to see through eyes filled with imagined jealousy. A brief contact or a glance that reeked of flirtation. A letter of adoration or a gift sent with intent. One adoring fan too many and too many nights spent apart gave rise to desperation.
On a night much like the one in which they had met, he sat at his piano creating his next monumental masterpiece within their once happy home. She, in a unrestrained moment, let loose her hand in an attempt to keep him hers for all time. A hand in which a knife had unbeknowingly found its way into. Down it struck piercing her one true love’s heart. The beat that drove him played in time no more. She looked on in terror aware and unaware at what had just occurred. Gazing down at his now lifeless face, she could see no horror. Only adoration. Her mind reeled. She ran from the room in a blind panic, but several feet outside the door the creature began to call to her. The one lone witness to her crime of passion.

“…murderess! “

She halted her flight. Slowly she had turned back toward the conservatory. And now she finds herself standing in front of the beast. Its ivory teeth stained with blood. Blood that she had spilled. Her lover’s blood.
She feels its voice within her mind. It is screaming in dissonance where once it purred with a melodic grace so pure. So wrathful now, yet so angelic. It seethes with anger at the destruction of its counterpart and counterpoint. No longer will its golden voice be heard by the world coached and coaxed so beautifully by his fingers. The beast reels in its death throes now, but it will have its vengeance. Its voice, its song, shall be heard. Even if it is by but one soul, it WILL be heard.
With an agonizing scream, she realizes that the monster now is upon her in all its vehemence. She falls to the floor as it rips her mind asunder and fills it with nothing but a mournful, bittersweet cacophony. Music that will constantly remind her of him and her ungodly deed. Her physical form convulses along side the body of her silent lover. A constant hell descends upon her. Insanity forged by clarity sets in. The clarity of that treacherous moment blends with the insanity of nothing else. All she will now see until the end of time is the blood upon the page and the keys. Drops of blood blend with the notes creating a new masterpiece. A masterpiece that she alone will now hear eternally, accompanied by the melodic wails of a black beast with ivory teeth.

He died yesterday. It is a loss that I can not quite relay to you. I sit here in the darkness of the parlor staring at his mortal remains. Memories flood my mind of days long ago. Days of his youth. Holding his hand in mine as we would take a walk in the sun through the park. It was his favorite place to spend time with me. We would talk. He would talk actually and I would try to answer his questions to the best of my ability or interject a few comments to help him understand the world around him. Sometimes we would feed old stale bread to the ducks and geese by the pond. He would laugh and then run and jump in my arms when one of the geese would get a bit too close. He was always amazed by how the wind would blow through the leaves in the trees. He would say that they, the trees, were talking to each other and that sometimes he could hear their voices and what they were saying. I would smile with the thought that maybe it was true. I would watch him as he took to the air on the playground swingset and wonder how far in life he actually would fly. With his curiosity, I didn’t think that the sky would even be the limit with him. Yes, I know, I had a grandfather’s prejudice, but he really was one of those people that would light up any darkness, be it within someone’s soul or a shadowed room. It saddens me that this darkness I brood in now cannot be shed with his brightness.
You know, the last time he saw me (that he knew of anyway) was when he was about five years old. I must have been around forty-five or so. He and his mother (my daughter) were living with us while her husband was serving a tour in Afghanistan after the whole 9/11 mess. I remember saying good-bye to him before I left that morning. I didn’t realize then how permanent that would be. I was leaving on a trip to visit some family members down in southeast Texas for a few days. He cried as I hugged him good-bye and didn’t want to let go of me. I assured him I would be back in a few days time and that I would take him to the park when I got back. Even now, all these years later, it still feels like I lied to him. I gave him back to his mom and crawled into the car. Wished I hadn’t now.
The trip itself was pretty uneventful most of the way. However, shortly after dusk had officially given up the ghost to night on some Texas backroad near Maud, my car began having trouble. I pulled over on the edge of the road, pulled my flashlight out of the glove box, and got out to see if I could find the problem under the hood. Right away I felt something was wrong. There was no noise. No sounds of the night bugs usually found in the area. No wind blowing. Nothing. Nothing, except the sound of my heart beating. It seemed to be picking up its pace as I stood there. I looked around the area I was stranded in but could see very little except what was in the faint light of my flashlight and that was mainly tall grass and a few trees on the sides of the road and the road itself. It was a very dark night. No moon and very few stars. After a few moments of fighting my own paranoia, I popped the hood of the car and began investigating the engine compartment for what was wrong. That is the moment when my life would be changed forever.
