Fiction - Lives Inside My Eyes - Written by Eric Crow

Time: Night, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. 

Photo by Matthew Mullins

The sonic explosion from a Triptykon high is rushing through my veins. This is just what the doctor ordered. This drug, made of thick, dark notes on vibrating strings, accompanied by amplified rasps and guttural screams, over a wall of heartbeats, penetrate my ears and creeps through my body. Just as I am about to start another trip, I pause a moment to step onto my front porch and peer into the night sky. Traces of silver beam and twinkle and all is calm and restful. I think nothing of a tiny burst of red that I see from my left eye, and go back inside for a drink. A sudden boom shakes the air outside. The sky from the kitchen window grows pale, dark red for a second, disappearing just as quickly. 

I go outside and look up, and in the air behind me that I see that sight. A nebulous ghoul fills the sky, just as I remember it filling my mind with tears shed from fears of being seized by darkness in my nightmares I had as a child. It is a great beast of stars, formed from the surrounding fabric of dark energy. Without warning, it reaches for the moon and grabs it violently, squeezing her, bleeding her dry of her golden-yellow shine, until she is on the verge of rupture. Trickles of blood turn into a stream, and she gushes down over Earth like a thunderstorm. The intent from this ghoul is to make war with every trace of light in the sky. It grabs the sky at all corners and pulls it like fabric, taut as a sheet of iron, before giving a final, forceful downward thrust. It breaks time and space apart. The world around me seems unaware of the torment being wrought from above. Some may notice of a random, uneasy feeling inside them. they offer petrified words to the zombie scarecrow vision of God that hangs over their head at night as they pray their souls be kept. If they go outside, all they see is the hint of some phosphorescent glow; if only they could see the same entoptic picture being painted for me alone.

I look back down, shake my head vigorously and wipe my eyes, hoping this is just another night terror. The sky is utterly still.  I follow the corner of my eye to a yard across the street, and I notice a black dog, its burning, sharp, hateful stare focused on statuesque creatures that creep toward him; under it's nose hangs a bloody lure, placed there to capture him. From one of these stone statues bursts a flash of light, and the spirit squeezing the in the sky bursts toward the dog and takes over his body in a flash of light. The whites of his eyes turn silver, his lenses turn red. The possessed dog snaps its head towards me, eyes burrowing right into me. A warbling, multi-voiced roar escapes from his throat.The dog smells the lure, smelling of fetid grapes and putrefied meat, and it must go feed.

In a flash, I am transported to a location deep in the woods, where a number of walking shadows appear. They have caught something in the white cauldron they guard day and night with razor sharp spears. A bitter, sulfurous oil contained in a pale yellow chalice beside the cauldron permeates the air. Suddenly, I see a black dog being led on a chain towards the cauldron. It is the same snarling beast I saw moments ago in the yard, and they anoint it with oil from the chalice. They seem to be preparing to boil him in the kettle. They have decreed upon him the punishment of “Tod im Wachs” - a practice of heating oil just under boiling, to prolong the suffering.

As they begin to submerge, the beast enclosed in its skin house emits voices with no earthly sound--white, frozen, and hidden--and they seem to crawl out of its soul. They screech and howl, but also worship with delight. 

The beast rushes up, trying to free itself from its demise--the voices begin to ensure its end, but not before it looks straight at me and morphs instantly, contorting into an unforgettable face from my childhood. It is pale, cold, and paralyzed; a face drained of life. It was the face of a man that I remembered lying dead in a casket in my youth, but that I had never seen it before, and was not able to look away. A pale, cold, paralyzed face. Completely drained of life. Finally able to break away, I ran from this room shrieking the same words that came out now. I gasped,  “NO! NOOOO! NOOOOOOO! I don't wanna look anymore! I DON'T WANNA LOOOOK ANYMORE!” 

My voice fell silent, and the vision of the past dissipated and I was back in the forest. I must have been in a dream state. As my eyes began to focus on my dark reality, one of the shadows floated towards me, it's hood falling back in the breeze revealing one of the most calm, and composed faces I'd ever looked into. It was a face with the features of a mother, but eyes that no corporeal entity could ever have known. Three times, it repeated a simple protection. “It can't prey on you anymore.”

Photo by Matthew Mullins

This thrashing, sloshing howling body, arteries now squeezed firm, plasma draining away, thin red left behind not enough to paint, replace any fresh new pigment, pleas from its starving soul for time, protein, water, air all fall to the ground like dust. Its heart levitates out of its chest cavity, up through its throat and mouth. One of its front paws swipes out at me in futility, and my eyes grow wide and bright in a mixture of terror and triumph, but then gives up and lands with a thud on a silver platter beside the cauldron, peppering the sky with orange, yellow and red ashes. The same shadow that comforted me now rushed toward the platter and consumed the heart in a single bite, snarling as she chewed. Once the feeding ritual is complete, an unseen force lifts the body, lifeless but intact (as if it had never been dipped in oil), removing it from the cauldron and lays it on the ground, to cool and brittle. Water from a nearby stream floods from underneath and makes mud. 

In the early morning frost, its internal organs are harvested and sold to an ancient hermit, who guards the forest, full of snow-topped green trees. This ancient hermit speaks of the unearthly sounds of clipped-wing angels, as they voice their despair (in the forest.) They will be all he eats for the next year. A slow, soft-stringed requiem voices gratitude from his heart as he feasts. This meal is an offering that will stop the world from swallowing itself, a world forever stuck in praying mantis posture.

In the morning twilight, all is still around me. All is still, but a detached hand left from the midnight ritual, its cold fingers purple and black in decay. The hand lies beside the same cauldron, glowing white in morning’s embossed edge. It fingers twitching a crazed rescue code, a four-bar ad infinitum loop, first played on that electric six-string I heard in my ears before I opened the door, returning to my own Hell. The hand pauses briefly between bars, waiting to see if anyone is listening, and then repeats the chord. The chant of Goetia....

Photo by Matthew Mullins

This detached hand lives on in my eyes. Don’t look in them after dark.