Shrapnel

The shadow of the cross on the church drags across the ground as the moon travels through the night sky.

Dust spins and carries a sermon, with gravel and shards of glass and a hymn from the moonlight,

God hasn’t had an answer for this church in a while.

Prayers etched into the wall with the markings of dead names and images of children so close to life they forgot to pray,

The wax of a candle hangs from the altar and the corner of a bible page speaks from the edge,

The doors rust and seed their own sin into the wood flooring as their feet carve eternal markings, a half moon for each door.

From the altar, a voice berates, not as a whisper, as a claim.

“The rings of Saturn echo in her eyes, a fellowship of regret and solemnity, twisting you into knots of yourself, ouroboros.”

The pews creak under the weight of a false descendant, claiming the chapel as his own and the broken glass and the melted wax and torn pages and all.

He breathes heavy, with cigarettes for lungs, and liquor to beat the heat of the sun.

“You dance a dialogue with yourself and not your other self. You sin in imagination only.”

He has heavy boots, the heel click echoing off the cold of stained glass, half broken and resting on the steps for the sake of divine variety.

In the rafters, a spider tries to spell its name in the webbing and still spells it wrong.

“A man or any being always learns to swallow names he hasn’t said in years. It’s the natural death before death.”

A lighter is lit, elevated into the dusty infected air of the dying church, aging as any other living thing.

The walls in the light confess to themselves and the mice scurry off into the floorboards to carry on the sermon,

The coyotes chirp in confusion and the ravens twirl their wicked dance around the moon,

No one really listens and they bow anyways,

A man or the faint shadow of a man walks in between the pews layered in cracks and old love, old love that can only be fostered by youth.

The lighter still raised, still flying bright in the movement of urgency, a cracked bell solves the equation of god in its broken and silent glory,

He gets to a confessional and the door is locked,

Dust devils twist into the glass from the wave of the rusty landscape, with dead lizards and birds that don’t sip water for days and the worms dry in the sun before any benefit can arise.

His head rests against the door hoping a word would come to him first, hand pressed against, leaving a dust print.

Eyes broken and white with traces of red glow from inside the window of the booth,

“Father, I…”

The lighter goes out.

“Father, I have sinned.”

He flicks the lighter. No spark.

He flicks it again.

And again.

Again.

Errant

Dear,

Dear-

Theres no one to address. This room built around me like a cell with a window to prevent some madness, does not work as well as id hoped. Remember that they lied to you and it wasn’t always your fault and that they couldn’t look in the mirror when you could. Don’t forget to dream a little bit longer tonight and to wake a little further than that. Remember that theres no lower than hell and even God throws angels out of his kingdom. Don’t forget to pray tonight for something you arent willing to earn. Remember to water your plants. Don’t forget that itll take them a while to grow. Make sure your friends keep you grounded and make sure you don’t always fall for the hype. Remember that people have their own reasons and they often have nothing to do with you. Don’t forget that your window opens and you can breathe when you need to. Don’t fight everybody, just fight when you know it’s necessary. Remember that dreams die as often as yesterday so keep them close and remember them for as long as you can. Don’t forget that the pissy old man at work probably misses someone as badly as you do and for twice as long. Vicious or mercy, that’s the true dichotomy isnt it. Never knowing when to be the hunter or the hunted. The stable or the magnificent. The wise or the heard. The coldest or the most kindred. Don’t forget that there’s a place in life they make for indecisiveness, and it lives in the name of regret. Dear- You – reading this. Chaos is inevitable and its not the end of you. Its why it lives in you in the quiet moments. We spend more time preparing for it than we actually have to deal with it which confirms our bias. All it takes is once and the foundation you built in childhood is falling apart at the seams. I promise you, the weight stays the same but your ability to carry it makes it feel lighter. Remember that dogs go to heaven and cats were gods in egypt and scowls on nameless faceless people is nothing. Don’t forget that a silent saying to yourself can pull you back into reality. Remember that there are flowers that still bloom in the winter and the birds will always fly south. Don’t forget that Paris smells like garbage but its still Paris. Remember to laugh at your mistakes a little bit and don’t be so hard on yourself. The landscape we’ve been given is tricky to navigate for us all. Remember that you don’t have to count down to every possible terrible moment on the horizon. Above all, don’t let them kill the love out of you. Make that promise to yourself and love will always exist- in some small way.