Life. What a strange word defined by a strange world. Life and live.
Anyway, it was at that moment life became something more (or less) than living. As I was bent over the engine, something hit me from the left side and knocked me down into the road. My ribs felt like I had just been struck by one of those hammers they use at carnivals where people try to hit that little platform that sends up whatever that thing is that rings the bell at the top of the post. My head, from the impact of the fall on the road, definitely felt like there were bells going off in it. My glasses had been knocked off my face and were lost in the darkness. I had lost my flashlight in the assault as well. It was rolling back and forth on the ground and in the rocking light I could see something that my mind had trouble understanding right at that moment. It was a young and very beautiful woman. The kind of beauty that photographers try to capture in those model magazines that my wife would sometimes look at when we were at the check-out counter at the Piggly Wiggly. She wore a tattered white dress with what appeared to be some kind of flower pattern on it (perhaps daffodils) and nothing on her feet. But something was wrong with her. She seemed off. Untouchable. And I don’t mean prom queen to the science nerd untouchable. I mean untouchable in a way that you felt as if you would die (or at least want to die) if you did touch her. Made my stomach turn. It may have been a trick of the rolling flashlight, but it actually seemed as if the darkness was either moving right through her or out of her. Wasn’t sure which. As I lay there looking up at her, she moved towards me. At least, I think she did. I did not see her step forward, but she was definitely closer to me than when I first noticed her. Each time the flashlight rolled she appeared closer. My heart was racing wildly now. I felt the urge to flee but couldn’t find the strength to regain my footing. She was hovering over me now looking into my panicked eyes with hers. How lifeless they were and as black as the darkness in which she seemed to belong. Her delicate, fragile looking hand reached down and gently embraced my throat caressing it. Fondling it. I wanted to scream from the touch of her frozen fingers, but fear…no, terror…had a grip on my throat as well. Suddenly, she grabbed me with an astounding strength and lifted me up above her head still looking into my eyes, but this time I was looking down at her. I realized that my feet weren’t touching the ground. How could something that seemed so weak and fragile lift a 220 pound man into the air like that? With one arm?
She smiled. It seemed the smile of a cat before pouncing on the rat that has had the misfortune of making its acquaintance. I then saw her teeth. It was the last thing I saw of her and the last time I saw her.
I don’t remember much after that. Some horrifying dreams of dying and undying, but nothing more.
I found myself waking suddenly in a unknown field with the sun on the edge of the horizon. I was damn lucky to be alive (or so I thought). At that moment I felt an uncontrollable instinct to flee or hide. There was blood on my shirt and pain was shooting through the side of my neck. Felt like my heart was burning as well. The sun was coming up more as I laid there. That feeling of flight grew stronger. I stood up and looked around for a place to run to or hide in. There appeared to be an old, abandoned church near a dirt road about a mile away. That struck me as odd. My vision had never been very sharp since I was a small boy. I had to wear glasses all my life and those had been lost in the attack. I knew I shouldn’t be able to see that far (especially that clearly), but that would have to be figured out later. I began running. Running for whatever reason I could not fathom. It was pure instinct. The sun was coming. Fear was rising and, once again, was giving over to terror. The mile was covered with amazing speed. I reached the delapidated building as the sun forced itself on the world. My skin felt like it was on fire as I entered the darkness of the church.
The cool, soothing darkness. Under the pulpit I wept and then slept.
I don’t know how long I slumbered within the rotting timber and shattered windows of that haven. May have been a whole day or even days. It didn’t really matter. I didn’t live (there’s that word again) by days anymore. I had changed and knew I had changed. Changed in ways I would not wish upon my worst enemy. I stayed there in that crumbling building for many months becoming more and more of what I am now. The thirst, or hunger if you wish, was incredible. At first, I would hunt the smallest of God’s creatures. Rats. Rabbits. Racoons. Even a skunk once. Just once. With my heightened senses that one about drove me mad with the stench. Whatever came close to the building so I wouldn’t have to wander too far from its shelter became my prey. This soon became not enough. I hungered even more as time went by no matter how many of the woodland creatures I killed. Even a full grown buck that came near did not sate my appetite.
