Dust to Darkness

The darkness was inside the man.

He put it there himself when he opened the jar,

never to be contained again.

The darkness tried to swallow the light,

but its teeth weren’t sharp enough.

Now the light and darkness live together.

There the darkness will remain long after the man turns to dust.

Steeples towered high above the city like inanimate fingers clawing at the skyline, ready to impale winged being’s falling from the clouds. It was a sinister and foreboding thought, but it was the one that gripped me, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. A storm was gathering in the darkness above and thunder called out from the distance, singing its mighty song of anger in a prelude to what was to come.

As thick gray clouds rolled over each other, lightning surged, scorching man-made and living things. Lashing out at whatever they could touch with their deadly reach. In the chaos of the storm, a shadow dropped from the sky, silhouetted by the flashes of light. A cry of pain mingled with the crack and booms, as flesh hit metal. Hovering above the fallen figure, brandishing a silver sword, a man could be seen cocooned in a mass of feathers.

I’d given up on my umbrella long ago. It dangled uselessly at my side in a mangled mess after a gust of wind had destroyed it. My sopping wet clothes clung tightly to my skin as the torrent of rain poured down on me, and a shiver raced down my spine, though I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold penetrating my skin, or the fear racing through my veins. From where I stood tucked against the brick building and the safety of its shadows, I witnessed the unthinkable. A winged beast had fallen from the sky and conquered his foe. And then his eyes met mine as if he knew I had been watching the whole time and he had just found his next target.

My breath hitched in a painful lump in my throat, and my heart skipped a beat. Time stood still as I stared into the glowing eyes of death as he looked down upon me. His weight shifted as he hovered lazily over his kill with his sword still gripped firmly in hand, and with the next beat of his wings, I was running.

My lungs screamed for air as I let my feet carry me as fast and as far as they could. And yet this small irrational part of my brain wanted me to stop. I didn’t have a death wish, but to die at the hands of that man…

…would be heavenly.