Witness0

The little soldier, he stood, five foot seven, pattering up the rocky side of a muddy hill with a bellow of smoke rising behind it. He thought he made out the sound of a trumpet in the wind or the sound of an angel had carried him here but nothing was to be found but dusk and the dark that waits after it. Hurrying up the side he can now see the landscape in its entirety with the wind lifting the dying flags, some singed with warfare and some standing among a rotting pile of the corpses it stands for. The guns and empty shells among empty shells and then the empty bullet shells beside them. Their hollow rings now blown with the wind to the past and buried in a moment of silence. Some soldiers lay under the mud, some reaching for a gun, some with their eyes closed, some hold something small in the grip of their hands, some cry in death and stare at the sky and wonder whether God had really something to offer them after this dirty disarray of humanity or if war was his plan all along. He turns every now and again, hearing a woman call his name, a ring that is not unlike any bullet or any rose, a voice he rises to meet only in his heart, a voice that travelled him 75 miles out of any comfort in lands he has no business occupying in a muddy bloody rotten corpse filled frost ridden hell having man bashing bone clashing vision of a future only we created for ourselves, oh so lovingly and willingly. He avoids the bones of the dead men in his path, they felt enough destruction. He only looks for a face. Maybe some color in it, with wholeness intact. Where the fever of a rotting injury or the slow bleed of mans creation hadn’t created another burial but it was all around him, how could he hear a voice so angelic in a field where men stab and thrash until the other ceases to see and remember. Men who built dreams to sustain themselves and nurture their longing for the undead, their longing for a laugh with a brilliant woman in a fancy hotel bar room or smoking in a cigar lounge with his best man the night before his wedding day. They left it all, to prove a point. What point is there for him to prove now? The battle is over. All faith is lost. All men are dead and have carved themselves out a landscape for the feeble to cry over and whither at the thoughts of such horror and he carried around his neck a bottle. A tiny flick of glass with a wooden screw on top for the sake of being sacred. He may have a message to save for her and he may not. There it is again, the voice, calling from the north over the sea of final release. Eyes staring at the sky lifelessly as if their last thoughts may not have been as harmful as the blood pouring out of them. Their dreams of children and wives and living life so freely as to pick up a basket of oranges and milk on the way home in the grocery store, every memory of mother and father, every love, every significant touch, every memory forgotten but stored beneath their fingernails and their filthy habits, it all lives in the mud now. In the graves that are dug for them in the country from which they came. The truth is the lives they lived are still the truth and cannot be ignored. Men with the capability to kill were already killed. Some in their wake, some in their daydreams and some in their nightmares but they were killed and everyone is killed at least once or twice by themselves. There are dreams that are meant to. Yet we dream on. We step on lazy and broken carousels if it means itll be the only horse to carry us home and so we spin round and round in that lazy way that we hope for something meaningful to happen. There it is, the voice again. Her name. He almost caught it and his jar was open and his jaw was allowing the air to pass through. He wanted to taste the sound of this angel and carry it home. The mud had gotten too high for him and the blood had a stench like shitting pennies he had for breakfast and he wish he could feel a warm embrac- no. He has to search for it. It calls him in this dying climate. Then the bullets pick up speed and move past him. He is out in the open and braces for cover. The metal smacking and clanging against the already dead bodies, sending flesh like shrapnel and bones reemerge into the war and the souls of the dead men that surround him just wish for silence but are propagated by the ache of the very thing that ended them. His nightmare is reawakened but a nightmare he needs to live eternally. Yet through every flint of cheap metal that buzzes past him like a bumblebee, he aches to hear her name in the wind with some breath and beauty, to remind him to continue forward. That war is all a bad dream and the feeling of longing is designed to keep only sacred wars intact, the sacred war of man vs himself. Nature and love do not coincide. One is always trying to remove the other. Nature decided that love was too welcoming and gave it an expiration date and we all abide without choice or fight but what about the ones who died before they enter the battlefield and what about the ones who die after. Ricochets reflect from his immediate surroundings and damn nearer to him with every shot. He waits and waits for the sound of her calm, her scent to erode away the fear of his finality and if that’s all love had to offer, he made peace with that. So he accepts that the thought is enough and hands dig out from the dirt underneath him, her hands, with her warmth and her century, an ultimatum only he can give himself at this moment in time, the glass jar on his chest opens and pulls in the black mud riddled with love and death and collapses onto the surface. As the soft hands of grace pull him into the ground, he can see faces of many dead men and women, singing so bright and aware that the top of the bottle burns with smoke rising from the top and it burns the dirt underneath it. The truth about every man is it will end for all of us and some would like to decide where and when and how or find the opportune moment like laying in bed with loved ones or in a comfortable hospital room also surrounded by loved ones but the real truth is that men will die for just a glance of appreciation. Once men die that very first time, some stay dead and some learn to live again.

Sombrerón

The morning had haze spilling from the sun and onto the slowly rising crops. The wood of the houses, the hanging metal pans and the malice in the air all drenched in fog. A horse carefully stampedes through the unseen thickness, trotting through the hanging green of the earth. On the horses back rides a young woman, Isela, with her hair sharply painted onto her face and a drip of water prepared to dribble off her forge sharpened chin. Even in the fog her eyes carried a light green reflection that blended with the life around her. Her long brown hair draping behind her, exposed to subtle gravity and clung to her to put up a fight. Isela is tired and grasping for a bit of air, hoping the fog would quench her dehydration. The water only lived in her hair and clothing. Ahead of her lies a riverbed, almost dry, with a dampness meant for the scorpions to feed on. She heard the quiet pull of a bucket somewhere in the thickness of the gray and urged the horse to follow it. She is entranced by the homes, with soft strands of hay bellowing over the top, water dripping into buckets, steel buckets and cats running away under the houses or into the thicket that surrounds them. The slow drift of a wind pouring from over the straw houses and bases of mud and adobe was not enough to clear the fog but it was enough to allow full breaths to be taken, which was not the case for the majority of her journey here, to Santa Esperanza.

