It was a young’un thrown down into a dungeon alongside mine own self. He had a head of red, and blue eyes too vivid in colour. Bawling, like a newborn without his mother’s presence.
“Oi, stop mewling boy… what’s your name?” I moved my shackled hands to distract him, yet the cackle of my rusty chains had done the job.
“M-My name?” The boy oustared the heavy chains around my bony wrists, suppressing his own tears. “A-Adelard… Sir…?” He peered up at me, his countenance full of red and blue swells, he had been beaten.
“Adelard, aye? It’s… Drogo.” I respond to the hesitation in his voice. “Drogo… how long have you been…?” The red headed lad spied at the cobwebbed corners of the tiny dungeon.
“How long? Who knows?” I had lost sense of time, I had lost count of the days long ago. There was fear in Adelard’s eyes at my dim answer.
“What got you in here, lad?” I decided to ask, uneasy with our silence. He gulped, “My father… a Lord… he beat my mother to death… I, his bastard son… took my revenge.” His hands buckled into fists, Adelard stared at the dead rat in the dark corner of the dungeon.
“You slew your father, aye?” I said out loud, “He is no father!” The boy croaked despite his youth, for a moment he resembled a sculpture of Lucifer I had seen in Rome.
“Why are you in here… Drogo?” Adelard asked, but his eyes had no interest in my impending answer, they were full of wretched despair.
“Why am I here? Like you… Adelard, I am also a bastard son…” I smile at my own tragic fate, seizing Adelard’s attention.
“Of a Lord?” He chuckled along with me, “No…” I lose my smile and cackle. “Ariadne. Empress Ariadne.” I confessed to him.
His blue eyes stared into my poorly sight, he convulsed into laughter and tears. “I do not believe you, Drogo.” He rasped out.
“Why would the son of Ariadne, wife of Zeno… be imprisoned in a dungeon in one of Alfred the Great’s castles?” He cackled out, ghastly.
“My mother… feared me.” I chuckled out. “Hid me… out of sight and time…” I explained to him.
“What’s it like, Drogo?” Adelard asked out loud, “Being kept from the outside world… being without freedom… what does it do to a person?” Adelard shivered as he questioned me.
“It’s no different to being out there…” I sighed. Adelard stared at my aloofness, unable to comprehend my answer, he was fretting over his own imprisonment.
“You may fear it, now…” I sighed, “But… you will get used to it.” I say to him. “No… I could never get used to this… even if it were my fate… I could never accept it!” He raged.
My eyes widened at his answer, he truly resembled that sculpture of the fallen angel.
Dante set forth into the abandoned church, and the scent of rotting wood, smoulder and loam blackened his senses, he was overwrought whilst he trudged his way into the ramshackled house of prayer, a part of him absorbed itself in shrinking away at the glimpse of salient signs of rotting construction.
He resolved to unearth his habitual hiding spot which was in the basement of the decaying church, where the burial chambers of the bygone priests still domained. He clung his palms together into another one of his heartfelt prayers, offering up his prayers to the one and only God.
“Father, art in heaven… forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.” Dante professed to God, repetitively, til his words became illegible by dint of his deadening tongue, and his lips were roughened by rallying fine powder hemmed up by the underground chambers.
“Father…” He rocked himself back and forth in a clay corner, absent of light, vainly, against the benumbing stench of the burial chambers that pulled his faint heart to pieces. Muttering in an undertone, repetitively, beseechingly, as if he were a newborn babe in a crib, afraid of everything and anything unfamiliar to what he was used to.
“Dante?” Gretel came into sight atop the stone steps that led to the chambers’ trapdoor, permitting a ray of golden sunlight to light up his darkness, wisps that fled from her scarlet plaits started to glisten under the sunshine, she hurled into the sod scented underground chambers.
She settled to perch atop the highest step, burrowing her elbows into her own lap, she clung to her flushed cheeks with mud-caked hands to be all smiles. “Dante… are you praying, again?” Her sapphires rather than eyes, danced in the blaze of the sun, so turbulently that Dante glimpsed, hither and thither, in the murkiness, up the loam walls and across the loam grounds for any wisps of rainbow reflection.
