Serenade of the Void

Inky blackness surrounds me, beneath my feet the cobblestone street is slick with rain; as if the world is weeping with me. A flash of lightning overhead illuminates my face, reflected back at me in the shop window. For the breath of a moment, I see my dirt-caked face; marked with the trails of a dozen eyes crying. Salt laced drips that fall from my chin and gather with the swells that lap at my shoes. My lungs burn as if they are gripped by sun touched hands; aching to exhale…But unable to remember how.

In that moment everything is gone. My name, my dreams, even the name of this backwater lane in a go-nowhere town. Nothing matters but the depth of the pit opening in my chest. My head and my shoulders slouch back as a scream rips my lips apart; a piercing shriek that echoes the Banshees of the Moors. They had it right all along; no words can convey grief of this magnitude. An eternity flashes before my eyes as I scream, reminding me that forever truly can be just a moment. I sink to my knees and raise my hands to the sky; fueling the fire of the inhuman noise that claws its way from my throat and into the rain-soaked air. I feel something warm and pulsating in my right hand but can’t bring myself to look. The depths of my feelings blur my senses, dancing across the lines of reality and fantasy as if it’s a skip-rope that was long abandoned by the children playing in this place. It's not until the warmth turns cold that I pull my eyes away from the sky; which tonight feels too full of stars. It felt as if the scream was waning… But erupted with renewed fervor as my eyes focused on what was in my outstretched palm. The flash of lightning on a glistening silver cage; dripping with rainwater and a dark substance. Softly thumping inside, is the heart that I feel missing from my chest. An aching void that screams to be reunited with its love.

In that moment, it all becomes too much, and I double over in pain; the cage clattering down the street. With hands planted firmly on the slick cobblestone street, my chest heaves with sobs as my mouth gapes in a soundless scream. As the cages tumbles further away, I feel the darkness pressing in around me. The air feels packed with presences that are as ancient as they are malevolent. The wind whips around me as if each is jockeying for first dibs of the broken creature on the ground before them. The tinkling sound of the cage on the cobblestone grows fainter, till I can’t hear its rattling anymore… Can’t feel the subtle *thump* *thump* of my heart as it reverberates through the earth. There is nothing but the sting of the rain and the weight of the hole in my chest. In the next moment of forever, I feel the last shreds of mortality slip from my grasp as I raise my head back to the sky; mouth agape, ready to welcome the darkness. There is freedom in Legion, there is unity in singularity, and there is calm within the Eye of the Storm.

The last thing that flitters through my mind as I embrace the void, is the faint echo of my heart as it putters to a stop; lost in the shadows of an endless night.