Krow

Fear of death or hear of birds? You decide.

Krow

H.M. Hearing

 

 

I am mesmerized by a burning fire within this black soul that begins to take shape.  Licks of red-orange flame converge on themselves only to stop and blanket the bleak shadows with the arc of a wing.  An enormous flaming black wing, that fills my vision, beats the nonexistent air of this oblivion.

            A shrieking caw, chilling to the bone draws my attention from the flaming black wing.  There, staring at an enormous dead eye, I froze.  My innards congealed into an unbreakable mass of ice.  The dead eye stared mockingly at me, taunting me with its threat of death.

            My heart thudded painfully in my chest as my vision grew from only the blank desolate eye to the enormous flaming feathered face of the Demon Bird.  The evil of death hung heavy in the air and the smell of rotting corpses gagged me.  This bird, this Demon Bird was the epitome of death.

            As I stared, his enormous head cocked precariously to the side his glossy dead eyes piercing my soul.  I screamed with unbidden terror, but deathly silence remained, engulfing me. His smoldering black beak opened, blue flames spewing from within as an earsplitting shriek tore at every synapsis and nerve, piercing my heart more keenly than any knife.

            My shrieks of agony went unheard.  As the Demon's torture of me continued I was able to draw my gaze down to his chest that was not ablaze like the rest of him.  It took me a moment to understand what I saw, but when I finally did the contents of my stomach purged.

            His chest oozed with deep viscous blood, each drop becoming a sticky feather.  His chest moved in an uneven triple staccato heartbeat.  As my eyes roved his gory chest I knew whose blood this was.  It was not the Bird's, but rather my own.

            I grasped at my chest trying to figure out how to keep my thick blood within me.  To my horror there was nothing for me to grasp.  I looked down to find a gaping hole where my heart had been.

            Another caw, this time muffled, caused me to look away from my mortality and back to the face of the demon.  In his maw was my beating heart.  I watched in terror as the hideous demonic bird lowered his head, which was more than twice the size of my own, and grabbed my still beating heart in his searing molten talons.  As the lava claws slipped around my heart I doubled over in insurmountable agony shrieking into the silence.

            I am dead.  I can see my heart, but I must be alive because the pain burns through my veins like a fire out of control.  My heart is there, still beating, still burning in the Demon's lava claw.  If I am dead, how can I feel?

            The Demon shrieks again to silence my whirling mind.  He leans forward and places his dead eyes mere inches from my own.  A swift c**k of his bird head his face transforms into the demon of darkness and one word echoes in the abyss.

            Die...

            I can hear my disembodied heart beat faster and I cringe because it is so loud.  It catches the Bird's attention to my utter horror.  There is no longer the demon only the terrifying bird I have come to know.  As my heart slows the bird turns his dead gaze to me and smirks.  He knows something that I do not.

            Suddenly, I grow cold, so very cold.  The bird chuckled then consumed my beating heart.

            I woke, screaming and clutching my heart fighting against the pain that seared through my chest.  The sun of a new day washed over me and I thought I was going to live.  Then the caw of death shrieked through my brain as my eyes fell on the Demon Bird, his beak bloody.

            I am not alive...after all.