Psychopomps

Six Six Six Nights in Hell (Cleopatra)
by Angela Dauthi

The pagan fires are burning on the full moon. It’s a darkness of daemons and vampires, the slim children of the night keeping to shadows and underground passages, brooding and waiting for the sign, the message, the summons…

It starts in a secluded wood. The Presence bursts upon a solitary, tossing away his empty skin husk like a used condom, and howling at the sky, crimson-tinted teeth glistening in the moonlight. The scream builds, pulsing, beating, entering the city and penetrating the walls of the mortals, writhing in their sleep, furious nightmares whirling in their minds. The darklings are alone to hear it, the beat, the pulse, a furious rhythm that has a single-minded purpose: the black sensuality of violence, the erotic rush of power from the necromantic feast, a birthing of a new time, the time of the dark. And it begins. The splintering of wood as unholy creatures force access to their prey, the old rules and superstitions surpassed by hunger and rage, bodies tearing like old cloth bags, offering up the gore and the succulent treats that hid for so long inside the thin skin. Soon, it is over. The beasts gather on the street, eyeing each other warily. They all feel the pull, the urge and necessity to go to the forest, to find their lord and master, having broken through to this world to rule for a thousand years of terror for those who live in the light.