Isela approaches a home with blue and red linen hanging over the arms of the porch, with windows so draped in the weight of moisture they cant be seen through or out of, yet she sees movement from the inside. Many unseen faces peek through the window and scramble away to allow others a glance. When she looked at the rest of the houses they were all doing the same thing. Her voice cracks through the dryness of her throat.

“I am only looking for some water, if you could please help. Me and my horse. We are very thirsty and I will be back on my way.” Isela steers her horse, hoping deeply for a response. The faces in the windows have now all disappeared yet the weight of eyes on her being have not ceased as if they were right above her, or below.

The silence stings with every extra second of thirst clearing her senses. The forest around her sings with a hollow drift yet the wind is too mellow for that, but she hears the voice of it, whispering through the soil and she begins to stare at the trees too long with an encroaching darkness in the haze of the fog. A woman, no more than half the height of the standing horse. Her elderly face, not gently but reaffirming, a finger up to her lips to grace silence followed by a hesitant gesture to follow.

“Thank you.” Isela nods. The woman turns around with a sharpness to her glance, a reminder to remain silent. Under the woman's hat, Isela could see just barely that she had no hair.  She is lead down a long path with plants that seldom see the sun and over fed by the conditions and fish hanging from sharp pins that hang from other tools like rope and thin metal wiring. The mud getting thicker with the horse readjusting as he slips a bit between his steps. A horse much more used to dryer land and readily available water, same as Isela. This reminded her nothing of her fathers ranch growing up, no more than a 4 day trip west, where she had come from. The memory of warmth and freshly made mole and pozole and tamales instilled nothing but regret in this current moment. Her face shows it with every foul stench picked up from the rotting fish and vegetables and perhaps the women hadn’t bathed in quite some time, yet she hid her judgement with a stern stare forward, just follow the woman.

They approach a house that is half burnt, a well behind it and two girls that rinse their faces just beside it, trails of black dirt running down their faces and shoulders. These girls also had no hair, maybe an inch a top but that was it. Isela wanted to now hide hers but felt that might be a rude gesture. Best to pay no attention to it but a strange occurrence nonetheless. Her mother spent hours sometimes, combing, brushing and braiding her hair. The memory to her as a child was a tender tug but she grew accustomed to wanting her mother to do it and her mother only, even today. The two girls watch her closely as she steps by dragging her horse along with her through the mud and spotty gravel.

Isela quickly picked up that love had not a name here unless it was etched on a fading gravestone below the earth. One of the girls is slow to offer water to her, glancing between Isela and the elderly woman, with the elderly woman carefully approaching behind her. Isela reaches down with the bucket, her long hair becoming a nuisance drifting in and out of her vision. The woman gently grabs her hair and holds it behind her, with Isela's shoulders dropping just a bit.

“Where are you headed girl?” The woman whispers. Isela pulls the bucket out and drinks a handful of it and then refills it for the horse, giving him a moment of rest and he drinks like hell has been burning inside of him.

“I am heading north eas-” The woman quickly silences her.

“Please whisper, dear, not everyone here needs to know where you are heading just I.”

“Yes, I am sorry. Northeast, to Pueblo Milagro. I am heading there to tend to my husband's wounds from battle.”

“You tend to a man.”

“Yes.”

“A violent man.”

“Not by nature.”

“Is nature not the action you take and not the thought otherwise?”

Isela ignores this question and pulls another bucket of water from the well for the horse and herself and this time the woman does not hold her hair back. The two girls have run off into hiding at this point. The only ears around are theirs.

“What is this place?” Isela asks quietly still.

“The only place where stillness is appreciated, and silence is a reward.”

“I mean no offense but without the riddles perhaps?”

“It is called Santa Esperanza and we generally do not like visitors.”

Isela knew her time here had gone on too long, and she should be leaving. “Truly, I meant not to be an inconvenience. I thank you for the momentary hospitality.”

“We do not like visitors... but I strongly advise you sleep here for the night. Evening draws near, supper will serve soon. It is up to you. Follow my path back or follow the riverbed out that way. The trees will be too thick to see so i hope that horse has better sense than you.” She follows her own path back to the other girls and women. Isela was not even sure how she got here really or who these women are and she wasn’t even sure Santa Esperanza was a real place but here it was. With its rotten mossy green and gray and the stars never showing through despite a wide view of the sky and the sun arrives here to rot with everything else and become another sunken gravestone in the memory of nature only.

Isela slowly approaches the house with a dying scent following her through the small village. The horse is belly full of water and is tied to a wooden stake just to the left of the house. She steps onto the porch as she can hear many footsteps creaking about inside and she knocks politely. All the noises cease followed by covered whispers and reminders of silence. She did not understand yet why silence was such a vow here, it did not bring comfort, in fact it brought the opposite. She felt like she had to perform silence as an act in order to gain the momentary trust of these girls and women. Just as she had assumed, not a man in sight and what shocked her further, not a single girl with a strand of hair longer than an inch, most completely shaved down to the skin. The room was dimly lit with candles and a fire in the chimney that roasted something that smelled delicious and unfamiliar with flickering shadows that caused the walls to look like they were dancing with the night.

