Sweet Night

Enduring love beyond shadow.

Glass-slivered daggers reflect and undress me;

the eyes of my rage surround and suppress me.

The horns were the first, thus I cloaked them in charm;

Politeness and wit, to persuade and disarm.

Next went my eyes, unto inky black pits.

But love true is blind, whilst drawing a kiss.

Despair, contempt, I would shield you of pain.

My shoulder-blades crack, my spine rearranged.

Bone-white wings snake out at my side.

 My organs erode, wither, and die.

 My skin is decay… Yet I hold you still.

 Your lips pull away… You shutter with chill.

***

Her room was a soft amaranth. Darkness lay beyond her windowsill, and crickets and the soothing sounds of night filtered into her second-story room. A single paper lamp on her headboard bathed the room in a quiet evening light, while unremarkable furnishings decorated her average, South Dakota life. They stood amidst her unwashed clothes, and unrecycled poetry; her toes entangled in a lacy bra she had one day intended to wear for him. Her slender arms were slung about him where his neck had once been.  She released him, and stepped back.

Impressed, sunk into the carpeted floor were his feet. They were enlarged, and heavyset; ivory-white, with no mark of flesh, and gnarled with growths of condensed bone and protruding horns of a similar wickedness. His legs and torso were shrouded by a wispy ghoulish cloak that billowed in eternal darkness, black and void. She dared not rest her gaze upon it long, lest its vastness consume her. Instead, her eyes found his face.

The shriek of splintering glass exploded as her lamp, and torso-length mirror shattered, arresting the room in sudden and complete darkness.

He spoke.

“Glass-slivered daggers reflect and undress me. The eyes of my rage surround and oppress me.”

He could see himself. Despite the lack of illumination, he flourished in the dark, was nourished by it; or perhaps he one day would be, but in that moment, he saw only the monster he was, reflected and multiplied in every shard of broken glass strewn about.

Whilst he mourned his loss, she stepped lightly forward, uncaring as the glass cut eagerly into her soft flesh. Her fingers reached out, tenderly searching for his cheek, and finding only the ghastly convex of his new skull-like face. The sensation in her hand died instantly.

“I see you still my love… my place remains by your side.

Surely you are become death, and I, my sweet night, your bride.”