Nightshade

.It's cold and dark and very still and silent out here.... my thoughts wander to what unseen creatures lurk beneath these shadows that surround me.

I sense a presence within my midst, a faint deep breathing shutters my beating heart. Round I turn and gaze into the black stain facing my stance... like a dark spectre, surreal in its supposition, I unwillingly become drawn to this apparition. As if by some divine rite, an apparent girth of the being's density forms its dimension. In terrified awe, I look upon this entity and engage it with a sense of weightlessness that froze my thoughts to hollow emptiness. Where eyes would have been set... blank, dark spheres glisten the evening moon's ambient glow. I am paralysed in a horror only that can be understood by an innocent, helpless creature bound to await it's own end.

In my silent cognition, I reprieve an apologetic penance. One that recalls ages of forgotten lore. Embraced by a distressing emotion aroused by a perceived threat, my skin becomes saturated with a translucent type of ash, but not with any matter of sustenance.

In the latter hours I wake drenched in perspiration and with a torn withdrawal of my previous affairs. Succumbed with discontent of a moment either I fathomed or was had lived upon in a wretched embrace, I recall on the whim of what encounters that my night had just foretold. To my saddened demise of sullen wits, my hands raise to my sight and I ponder that soot-like film that covers me. Once again my heart clenched,

...  and I am still in hallowed torment.

'Nightshade'

- Ethan  Murphy