The two young girls from the well looked at Isela and whispered to each other then they offered her a seat next to them. The elderly woman sat across from a table of mothers, maybe her daughters but she could not tell. The last thing Isela wanted was to open up wounds so she remained as not curious as she could pretend.

“My name is Nayeli, this is my sister Xio.” Xio waves from behind her, kindly. “Truly I would be happy to discuss more with you, but we are not allowed to say much or ask much of anyone. I just hope you have a wonderful meal with us.”

“I am sorry that is your reality. It is not this way out in the rest of the world.”

“I would love to see the rest of the world.” Xio exclaims under her breath, Nayeli pinching her under the table and whispering something inaudible. The elderly woman continues to stare at Isela's hair from her own dark corner of the house with her eye's unseen in the shadow of her hat but Isela knew her eyes were locked with her own. Nayeli gets up to serve herself a bowl and takes Xios bowl with her.

“I will get you some as well.” Nayeli hides a warm smile underneath her offer and looks at the elderly woman. Xio scoots in.

“I have to know, is the sun over the open land as handsome as described in literature?” Xio asks quickly. “Yes or no?”

Isela nods carefully, allowing herself a step away before getting drawn into something she knows is larger than just a silent village with silent and hairless women. She can see through the curtains that the fog still lay a heavy thicket of mist on the window but at least she was spared the odor from the outside and sat in the warmth of what smelled like something spicy. Xio scoots back with a subtle smile and pulls out a piece of paper with a thin slice of charcoal and draws a half black circle over a hill with her imagination of a bird soaring through it. “Like this?” Xio sticks the drawing in her face.

“Ah yes, but golden.”

Xio looks back down at her drawing “Golden, like a lively dandelion.” She whispers.

The elderly woman approached behind them quickly and looks at the drawing. “Keep your imagination in balance.” She whispers to Xio. “You drift too far and you will not find your way back.” Quiet enough to remain an intimate piece of advice, loud enough to get Isela to stop spilling her rumors of a better life beyond. Truly, Isela had to wonder if that was even that case. She then turns to Isela. “Please keep your fables to yourself if you are to stay here.” Isela nods with a bit of embarrassment. She had not meant to intrude this way. The room had gone quiet now. Everyone chewed and appreciated their meal, getting up to wash their dishes one by one as they finish. Isela quietly waited for everyone else to finish before she attempted to get up but the elderly woman sat her down and grabbed her bowl from her as if her very presence were an issue now. Isela opted to remain silent with a brick with nails resting in her chest. She wanted to leave but knows it is too late in the thick of this fog and the thick of the trees and the dryness of the riverbed being the only thing that led her out. All the girls and women pulled out thin fabric and thin pieces of charcoal and began writing into them. Vows of gratitude. “I am grateful for this silence.” “I can feel the vison of God approaching us.” “I express gratitude for my dreams.” These were the silent prayers of these women. Isela had remembered. She had something she wanted to ask much earlier and she whispered it to the silent group. “Does anyone have a guitar? I heard one just up ahead of me before I saw this place. It’s the sound that led me here.”

Whisper in the Forge

His chain mail slammed against him as he rose higher up the mountain, lead by the stars in their ancient ritualistic lingo. A language saved for the dead. A language he would one day speak himself. An ember up ahead braised through the cold sweat dripping from his eyelash. The heavy wool draped over his shoulders is not enough to block the chill from nesting into his joints and among the thinnest sheets on his armor. Ian Mcalester. Described as many things. Many things he ignores. The moonlight assists in building him a passageway through the lanky, rotten trees, drooping into careless silhouettes, unable to carry themselves through the winter. Some like arms reaching towards the aging knight.  

     He appreciates the assistance from his environments. Often a herald he can always rely on. He felt that trees can speak when the wind blew when he was a child, though he didn’t care to listen anymore. He had hoped this one time, that the light would take him in another direction.  

     The falling flakes had picked up speed now, the sweat on his face, dripping down his brows and lashes, now frozen still keeping his face more stone ridden than it already was. His eyes hide from the light. He doesn’t want God to see into him or the devil. This is a choice without influence. He does not need to share the blame. He stares straight ahead into his own faith in darkness, guided by the pale blue aura ahead, almost hidden by the flurry of ice in the air.  

  The ice on his fingers, calling him to warmth. Drifting nearby, a scraping wood and a warm yellow fade, piercing through the chilly blue and pulling him toward a brick endeavor. There was a red cloth hanging over the door, burnt to ash at the bottom and rising to a deep amber, swaying in the wind. A wind heavy enough to swing the door in favor of his surviving senses in the snowstorm. For a moment he confuses his footsteps with another and spins around. The woods behind him, darker than he remembered. A stench followed him rotten and full of flesh. It made his nose twitch. 

