The specters and wraiths unwound tied knots and strings, chained to fear, panic, desolation and despair, the haunting, wailing decibels of ancient, reticent paradigms, refused to be lifted from their coffins, from their tombs, from their catacombs, swarming in the deluge of darkness. Incapable of touching the other side, inefficacious of stretching their gnarled bones to virtues, to paragons, to divinity and the crushed, twisted expanse of beatific resolution, they rested and remained as bulbous cretins, as infernal fiends, as woebegone titans glorified to ash, to dust, to rubble and ruin. Heathen rapture frayed, decadent shells, tyrannical tides, rampant rivulets drinking, licking, relishing and relinquishing the embers, coals and entropy, the snarled animosity of a wicked ruse and muse, plunged, forgotten, from a guilty nation. The bittersweet cacophony, satanic symphony, hell and infernal bliss lacquered to marsh and wasteland, locked in the ruthless embrace of all its perilous deeds, screeching each wafting, dying sin. He glanced unto the murky world and swallowed Stygian threads, swarmed and consumed the bewitching ache of doldrums, condemnation, abhorrence and loathing, dragged into the depths of persecution, annihilation, disintegrating enamel. Would he be the same one day, scattered and torn, drenched in madness, in archaic, destroyed sinew, pulsing life only from his callous limbs? Would he drift ashore upon the eerie, heartless banks, begging for absolution when his pernicious power failed him? Would he stare upon the kingdom he burned and whisper for its deliverance? Would he aspire to merely move, instead of maul, devour and ravage? Would his power fail him, pernicious croons stolen by apocalyptic liberation, heart blown, muscles mauled, decaying, rotting, withering in place? Would he rest here, imploring, pleading, weak and defiled? When he fell out of bedlam’s favor, would terror become meaningless, would horror become nothing, would his flesh perish like his name? Would his unholy violence eventually meet its end, and he’d arrive here, a demon in another realm, just as haunted, just as tormented, just as tortured? It was a cool delusion, a trance unsung mayhem caressed and nurtured, and his vivid, puncturing stare swerved back to hers, to the light that she’d promised, to the grave that she’d dig for him, to the tombstone she’d erect in his place, and to all the words left unsaid in the surreptitious halls. The silent plea, the hushed demand, the muted command; Save me.

But his throat curled something different from the rough granules of his voice, resisting igniting hearts and vulnerable apathies. The Reaper’s lips, often partaking in the closed walls of his vicious vehemence, of his inaudible, unattainable entity and essence, discarded one word to all of her follies and frivolities. “Unwise.” He found her foolish, wafting amongst the scattered carcasses, cadavers and corpses, where death bled into the scenery, encompassed every aperture, every dungeon, every mausoleum until their lifeless treaties hung as tapestries and siren calls of indifference, coaxing the wayward divinities into the sinister, the nefarious, the barbaric. He was here because the bog was a second home, undying loyalty to the mysterious, to the powerful and future decrepit, to the arched triumphs of clattering fortitudes and destined, augured, foretold turbulence. But she, with her dew, her showers, her stained, blemished virtues, should have had no reason to partake in the tempestuous creed of iniquities, the brutality of violence. Did she wander amongst these runes to find depravity, corruption and licentiousness? Did she want to heal their laments, to cure their immorality, to delve into the crooked souls? Or did she covet immoral deeds, did she wish for a more bitter life than the frail one she’d already found, encountered and led? Did she long and yearn for the rancorous caresses, the acrimonious edges of the soul-sucking bog? And would he be upset if she withered and decayed before his eyes, changed and distorted, no longer nymph, no longer rain, but a storm, wild and damned, condemned and brutal, drowning in the chaos of her abysmal designs? Why do you stand near me? Some portions of him remained perplexed, deluded and confused, entranced by the ruminations of a golden spark dimming, and another sentiment rolled, growled, brewed deep within his dissolute existence, crackled in his chest, whispered frustration and agony over the twist and falls of the blue belle. Closer, as near as temptation, enticement and allure wrought, he presided over her features, her upturned face, in a towering conjecture, blackguard demon sinned and sinned against, brushing and caressing the armaments of his brutality, like a shield, like a shade, like a mantle, the only creature allowed to annihilate. Huyana shuddered, a light shiver and quiver in the intoxicating, ink nocturne, and he plucked the ravenous chords of his predilection, lowered his mouth for the smallest fraction of moments – perhaps she would not feel it at all, believe it another ghost trickling, gliding over her skin – to caress, to touch, to enrapture, steal and capture, the dove tails of her sable forelock. Another beguiling fraction and friction, a mere instance of tracing diabolical strings, drew along, across, the arch of her neck, kindled reassurance through quiet, unearthly silence. His answer to her previous query only trickled into the deep resonance of devilry, of necromancy, when he’s drifted his countenance away from hers, uncoiling the layers of his death requiems as he controlled atrocious impulses again. “To torment and haunt again.”