Blessed are the dead, eyes forever shut to cold reality. They repose content in the womb of the earth as above autumns come and go, as men live, toil and suffer. In one bat of a maiden’s eyelashes, ages pass, nations rise and fall, pain is had, love goes unrequited, and agony is bestowed upon the unfortunate living…all while they sleep blissfully on unaware.
Damned are they, as I, that ride the night and moan to the moon, cast into dense thickets far from the sphere of men. We wretches roam the wild, shunned by even the most ill-tempered beasts, our faces wan and drawn, our eyes cold and hollow, our black hunger continually gnawing. We know not the comforts of home nor the love of mankind. We are hunted like feral dogs. Mothers tell their children to behave lest we come and take them away. Travelers keep one wary, superstitious eye on the forest when they pass at night, and then frighten each other with tales of us around warm inn fires. Children dress as our race in the harvest season, when the moon is full and the trees bare, and roam the chill countryside in ghastly light, snarling in ill will and confectioner’s lust, scaring babes and moaning for candy. Writers in Swiss villas take doses of laudanum and dream ghoulish visions of us. The righteous regard us as daemons sent forth to kill Christian children, and groups with guns and torches seek us and our demise.
We are cold, hollow creatures banished to hardscrabble limbo, damned to haunt midnight graveyards with large mouths and eyes. We know not the bewitching allure of evil, only the hot need that drives us to drag our icy brethren from the ground. Continue Reading
I didn’t connect the mouse and the headlights at first. The mouse barely registered in my consciousness, a blip under my wheels. It was dark; a blur of movement caught my eye…by the time my brain interpreted it as tiny mammal running rather than wind-blown leaf, I’d flattened it. A pang of regret and it was forgotten. No guilt. Not yet.