With no hesitation he enters the small brick foundation, just tiny enough for him to squeeze through the wooden frame barely holding and pulls the heavy red blanket on the door with him. A symbol of his rivals. He rolls the blanket up in his arms, centering it and admiring its ugliness. There is a small forge in the center of the brick cabin and he catches a faint feeling that something is waiting for him in the cold night just outside the door, as if there were no space for him other than this tiny cabin with a tiny fist sized hole. 

From the bag near his hip he pulls out a telescope, adjusting it far into the night, to see endlessly. The telescope circling through the other end, finding its home to rest its own eye upon. It may have found it. 

A hidden cabin, among the lively trees that sit on the crescent hilltop with apples that fall and tumble to a clear river with lively fish and sheep that willfully dance over fences and have no need for a shepherd. Even in the moonlight, Ian Mcalester could see the life beyond the false measurement of the glasses eye, from over 4 miles away. He can see what he’s taking away from someone, so he leaves the telescope in the hole and begins to prepare a fire in the forge. Starting with the flag that carried the horrible stench, the sweat of his enemies, sworn and now tearing. Tearing piece by piece into a nearly flaming pit. Ruthlessly trimming with his smallest blade, a handle with the taste of ivory bone and keeps the rest of the flag to the side, where he can’t see, smell or hear it. 

A match is lit in the fervent night with an accent of sky to fill the rest. The bright yellow shade killing the black, illuminating a room aged by death and the recycling of death itself. Dead maggots lay rest inside of eaten skulls, dead maggots that probably had maggots of their own. Boxes with years' worth of rot and famish lay bask less and plain within this small perimeter. Perfect for firewood though he had not much room to walk without waking the dead. A match is thrown on the flag and some wood, igniting with no wait for breath. Within a few minutes, the knight was warm.  

He threw a thin bowl of steel inches above the fire with his sword to hold it up, warming up a little bit of water. Digging through his bag he pulls out a cloth wrapped around a loaf of bread. He swallows the shallow meal down, saving much of it for later. He grabs a cup of warm water and drinks it slow, approaching the telescope on the wall. Still observing what it needs. The knight peers through the glass and sees that the house he is watching, now has smoke rising out of the chimney. He takes a long sip with the water burning his lips which in this moment, is easy to ignore. He would gladly allow any distraction from the morning ahead. 

When Ian Mcalester had just turned 12, he was handed his first wooden sword. It splintered and weathered his many bruises and weak dashes and mishandling and crises and formulaic excuses and rhythmic obsession and misunderstanding. He grew up not understanding why younger men had to fight and the older men got to live. He questioned often, the choices of those above him, not out of superiority but to pull them out of their own sense of superiority. He felt he was saving them from themselves. Who was going to save Ian Mcalester from Ian Mcalester? 

Ian was 16 when the king had knocked on the door of the Mcalester home, over 3 miles north of the kingdom itself. He remembers the day. The town gathering, handing him baskets of the freshest apples, oranges, potatoes, almonds, fish of all types, caught with our fathers bare hands. All just thrown at him. He didn’t even need to step off of his horse before his entire kingdom was fed ten times over. Ian thought at that time and even now, it was too much blossoming for a man who could supposedly carry his own. That any king worth his merit would not accept such offers from needy people. Yet he took all of the food that was handed to him, ordering his men to pillage it off the ground before it went rotten from bugs and dirt. This whole extravaganza, before he entered his home. When Ian would walk out of that house, the town would never accept him as their own, so he left with the king and stared at the plains and old village cottages behind him as they grew smaller and smaller and hid from him behind a hill full of dead trees. 

Now Ian is here, in a forge with nothing but a faint and fading memory and a tomorrow he wished would turn away and return another time, when the force of innocence had no play in the game. A note sits just out of reach and he chooses to ignore, unless choosing to ignore it is not ignoring it at all. It isn’t, so he reaches. The king spends a considerable amount of time in this letter, divvying up his forces in favor of a brighter day ahead, forging a plan for conquer and peace in his region of the world. Then a space, handwritten specifically for Mcalester himself. “The child is southeast, about 48 miles worth. A dreadful journey but one worth a lifelong debt. The child is a risk to the family name and must be dealt with in a timely manner, preferably before my wedding day. They live in the green hills of Sage Valley. Please make quick work of this.” He rolled the letter back up and worked to dismiss it in his mind, yet, he couldn't and who could. The letter was not ruthless but in that is where the most ruthlessness shined through. Mcalester had gotten messages like this before from the king and had made quick sorting of these issues a place of high honor for himself. A lifelong dream to serve a country that is, for a young man. He raises his sword and places it over the fire and uses some water to wipe off some residue of blood. A skirmish he had nearly forgotten about until this very moment. Yet another petty war no one will ever hear about. “Foolish.” He whispered to himself. 

“Foolish indeed.” Something answered back in the cold dead of night. 