“Go away… Gretel.” Dante towed down fistfuls of his black hair, endeavouring to tremble out his shuddering words with a quaking jaw. “To God, again?” Gretel continued to chant away at her questioning, her pearly teeth ploughed down at the strawberry and lemon lollipop in between her lips, regardless of her place upon the stone steps, she battered down her rose-coloured shoes upon the steps.
“Stop it! Gretel!” Now, Dante held onto his ears with both palms to hinder the racket of her shoes atop the cobble steps, “Stop it! Gretel, please!” Rehearsingly, he pled for her to cease at her torturous behaviour. Gradually, her rumbling steps came to a standstill, and the sounds of her fracturing lollipop could be heard.
“Hmph.” She ascended up to her feet, churlishly, to flee her way out of the trapdoor. “Scaredy cat.” She soughed out with a blackly look, and disappeared out of sight. Dante started to breath, again, and the tightening of his chest had dissipated along with the tremble in his jaw, his beady eyes took a moment to rest upon the tombs in the shadows.
He bolted his way up the stone steps and into the sunlight to find Gretel.
He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking through me. The beads of sweat upon his brow, pelting down the sides of his face, it was thanks to the burning of the candle in his hand that I became aware of the dread that befriended his cowardice.
“Leave me… Elizabeth. I’ve no time for your interrogation.” He swivelled away from me, counted the rows of books imbedded in the bookcase across us with his beady eyes, he was fleeing away? I felt my heart shatter at the very thought.
I stepped forth to seize him by his wrist, he slapped my clench away. “Return to your chambers…” He hissed out with linings of vex in his tone.
“Why? Why must you break my heart like this… Charles?” Hot tears unearthed from my vision to blur him, he was statuesque and charming, in face of the growing ache in my chest. “Stop it.” Charles spat, turning to face me.
“Leave me be… I’ve nothing to say to you, Elizabeth.” His black eyes peered up at mine, breaking my heart further. I sensed the anger in his patience, a part of me feared it and another part of me did not, but I had to leave.
So… I left.
Her hands were cold, yet her face burned from her fevers, the iron shackles around her ankles and wrists stained marks that seemed unerasebale. She decided to whimper out a tune from her childhood memories, was it for the moon’s amusement or hers? Now, that was a rhetorical question, for another to doubt, for she hadn’t time to spare in the wake of such an eerie night. Her lips mustered out words that had weaved themselves into the entrails of her mind, her palms against one another, was she in prayer?
The moon hadn’t its other half, yet it seemed happier than her, she fastened her sight as the words had begun to trip up against the buckling nerves in her throat. “Are you hungry?” It was barking chaste, that caused her to tremble. “You-!” The French soldier’s hand gripped at her thinly arm, it was dark. “Are you hungry?!” He barked louder, and shoved a piece of bread into her chest. Tiredly, she plucked at the bread in her lap, and trembled whilst trying to feed herself. The soldier tried to light up the lantern in his hand. He shoved the alight lantern between his face and hers, the moment her eyes laid on his features, and the moment his rested on hers.
Their chests heaved with a warmth that challenged the wintering air, their bodies started to heave away at the heat from the glowing lantern, their pupils dilated and the mouths became parched. The blackening sky had caved in, and the earth had loomed upwards, for the scent of each had strengthened in so petty time. Swarms of others had become swarms of others, and the stars that perched became temples to idolise.
Her sight gathered at his lips, as if a mirage of an oasis was confined beyond them, if she did not imbibe from this body of water, she feared he’d meet his end sooner. Her palm held the side of his hardened face, the warmth of his skin replicated the warmth of a dwelling, she yearned to hide within for eternity. “Are you cold?” The soldier muttered, his harsh panting harmonised with her desperate ones, “No…” She confessed, his sheeny viridescent pupils reflected the ambers of the lantern in his clutch.