Then it happened. I still ask God for forgiveness for that moment. I did not want it to happen, but it did. The sun had just settled in for the evening and the moon had come knocking in its fullness backlit by the stars of an autumn sky. I had awakened that dusk to the sound of something familiar. It was the sound of an ATV. It was growing stronger and stronger much like my hunger. I crept out of my make-shift home to see what was coming. I could see the headlight weaving in and out of the sparse trees near the dirt road that led to my sanctuary. With the time of year, I surmised it must be a hunter maybe looking for a place to set camp or perhaps a spot to set up for some night hunting. It became clear to me (as well as repulsive) what I must do. The hunger gripped me with a severity that I can not describe. I followed it to its conclusion. I stalked him…able to move as fast as his four-wheeler if not faster. I hunted the hunter. He never knew I was there. I dismounted him with one swift blow from that mechanical contraption which immediately crashed into a tree. I slammed him into the ground and I attacked. I watched as the horror in his eyes dissolved into the coldness of lifelessness. I drank until the pulse in his veins subsided to nothing. I fed and he bled. I fed and fed and fed. The hunger was sated and I had become what I knew was inevitable. I had become…vampire.
Later that evening, after I had wept blood tears for that unknown man whose family would never know what had happened to him (much like mine I imagined), I decided to leave that place and become part of the shadows of the rest of the world. The killing…I prefer to call it hunting, but I know what it really is…would continue, but I always made sure the target was completely dead for I did not want that person to become what I had become. I would learn to control this blood urge eventually and hunt less often over time than when I first started. I never got used to it though. That and not seeing the sun again.
I learned many things in that time between the then and now. In the shadows, I learned how much my wife and family had grieved for me. The hardest part for them seemed to have been the not knowing. Not knowing if I was actually alive or dead. How ironic…and sad…that it was both. But given time, they healed and moved on. Never forgetting, but not dwelling on it either. I also learned more of the world than I ever imagined I could. The good and the bad. I could go into all that, but I haven’t much time to do so now. The sun approaches soon.
And now, here I sit. In a funeral parlor that has been closed for hours looking at the mortal remains of the last remnant of my mortal humanity. By the way, if you are wondering, immortality isn’t all its cracked up to be. In a mortal world, you wouldn’t like immortality. Everything and everyone eventually leaves you in one way or the other. He was the only connection I had left to that world. I always watched him from afar within the shadows. I tried to keep him safe, but not too safe. After all, life isn’t just to be walked through. It is to be waltzed through. He had to make his own mistakes and learn from them, but I was always there…hidden…if he needed the music to be reset. A safety net I suppose. But he didn’t need it. He did well growing up and into a man. Good in school. Lots of friends. Played sports. Went to college. Became a pediatrician and served for many years as a deacon at his church. Well-loved by the community of which he gave most of his time and energy to improving it. Had a loving wife and several children which in turn gave him many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I was…and am…very proud of him. I did visit him once, but he thought I was a ghost from his past. It was on his death bed a few days ago. I visited in the night (of course) while others thought he was sleeping the sleep of fevered dreams of the slowly dying. He called me “papaw ” like he used to when he was a boy. I smiled and kissed his wrinkled forehead and told him everything was okay and that I loved him. He told me he loved me too. He quitely fell asleep. I squeezed his hand gently and then vanished back into the darkness from where I had originated. I cried my blood tears alone that night like so many nights before, but this time not for the loss of those hunted, but for the one cherished and lost.
He died yesterday. He was 98 years of age. I look at his body now and am grateful to have known and loved him no matter how my life…unlife…has turned out. He was the foundation of the humanity in my inhuman soul.
The dawn is coming. I have stretched out my welcome for damn close to a century and a half and now my story is up. I think it is a good day for a walk. Maybe I’ll feel him holding my hand once again asking me so many questions like he did so long ago. Maybe he’ll listen to the trees again as well. Yes, I think it is.
It’s a good day for a walk in the sun.

Legion
(27Oct07)