Ian raises his sword and spins around and points it down to the ground, he raises it to the ceiling, he points it at the telescope, which is now turned inward, pointing at Ian. He holds his breath in the quiet, sword prepared straight at the telescope. Quickly, he pulls it out of the wall and peers into the hole. Nothing, nothing that speaks. Centering himself, he gathers that his exhaustion has spent his minds well being and that rest would come after the cleaning of his blade. The sword is placed gently on the edges of the brick with small grains of rock and dirt crushed underneath and dragged out of its comfort in the man made earth. The flame lights the security around him. He watches in between the crevice of the brick where critters crawl and webs catch prey and prey hunt in the dark. 

He needed to relieve himself and the space was too small for that sort of use, he knew he would need to step outside, if only a few feet. The snow had slowed to a crawl as did the wind, almost completely still now and he was impatient with his body. He takes a few steps out and leaves the door open for the fire to light the area around him. Ian watches the white collect on the fading treetops and some snow clumps even falling from one dead branch to the other. That dead blue light still pouring in, making him feel colder than it actually was. He drove himself into a momentary spiral thinking he was spotting faces among the trees, that would look at him and turn away as soon as he looked at them. He stopped looking directly at them and there they were. Eyes, living in the moonlight. 

Ian shut the door quickly behind him, knowing those faces only existed because he wanted them to because he knew the faces of strangers in the dark was a slight comfort above the things the dark deliberately wants to hide from us. Darkness exists for hiding and light exists to make sure the bad things can’t hide forever. In between the exposure, they are one in one, a force unbeatable, if not divided by the eyes that misperceive. Opposites don’t just attract. They bleed into one another.  

“Mcalester!” a voice bellowed from the smoke that now filled the room. “The bastard child waits for you. He can feel your footsteps haunting in his bedroom already. He may be asking soon whether there is a monster around in his room in the dark. His mother will sweetly tell him no and this time she will be lying. You are just around the corner.” 

The trees around the forge had been dropping enough branches to cover the exit for the smoke in the ceiling, causing it to collect quickly. Ians cough became heavy and expensive. He blew the door open and watched the smoke rise out of the tiny room, blowing it all out with the flag of the impostors (in his mind). The smoke would bend and coil and tether with every throw of the false rag being hurled into the air, some parts of the smoke darker and richer with a creamy texture flying into the air and the flakes of snow burning inside of the black dread that surrounds it. That’s when Ian saw it. Something just outside of the door, where the woods meet the gravel, something moved and shifted the smoke and disappeared in the dark of the forest. 

Through all of his efforts, the fire grew, and he was frozen. Outside, waiting for him, was something beyond him. His speed, his thought and his preparedness. He was tired, that was for certain, not this tired, he thought. He stumbled backward and knocked the sword off the forge, burning and cutting his leg at the same time. The fire slowing itself down, showing self-doubt. Through the smoke he even hears the slight comforting sound of a kettle and a kitchen and a laughing child, faintly as the fire dies down. He grips his leg, grinning with delirium on his teeth and quickly wraps the wound with the flag of his enemies. He limps with the dagger in his hand, prepared for anything to emerge from the thick of the smoke, but the smoke was clearing now. His shadow on the wall reminded himself of his father and he didn’t like it.  

He points the dagger at his shadow “It’s you motherfucker.” He steps toward himself. “You had a lot to say when I was coughing on smoke.” Ian examines the entire room, his eyes scanning every corner, placing boxes in front of the door, taking one last look at the house across the valley with its chimney still lit and covers the hole with the remainder of the flag. He uses his sword to knock most of the branches off of the ceiling to the best of his ability from the inside. He wants the fire, like any other, to roar in peace. He paces the room now, checking his shadow occasionally, circling the forge like a hawk circles its prey. He knows now, what waits outside. Ian Mcalester, saving Ian Mcalester, from himself.  

The night surrounds him now, he thinks in circles, a woman and child on his mind. Their faint laughter echoing behind and around him and inside him. The kettle steaming and boiling over echoing over the valley. He wished that maybe he would have kept on walking but that isn’t so true. If he wanted that, he would’ve. He didn’t like to be around indecisive cowards. Faintly annoyed even when his own king took too long to decide, always at the ready to decide for him. Now he would have to do the same again. He picks up his sword now that it’s cooled off and places just half of it over the flame to now wipe off his own blood. A voice, a new one, one he had forgotten about rings in his head and through the flame. “It’ll be easier on you and the kingdom to just do this dirty deed and get it over with. I’m certainly not the first king who ordered to slay unfit kinship and certainly will not be the last. Stand!” Ian stands at ready. 

Ian is again at his village. The day when the king came to visit, when food was treated harshly and the young and old were no longer priority and when one man had an entire town on each individual mind at once. My father, vicious to my mother, unfit to raise, unfit to marry and unfit to love and be loved, had laid his hands on her. The king had gotten a hand written letter from me, never thinking it would make it there or even be read but here he is. Here you are. Teaching me to protect, not to... Ian stabs his father in the chest at the dinner table with a king fit to watch and observe this sort of occasion. Violence for him was something to clean up, not ponder on, not for men like this, not then. 

“Dammit Mcalester, you’re too damn sweet sometimes. We should’ve sent the one we all prefer.” Ian throws his head down in minor disgust, mainly at his snarly voice like a snake is swimming out of his nostrils. 

