That lyre,
Apollos hand-me-down,
An instrument of antiquity,
That sound,
Each tone more shrill than the last,
Thundercracks across string,
I hate it,
I hate those aural pangs,
They scrape across my cranium,
Nails upon chalk,
Leaving invisible scars,
There is nothing divine about this sound,
No virtue from its turtle shell frame,
It is a miserable dirge of angst,
Plucked free by the fingers of demons,
Inflicting naught but malady.
After the sunsets warning,
The dark creeps up,
Nothing is radiant in the world,
Naught but the two lights I see,
Corpselights in the black,
Malevolence in twin lustre,
Eyes flittering a grim emerald,
I lock vision with them,
Silence,
Just silence,
The hairs upon my nape stand in awe,
I know not to which fiend they belong,
But I feel the heat of their ire,
Such hate in their illumination,
They pounce from brush to brush,
Denoting a predators process,
The night shifts just that bit colder,
I am fixed in their gaze,
Silence,
Just silence,
Then rapid claws upon broken twigs,
No more sound would be heard,
No more sunsets to be seen.
The dark has a mind of its own,
The periphery does not lie,
There’s something there,
Exerting its will unseen,
It’s like a shadow person,
It has limbs of pure contorted blackness,
It pinches at your ears and thighs,
Supping upon your rapid heart,
Tentacles against table legs and wall skirts,
Those whispers are very real,
It tries to lead you further in to the night,
Tendrils ushering you onwards,
For nefarious ends perhaps,
Or some other mischief.
I am Gaki,
I died once,
A life spent in overindulgent opulence,
Now I suffer in spirit,
Doomed to unlife existing in eternal famine,
All is fodder,
Unclean or otherwise,
But no myriad feast can cure my paucity,
All of the kings men,
And all of the kings flesh,
Couldn’t sate this demons hunger again,
Nothing can fill this distended belly,
It is hell I assure you,
The pain has dulled all other sensation,
Hell of a worse kind.
Walking through these cold streets,
All I see is grey,
Save for the colours of demons,
Hovering behind human shoulders,
Feral spirits whispering into human ears,
Cupped hands beside unknowing brains,
Sweet nothings that feign sweetness,
One suggests taking that crones handbag,
Another sings the praises of broken windows,
Yet another gives you invitations to every speak-easy,
These invisible spectres suggest the worst of vices,
Pushing a dark narrative,
They are over all of our shoulders,
Wearing the shrouds of angels,
Whispering,
Whispering,
Suggesting.
Ifrit,
Fire given form,
Smoke and ash given intent,
Among the jinn he resides,
Among creatures of the hereafter,
Upon a searing wind of flame,
He comes to Mundus,
With broiling malice in his eyes,
Emanations of foul determination,
Ifrit,
He comes to spread misfortune,
His bestial form is scalding in its barbarism,
Horns and scorched auburn fur,
He comes to bring about an encompassing scorched earth,
But there is a defence,
Go to your Imam,
Chant your Du’a,
Chant if you hope to douse the fire,
To defeat him,
To defeat Ifrit.
Descend you will,
Seduced by the siren call of golden opulence,
Down into the dungeon,
The harsh pit,
Dank fluctuations through the planets flesh,
Hewed by unknowable beings of history,
The marvel of its structure only matched by the horrors within,
Those before you have fallen as fodder or gone mad,
There are things down there,
Things waiting in the darks cloak,
Hungry pitiless things,
A terrible bestiary of jaws and roughshod weapons,
Goblins and dragons and basilisks,
Beholders and zombies and troglodytes,
Descend you still will,
Like so many before,
Will you overcome them all?
Cleave a swathe through them,
And return to the light with riches aplenty?
Or fall and become yet another skeletal decoration,
Expired prey of the dungeon?
Do you remember thirteen years thus?
A bargain was made,
A pact you cannot break,
With a loan shark you can’t dupe,
An infernal contract,
Your soul for your hearts desire,
Seemingly an easy trade at the time,
The time has come to collect,
Your final sunset has passed,
The hounds come,
Obsidian pelt and garnet-eyed,
Slavering and tireless,
From the flames they come howling,
To tear from you a promised ember,
The hounds are here,
A flood of ghastly Baskervilles,
Do you hear them scraping at your door?
The scent of brimstone is palpable,
No amount of bargaining can lull them,
They are the devils own mongrels,
And they hunger for the flesh of a soul promised.
There are other worlds out there,
Alien and shadowy,
Full of miscreations,
Manticores and ghouls and chimeras,
Full of hunger,
Only a thin veil keeps them at bay,
A glass screen between the realms,
A blurry fortification,
A monochrome stained glass window we all push on,
Man doesn’t gently caress the wall,
Indeed man bashes against it incessantly,
Tempting fate and monsters,
As if galvanising our own slaughter,
Each crack in the veil is a dinner bell,
A welcoming call to the trough of this world.
Sweating in the southern humidity,
There is a dead soul walking,
Waist deep in stinking brackish water,
Inspirited by the morning bourbon,
Gummy peacemaker in hand,
On the search for the devil himself,
Wanted dead or alive,
Amongst numberless drowned reeds,
Even a dead man can feel agony,
This swamp is a mad undertakers dream,
There are worse critters than mosquitoes,
These waters have teeth,
Scaly cold-blooded demons and wandering corpses,
Both would drag our hunter to a fetid end,
The bounty hunter wades gutsily ahead,
But the devil has other ideas,
The swamp rebels at each step the hunter takes,
Filthy waves advance and a ghostly banjo yelps,
The clamour of a rattlesnake intensifies,
At the behest of Lucifer himself,
The bayou seeks to claim another between its jaws.
