But this night is different. Tonight I smell the scent of another, touched by magic. I must have it. I must see if this is when I finally quench my thirst. He is waiting for me, this man of magic. I will let him find me so that I can share with him the pain that courses through me each night I wake. I will tear out his eyes, and rip his bones apart, drink his tainted blood and be satisfied.
All vision is clouded until I reach him - his eyes blazing with golden fire. Hair as white as fear itself.
He is strong and he is cunning, but so am I. Time is short. The darkness will succumb to the light soon, and I must not be awake to feel it. It will burn away the dead of my skin, peel the casings from my eyes, and whither me into nothing - a nothing I cannot control nor hope to relish in. It will consume me,; and that is what I fear more than the death I was born into. I fear a life other than the one I have been granted, where hearts are easily corrupted and lies so easily given.
I hear the trickling of water hit the tomb of my birth.
The gate remains broken but I cannot escape. I am barred from it, the strength I wield worthless against it. He has condemned me here to wait for the sun, but I will seek refuge. I will recover and rise to find him again. The resting place of my mother sits and waits for me to return. It calls to me, ringing in my mind and shattering my need to kill.
Grasping the sealed stone sarcophagus does nothing, sealed shut. I cannot go back. I cannot enter my haven and I cannot sleep in my mother’s weathered arms as she comforts me without words or warmth. I am trapped, the light is coming. It touches the damp, broken ground of the crypt through the small barred windows I cannot break.
Something other than revenge consumes me.
It has left me shaken and desperate, icing my skin, colder than I have ever felt, as it carries my mind into a storm. What is this phenomenon? What is this thing that is taking hold of me, that I am surrendering all control to? I claw and wrap my daggered hands against the face of my sanctuary, harder and harder, as nothing else matters than getting into my cave. I must not let the light touch me.
But it is almost here.
It creeps across the ground, spreading like a virus, eating up the darkness that allows me to linger on. Soon it will reach me. A sound breaks that I cannot understand. It is faint, but it silences the chaos of my soul. As I sit and listen, I feel as if I am no longer weighted by stone.
It sounds a second time. Then a third.
As the final tone breaks and dissipates, I am on fire. Burning with uncontrollable terror. I fall from my mother’s tomb, writhing in an agony that has never been matched before. Screaming is all I can do –the shriek of a dying child who never lived. It twists me and breaks me apart.
Comments