“Not anymore…” She professed, fastening her eyes to bury herself into the dwelling of his chest. His flushed scent unrolled into her chest, there was the wish to mother him, and the wish to be spoiled by him, there was the wish to bequeath him with her everything. The gateways of his eyes, bejewelled in emeralds, beyond that viridescence, birthed the city of God. A mirage that could quench her thirst for eternity, to set foot into that land, what would she have to grant?
The craven Mason has to hasten, For time is short for his nation, His son is quite brazen along with his raven, His frustration is in no way to chasten, It is an invasion, time for evasion, His raven is in no need to chasten, Although, the son of the Mason has emblazoned, He has begun a creation for cremation, He hasn’t chastened, nor is he craven, nor is he graven, His suasion above his station, His pervasion is corrasion, he is a maven son, It is an obligation, his libation, The revelation is but a haven…
She, forged from dew, He, could only ensue, Presumptuous thirst lurking at the back of her reversed moonless gullet, He, the animate fowl punctured with her bullet, Elderly father if it weren’t for the future, you seek in me, I’d be a lonesome boy by a misplaced creek, Aodhan, you may be pretty but you are the son of a Saint, Ailidh, “You do not know the way”, You say, If it weren’t for that loathsome black horse of yours, I’d be sleeping in Desmond’s chambers for the nights are bleak, “Bleak?”, I say, “You say”, “Weak”, I say, you say; Should’ve eloped with Fiona upon that ghoulish horse, Endorsed myself in ransomed shillings? Rekindled in unforced sanctuary? Shackled myself to a crucifix before January? Lying to my father’s bastard brother that his forest is the shield of a beast, It was all for show, a performance for the corrupt Priest!
The angels shall separate the righteous from the wicked at the end of this world to fishers sorting out their catch, keeping the good fish and throwing the bad fish away,
And a strong east wind divided the sea, and the Israelites walked through on dry land with a wall of water on either side,
If all the oceans were ink, God's knowledge would not be exhausted and the oceans would run dry…
The antiquity that decorated the furniture had perfumed the room with the scent of dying flowers. She sneezed into her expensive napkin and her ginger hair that was plaited skipped into an orderless mess. “What is the reason behind your visit, Heidi?” Hans spied from over his mythology book and gold-rimmed glasses. “Why… for tea?” Heidi gulped down the hot drink with exasperated eye rolls, Hans continued to read after a strained scoff. “Truth is…” Heidi hesitated before she confessed her thoughts, “What is it, Heidi?” Hans hinted his interest with hollow eyes.
“Why… did you leave so abruptly… that day, Hans?”
“Hans… I know… how long it’s been… I just… want to know, why… Why you left?” Heidi’s eyes shrunk and her lips began to tremble before the middle aged man.
“Well…” The man fidgeted in his verdant armchair. “Why would I have stayed? You were engaged, Heidi.” His tone quivered. “We were in love, Hans.” She exclaimed. “You promised… me… that you’d take me away… you left without me.” Her fingers dug into her floral dress.
The myriads of persons of all colours have encompassed me as if I were the nucleus of their reprisal. I had to call him, Amos would know what to do in this situation. I feel a benumbing touch on my right shoulder and pivot around to confront the source of sensation, a ghostly figure without shape towers and hovers before me. I curse and bolt through the numberless crowds and halt. “Where are you going, Genesis? Isn’t this what you asked for?” The dark figure of Raziel has turned to regard the hectic masses. “Or is it not?” I feel nauseous before the potency of his ruby glare.
“No…!” I claw at my head with both hands and my knees find the ground. “Where- Where is he…?!” I reach for the alluring Angel before me and beg for a response. “Amos?” Raziel chuckles beneath his hand. “I am he… the carrier of God, the Angel of mysteries…” His wings unearth from his back and span so far, the ends of his feathers remain unseen. “Genesis… all I need is your will to be one with mine… tell me, do you wish to join me and create a new world? A world of only light and forever light! A world, God, failed to create?” Raziel’s form is sheathed is some black mist, “A new world?” I question the supernatural form.
