His Darkness is My Light

January 25, 2023January 21, 2023 ~ Marge Simon ~ 3 Comments

Born out of wedlock, a child of the streets, the sisters took me in to nurture and bequeath their divine formula. I was a willing novice, grateful for their care. Oh, I believed in the Word, the Truth, committed my life to selflessness, counting my rosaries on stone floors, a paper doll in a cardboard room.

Why can’t I see the light in all this gloom? A key turns in the lock. I hear the creak of floorboards, — a shadow moves suddenly from the wall and joins my own. He materializes whispering my name. Ever so gently he folds me in his cloak as his lips find my neck.

I hear them talking on the street, “Look at her face, see how she changed? Yes! Her brown eyes, bright with innocence have turned dark as pitch. And see, where there once were tears are fresh tattoos — emblems of her Master, inked into her flesh. Scandalous, the way she flaunts her body!” Let them talk, let them wonder! I don’t care.

I know the truth now, the truth that the sisters would never condone –his darkness is my light; I fly close beside him. We search out the sidewalk junkies, the castaways, the homeless victims, too proud for Salvation. We offer them comfort, freedom from this mortal life of hunger and pain in exchange for their souls, an offer they seldom refuse.

∼ Marge Simon

Hush Now

January 18, 2023December 31, 2022 ~ afstewart ~ 6 Comments

The quiet things are the most dangerous, the ones that live between the moments when the night stills and the breath slows. They’re the ones you don’t see coming. If you pause, sometimes you can sense them. When you are alone. When midnight swallows the noise. When your heartbeat and the darkness meld. That shadow out of place, off rhythm, a small shift underneath the world.
Just a shiver on your skin as the clock ticks, ticks, down. But they’re watching you, in the folds beyond the shadows, eyes bright and silent. They are patient and still, hidden by the bustle of days, enfolded into the hush we never hear. A slithering river of the things we fear, shunned and shunted out of sight, out of mind, but never quite forgotten. The cracks in the veneer of civility, the bogeymen, the striga; the looming unknown we pretend isn’t there.
But they exist, skulking below reality.
They are the breath of night winding past midnight in every terror we’ve been told as children, the tales that crawled down our minds, crowded out by responsibility and maturity. They hide in our ignorance and disbelief, while we disregard their presence.
Until one day we turn around and see them.
The quiet monsters.
That’s when it’s too late.

~ A. F. Stewart

Worthwhile

January 11, 2023January 3, 2023 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 4 Comments

It was not an easy path. The old mines were swallowed up by the forest at the edge of town. There were fences to climb, warning signs to ignore, hazards to bypass. The old mineshaft pond was further away than most, abandoned back in the early days of prospecting. No one said why, but Jessica had no need to ask.

The pond itself was small—a black puddle in the craggy forest, but deeper than anyone dared to question. Rusty bars crisscrossed the dark waters to further dissuade the curious. Still, Jessica made her way through the forest trees, over the fences and signs, around the mining hazards, just to sit at those rusty bars. The way was difficult, the waters were dark, and the knife’s edge stung as she slid it across her finger. But watching her blood drops fall to the water below, Jessica knew it would all be worth it to watch Her feed.

The blood beckoned Her like a familiar voice, Her face appearing like a darkly beautiful reflection beneath the water. She came hungry, Her too-sharp teeth eager for the scraps of squirrel, of raccoon, of uncertain roadkill that Jessica might bring. But Her greatest delights were human: the collected digits, limbs, cuts of flesh that Jessica pushed through the bars.

Jessica didn’t know where She had come from, or how She had acquired her dark appetite. But neither did She question how Jessica gathered such offerings. Both came for these moments together, and both left with their secrets intact. It was not much, but it was enough to make the work worthwhile.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

Good Intentions

January 4, 2023December 31, 2022 ~ Richard Meldrum ~ 3 Comments

I hunkered down near to the rail track. I was just outside town; I’d spent the day there, panhandling without much success, but I didn’t want to spend the night in an alleyway or doorway. Small town folk, especially cops, didn’t like hobos, so I’d walked a mile or so out of town and found myself near a small rail shed, obviously used for storing equipment. I planned to move on the next day. There wasn’t much shelter, but the weather was warm and the sky was cloudless. It wasn’t the worse place I’d slept. I’d lost my job as a meat packer in Chicago in January 1933; I’d drifted west hoping for salvation. Six months and no luck later, I found myself in Colorado, still hungry, still poor.

I was about to drift off to sleep when I saw a figure standing over me. I tensed, it was normal for railroad cops to hassle us drifters, moving us on if we were lucky, beating the crap out of us if we weren’t, but I hadn’t expected to encounter any so far from town. My eyes focused and I realized it was an old guy, maybe seventy.

“Please, I mean you no harm. I live in the house on the other side of the gorge. I know what it’s like to be poor, to be homeless in these hard times. I’d like to offer you a hot meal and a warm bed for the night.”

The rail line ran alongside a steep gorge before turning south into town. I looked across the gorge to the warm yellow lights of a mansion. This guy was obviously loaded, probably ran a charity or something. I didn’t normally accept such generosity, but I was starving. The offer of food was too tempting.

“Okay, thanks.”

“Excellent, now just follow me.”

The old guy headed across a bridge that extended across the gorge. He reached about halfway, stopped, turned and motioned me to follow. I stepped onto the bridge.

“Come on, young man. Keep up!” called my new friend.

I took another step and found myself falling. I felt a crunch, then nothing.

I woke in a hospital bed. A nurse stared down at me.

“You’re awake. Good.”

“What happened?”

“You fell, luckily for you a tree broke your fall. It also broke your ankle, your femur, your arm and four ribs, but if it hadn’t been for those branches, you’d probably be dead. The others are.”

“The others?”

“You aren’t the first to fall. Didn’t you notice the bridge is out?”

“I guess I didn’t.”

“You guys never do, just straight across the bridge without looking, then boom, you walk right over the edge.”

“Isn’t there a barrier, to stop people falling?”

“There was, but the town can’t afford maintenance men anymore, so when it fell into the gorge last winter, it was never replaced. There have been five deaths since then, all drifters.”

“What about the old guy? I saw him reach the middle of the bridge.”

She smiled.

“He’s Henry Lansing. The millionaire owner of the Lansing House, the big mansion you can see on the other side of the gorge. He built the house in 1860, built the bridge over the gorge in 1863. He died in 1892.”

“Huh?”

“By all accounts he was a very decent person. He got upset after the war by the sight of dozens of ex-soldiers wandering through town, moving from railyard to railyard. But instead of getting the police to move them on or arrest them, he’d come over the bridge into town and invite them back to his place for food and a place to sleep for a couple of nights. Converted one of his stables in a barracks.”

“I don’t understand.”

“His ghost still walks, comes over the bridge and invites people back to his place. He’s still trying to do good, all these years after his death. You guys hunker down at the rail shed, he appears, invites you over. The mansion is still lived in and looks welcoming, but there’s one problem. He can walk across the bridge. You can’t.”

“So…”

“Exactly, he doesn’t know the bridge is out. You follow him, watch as he walks over the bridge. It’s dark, you can’t see the planks, but you can see him, so you follow. When he steps off onto the missing part of the bridge he stays where he is. When you do it, you fall.”

“So, it isn’t malicious? Evil?”

“No, but the outcome is the same. After all, they do say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I guess he still sees the bridge as it was, doesn’t realise he’s killing you.”

I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her.

“One thing always makes me wonder though.”

“What?”

“What he thinks when he arrives on the other side with no one following him. I wonder if he gets upset?”

There was no answer to that.

∼ RJ Meldrum