“I think you should’ve too.” 

In the woods, just outside, he hears snow crunching under the heavy footsteps of something else. It quietly wanders the woods and keeps its head low so as not to interrupt the glow of the earth with its quiet and somber cry. 

A voice appearing as floating ash through the flame “Think my light a true shade of darkness and my flame a tongue.” 

The creature out in the dark, somewhere watching, has caught the attention of the stars but still has more attention from the black space in between them. He leaves that space open for a silent wail that travels through the door and into the brick and out into the open air of midnight. Ian Mcalester stands at the doorway, leaving his armor inside, bracing his sword and dagger. Blood waits on the path of any man in his position he always knew that, his path had to be chosen tonight, before the moon made room for its partner. The door begging for an opening, an answer to its only purpose of existence and Mcalester just stands and stares at it. No motion and no drive for motion and a wish for a quicker ending. He is losing the grip on his sword, he knows time is out of the opening, he knows the opening is closing in on him, he knows, he knows, he knows... 

“Mister?” A soft voice carries through the flame. “Hi, me and my son do sure see a lot of smoke coming from that direction. Is everything alright?” 

Ians grip on the sword had never been stronger. What maniac talks to fire? 

“You really don’t have to respond, we understand. We just haven’t seen someone like you come through here in a while. If it weren’t so cold out I’d say you can just come right in and have some coffee or some tea and soup though the soup isn’t the greatest.” 

Ian rests his sword in front of him with the point on the ground and the hilt firmly in his grip. He didn’t need her tea or coffee or soup to warm up right now. His lips stand slightly apart and his jaw clenched downward towards his chest, where he could feel the weight of gravity pulling him to the floor, but he refused it that. 

“Sorry i guess i ramble a little bit. We don’t get to talk to other people much.” 

“Hiii!” a boy shouts through. 

“Venus! That’s rude!” 

Ian chokes on his tongue and his words and himself entirely. He had traveled for miles, encountered grave robbers, ridden on strange horses in strange lands with even stranger men, eaten food he wouldn’t have in a millennium, played games with his own mind that he wouldn’t have stressed a day in his life. His loyalty, his oath, it came first, it always comes first, before the wind and the lightning and the rolling thunder and the bellowing waves of the widest oceans, he was that, a loyal and unconditionally faithful servant.  

“Ma’am I...” He bites. Bites hard, makes his tongue bleed.  

“You do have a voice. How nice to-” 

“Ma’am I think you and your son are in trouble and I think you two should leave.” 

“Don’t be silly me and my son are fine! We’ve been here for say, give or take, seven years now? Moving into eight? You seem on edge mister you big on travelin’?” 

“I am going to cover the fire now. You need to go. Please. They will continue to try to find you. You need to go far away and never look back here. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. You and your son keep each other warm. Please.” His hand trembles as he opens the door and scrapes bits of snow inside. Just enough to kill it. The cold bites his hands as he throws more in. Praying under his breath. He can hear every flake burning in the heat into nonexistence into memory. The sun, far from returning, to save this cold dark end of the earth from itself. Not even a spark or a field set ablaze can save it. He peers one last time through the telescope, watching the house and the smoke failing to rise. I hope for the woman and child to gain speed ahead of you and I hope for my soul to find rest among this wicked place. 

He sits down against the door with the moonlight peeking through just ahead of him. Hours away the sun would rise and it would rejuvenate all around it. The snow would melt and become a stream at the bottom of the valley and the birds would sing to the sun and the sun would replenish their thirst in spades. The trees would speak to each other in their ancient tongue and the roots would be fed and cold and no longer dying but reborn and providing lush to the deep valley beyond this forge and this brick wall. Ian Mcalester would not see this though. The cold has already darkened his vision and overtaken the flooring underneath. His sword is dug into the center of the forge, hilt standing upside, its shadow in the moonlight. A frozen image and a frozen image will never die but it will never live either. He was okay with never seeing the hint of the sun again. He can hear the dark just outside resuming its unlawful presence to all around it, starving the animals and beasts of sight and strength to those who adapted to the dark because when you feel that warm and steady grip from the dark, it would be a complete betrayal to yourself not to stay there. 

Witness1 : A Southwestern Gothic Vignette

New Mexico, 1920s.  

Carefully… he pulls his hand back. An axe drives down through the air. Splitting the moss ridden wood in half, as carefully as he could. Damio never believed in the act of destruction. He would quicker watch a guitar collect dust and spiderwebs than ever play it.  How could he? It was perfect. Like a new land of snow forming on the hill. How could he ever ruin its grace with his muddy footsteps? He also spent many dinners wishing he didn’t have to chew his food. Though, he was lovingly reminded by his mother. “A hawk chews the food for their young and I’d be happy to oblige.” He opted not. So when his father passed, and he had to split the firewood in half, he knew he would have another weight to grieve. Innocence.  

