prologue: 'The Dark Prince of Hell'
Another day of toiling away, at least today wasn’t so bad. I sat on the edge of the circus grounds, facing the screaming woods, washing props that got soiled during transit with my nearly frozen hands. The cold breeze hits like icicles piercing into my skin. My legs went numb hours ago and the skin on my palms have started to crack like a frozen river being disturbed mid winter, frozen on the surface but it runs alive beneath, gushing and waiting to crack open from the ice, like my blood. Blood would seep through, spill everywhere, but they’re frozen and I lost feeling in them a while ago.
I breathe out white opaque air, as though something inside me is on fire, if only it were.
Just then, a scream came from inside the woods, animal and guttural. The voice demented and desperate. Like a last cry for help before life drained from it.
Is it even human?
The ornament in my hands slipped and clattered on the ground as I perked my head up in the direction of the scream.
Before I knew it, I was running into the woods, my legs regaining feeling as I run, but I can only hope my hands remain frozen or I’d return drenched in blood regardless the outcome of the events in the woods.
It was a dark night with no moon in sight, without the moon to illuminate the sky, everything was a notch terrifying.
I run past enormous dead hollow rotting trees that could fall on me at any moment, forcing me to join them in their grave with them. With fear taking root in my chest, I ran in the direction of the scream, I would be lucky if I got there while the blood is still warm. The deeper I went into the forest the more fog there was. A fog so dense, I imagine this is what clouds would feel like.
In the dead of night, with no moon in sight, I run past dead trees and a sea of suffocating cloud.
The more I closed in, the more crows there were. Perched on top of the trees, unmoving and ominous with their carnivorous nocturnal ruby eyes. waiting, waiting for their hellish master to give them a command, a beckoning. A dreadful sense of foreboding crept up on me; perhaps their presence was warning me, to leave and never come back or sentencing me to the same fate the screaming soul met.
I stopped to catch my breath, the thick cloud like fog was somehow suffocating, gasping and panting for air, a strange rhyme came to my mind reminiscent of my childhood
’The red eyed companions of the hellish master,
Won’t bite unless you bleed
Won’t kill unless you weep
At their mercy you are,
In the kingdom of death and rue’
I rest my palms on my knees and crouched, I saw the blood on my apron, where I’d kept my palms.
I gasped at the sight of my bleeding palms and I hear a crow caw from atop the trees, my heart racing, my hands trembling, I forced myself to tear away from my oblivion of terror.
‘These carnivore crows will pick me clean’ I thought to myself. I looked up to see more crows were gathering on top of the trees surrounding me. And something slid down my cheek, wet and cool, freezing on its maiden voyage, a tear drop. My throat tightened and I let out a strangled voice.
Good, now I will definitely die, I’ve wept and bled.
A caw from one of the crows on top of trees brought me back from oblivion and I started running, on the first movement, I heard all the crows caw and raise like an enraged crowd, an angry mob ready to crucify a witch.
I ran through the fog, my throat sore like the rest of my body.
I looked ahead, and saw a wall of this fog, maybe this is the end? Past it, perhaps, maybe just maybe lies my escape, my survival, my salvation.
I deluded myself with hope, instead I entered a circular clearing, Surrounded by the thick wall of fog. I’d lost my sense of direction but this has to be roughly the origin of the scream.
And perfectly right in the middle of the circular clearing, right in the middle, stood a man, a dark figure, lean and slender, shrouded in rich black, darkness, standing in the sea of fog. He held up an arm and an eagle landed on it, big and ferocious. Their ruby red eyes glinting through the fog like a warning.
Taken aback, I fell on the ground, I landed on the damp mud.
I looked up and there they were, perched on the trees surrounding him, mighty and unmoving. The red eyed carnivore crows. Their eyes glinting through the fog like jewels on a crown, an unholy dark crown.
I sat there watching the scene as realization dawned on me, the prince of hell wearing his pretty bejeweled crown about to bring dusk to my life.
The dark godless night illuminated by ruby eyes and the fog ran thick, thick like the river of hell.
The air feels even more suffocating here, pungent stench to it, I couldn’t breathe, I felt my face drain of feeling as my chest filled with fear, growing like a raging fire about to consume me. My heart was beating in my throat. Even then, his presence possessed an aura mysterious and enticing, it drew me in. I wanted to run to the man and ask him to take me back, let him lead me like a lost child, even to hell.
My vision blurred filling it with black dots, my lungs burned and my head span, my life flashed before me as I started to suffocate in the fog. Then as my head hit the ground, near lifeless, a slow realization dawned on me, I struggled to grasp it, I fought to stay conscious.
At the very last moment when I lost control of the last strand of control over my consciousness, the thought unveiled itself like the climax of a play,
The last verse of the legend, most kids don’t remember this because they fell asleep before the last line fell on their ears
“And if the crows don’t take you,
The white opaque sea of the godless night will’”
The sulphuric fog of the screaming woods I realize as I take in my last breath of air before all goes dark.
to be continued....
new chapters each week!
next chapter,
chapter 0: 'Bleak Bleak Hell'
