Making the Macabre
For my Composition II class the other night, we began a unit on Edgar Allan Poe. As the end of my prepared lesson drew near, I realized I didn't have enough to fill what time I had left, so I came up with an assignment on the fly. I asked them to draw form the masterful mood-setting and creepy craftiness to write a dark and brooding piece of their own. While they wrote, I, too, took the opportunity to write something to endulge my dark side. This is that piece.
Blackness and terror became my dearest companions that winter. The branches around the cabin, heavy with a frozen blanket which nourised as it destroyed, mirrored the fetid sense of lost hope which hung heavy on my heart. No ray of sun, no glitter of star could reach through the morasse and latch onto my sensibility enough to interest me--much less to drag my reluctant spirit from its bonds of torture.
She had been the moon in my night sky, reflecting more radiantly teh garish light of day. She was the very essence of dark beauty, with eyes and hair as dark as the void and a voice which enveloped me, smothered me with its husky tones and honeyed congac timbre. I wanted to drown in her, to embrace the oblivion promised in the soft curves of her supple body. She was dark perfection--lurid and wanton and--gone!
There are not words enough within my lexicon to make sense of what happened. The images break into my shattered memory in pieces, little shards of what was--or what I imagine may have been . . . .
Her porcelain-skinned neck slashed with dark purple satin, red droplets scatterd in an arc, those black eyes gazing beseechingly, seeking the life that lept away.
What have I done?!?
Flashes, brilliant, yet dull, like an old filmstrip on a flickering machine--scrubbing desperately at my hands with waters running pink, the glint of the winter sun on the metal handle as the scissors spiraled through the air before dropping into the dusky water, the smell of the gasoline covering the walls, the floor, the drapes, the reflection of alternating blue and red on the siding of the house next door . . . .
The images, the sounds, the smells--they torment me. I haven't slept in months . . . .
Copper. So much copper fills each nostril, holding them hostage, waiting for the ransom of fresh air, only to be invaded anew with smoke and peeling paint and something vaguely sweet.
What have I done?
What have I done?
What have I done?