     Boso, his fathers gentle donkey, straggling alongside Damio through his daily rounds. They paced themselves through the narrow hint of sun peeking through the cloudy sky, yet warmth still surrounded them. Boso, dragged with them two dry leather canteens and a neatly threaded straw hat, shielding his aged iris from the sun. Periodically they would stop and Damio would cup water in his hands for the donkey. He was too old to raise his head for a pour. At some point both of them knowing these journeys would have to end. Damio, gives him a kiss on the head, replacing his hat and both forge on, trembling an air of dust behind them for the sun to drown in.  

     When they got to the river, the wind had chosen a violent cadence and unpredictable at that. Gone for seconds, alive for minutes, dead for hours, dreadfully aware of its own breath.  

      “The air must have a… rhythm of its own.” Damio speaks. Words pouring out slowly. “Like a dance or song it plays to move like that.”  

      Boso laid at the bank, his body down completely, allowing himself to gorge a mouth full of water. The dry leaves a top floating beside his drying lips. Straw hat dipping itself into the river causing the school of fish to flurry. He looks up, just as a bottle tips his hat and pulls it into the river. Boso, too old to swim, spits at it moving away, like a betrayal happened upon him. Damio leans on the nearest branch, grabbing the hat and scooping the bottle with it. He drops the bottle in his hand and throws the hat on for wear. Letting the cool water run down.  

     “What do you think this is?” He looks at Boso, for some reason, expecting an answer.  

     Damio sits on a nearby log with a tobacco pipe, making a poor attempt at lighting it with the wind dancing about. He gives up after the second match had gone to waste, sparing his lungs from a clogged breath. Ceasing to destroy the world around him and ceasing to treat himself the same way. 

      The bottle sits beside him on the log wavering in the thickening air. Thin branches snap off of dry trees and collapse around them. The sun goes further into hiding, leaving a red hue hurling through the grayness. Rose accented cacti blossom across the water, bees collect in a hive nearby with the scarlet tint praising its worth of honey. A buzz of excitement that even Damio could hear and the wind never settled. He reaches behind him, grabbing the bottle with a piece of stained paper. Stained in black. Stained in a black he had never seen himself before. He stares at the bottle, the red hue bouncing in and out of it, fragmenting into subjects of paralysis. His eyes dilate, letting the light in. The wind now causing the water to move, a partner in a daring performance. Seeing a reflection of himself in the bottle, darkening, twisting, clawing. A shadow of his face staring back at him through an uneasy cloud that contorted his chest. His lips moving. No words escape.  

     The bottle begins to smoke from the top when his eyes return to form, his hand unable to let go. The heat sealing the glass to his skin. He dashes for the water and submerges his hand and the bottle. A surge of bubbling heat blasting to the surface with the violent rhythm of the wind and the waves. Crashing into the cliffside across and peeling the cactus away from the ground. The beehive buzzes out of sync with each other like they don’t remember how. The red light has escaped now, into the bottom of the bottle.  

     When he removes his hand out of the river, he ignores his bleeding agony. He does not look at his hand. He keeps his eye on the pale horizon and on Boso who is pacing in the distance, staring at him or something near him, from afar. Damio swears in his mind, that Boso and his shadow are out of step with each other. The wind now strong enough to push has him struggling to wrap his hand, he can feel it swelling. Now he steps back to admire the strangeness of the moment. He questions what was in that tobacco pipe.  

     Damio begins to walk to Boso who is now crying over a landscape of flying tumbleweeds. There is a loud ring in his ear. Tracing him to a place. Pulling him back into a moment, a warped sense of solitude, a grace with it. He sees now a freeform shadow, following him on the ground. Hiding underneath a rock. Peeking around the corner at him. He walks backward quickly and trips. The bottle sitting beside him, neatly, with the skin of his hand hanging on with a firm grip. Now he feels the pain, what's missing. The wind charges through him, blowing dirt in his eyes and burning his nostrils. Boso yelling for him in the distance. Damio stands and throws the bottle into the log, and it shatters as do basic principles.  

     Damio freezes. Boso stands on his hind legs and wails to the sky for mercy. The trees stop waving, the shadows for every rock and every branch, contradicting each other. Shadows with no sun. Shadows with no reference. Shadows with a pulse. 

     All is silent. The wind fading into memory, a frozen scent, the temperature can’t be felt. The river had frozen just as it was, Damio, trapped in a photograph. Unable to move. He hears his inner voice, calling to his father, calling to his mother, his abuela, himself. The clouds overcome the bright and hunch over the landscape as a starving beast who casts fear for sport. 

     He looks back at the rock with the hidden shadow, no longer seen, no longer peaking. With the overcast it may never be seen again. With that thought, Damio knew, he and Boso had very little time to contemplate.  

     “This is no song, and I am the instrument.” He whispers to himself.  

      The river, frozen still, cracks from underneath. A deep bellowing hurdles beneath the hell beneath him. Then                                                   

A Glint 

Floating 

Down 

Swaying 

Back 

And 

Forth 

Catching  

One 

  Final 

Dance 

  From 

         The  

                   Wind 

Spinning  

Down 

          To 

Safety.  

     The piece of paper falls into Damios hand. No more wound, no more damaged wrap. Healed.  

     Boso lands on all fours, walking back towards Damio. His shadow remains, standing in place.