Bound

June 5, 2012November 17, 2014 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 17 Comments

As I look down at her cuffed and shackled form lying in its own filth and squalor on the stone floor, I feel no pity, no remorse, no compassion for what has been done to this pathetic creature before me. I feel revulsion and shame – shame that she would allow herself to come to this.

She begs me to free her, to release her from this pain and torment. Though she may be ignorant of the consequences, these things she asks of me are within my capacity to grant. Reaching down, I grasp her collared throat and pull the wretch towards me, snapping free wrist restraints and the chain that attaches her collar to stone. Blood trickles freely where her bonds are torn. She pleads with me not to hurt her. Hurt her? I would never harm that which begs for its own mercy, I would not debase myself in such a way. I wish only to have her pathetic carcass removed from my view and rid myself of its vile stench. She may not be of a mind to understand this, but we all serve a master – and mine requires I perform this act of compassion towards this putrid thing, my choice unconsidered.

Into a sunlight she’s not seen in years, I drag her writhing body. She yelps at being treated so, hauled across the soil in my vise-like grip. But having been kept chained in darkness for so long, there is no fight left in her.

Reaching a calm pool of water trapped in the curve of a small sun filled recess alongside a river, I toss her ripe and blood caked body to the ground. With a gentleness she does not expect nor deserve, I kneel beside her as I remove the symbols of the sins committed against her; the first of which is the collar I too have used to tame her.

Unsure what to make of such an act, she looks on me with both fear and desperation. An overwhelming desire to believe I am her savior crawls through her amber stare. This wretched girl, this torn and shame ridden child of man, covered in her own vile excrement and foul drippings – she wears her guilt as though it were a queen’s cloak, yet soaked in the foulest of deeds. Salvation she wishes for, in her eyes she is not to blame for all that has transpired. Is there yet kindness enough left within me to offer her such a thing, she silently begs. Yes, I believe there is.

Removing my own shirt, I dip it into the clear water at the river’s edge. Tentative of my ministrations at first, she cowers as I use the garment to cleanse not only her damaged body, but also her ruined soul. I allow the cool water to rinse over her hair, down her face, her exposed back, baptizing her body once again in a purity she cannot even remember she once possessed. Washed clean she is a thing of beauty even to my time ravaged eye; it’s no wonder I found her trapped in such a pit. Beauty is the trickster’s tool – it is a thing to be cherished, a thing of great value, a thing most would hold in high regard. But beauty is also a curse that cannot be outrun when the shadow of evil takes notice and comes to call, exacting payment for just such an indulgence.

Gazing at the creature before me, I admit her beauty seems near a virtue, or I should say may have at one time. Having been used and wrung dry, this beauty is scarred so deeply on the inside that I almost feel pity for her – almost.

I watch her for quite some time; captivated by the mere sight of her and the quiet joy she seems to extract from her new-found freedom. My gaze cannot help but wander her exquisite form. She opens her eyes. No longer filled with fear, I see admiration and gratitude for this benevolence I have shown her.

As her hair blows in the soft breeze, I lean over her, our raven locks intertwine as if to embrace for a lover’s dance. She gently shuts her eyes as my hand strokes through her hair, down her cheek, coming to rest on her alabaster throat that is turned up and exposed to me in a gesture of supplication. I pause long enough for her to open her eyes once again, long enough to breathe in her breath, long enough for her to fully convey an acceptance of my wants as a sign of gratitude for all that I have done for her.

My eyes peering into hers, our lips barely touching, my fingers still caressing her soft flesh, I snap her neck as though it were a bothersome twig in my path, and her limp form falls to the side.

I stand for a moment looking back on her. She retains a beauty and grace even in death, more so perhaps because of it. Her sins absolved? I hardly think so. She begged mercy from her god, a mercy that would set her free. Little did she know he would send a darkling in guise of beauty itself to free her of all her sins, even those she had not yet committed.

~ Nina D’Arcangela

Unrelenting Desires

April 20, 2012November 17, 2014 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ Leave a comment

To lie awake among the foul stench of his putrid liquid offerings leaves me but half the creature I may have been before his hand touched upon mine. In my own hazed world, I see only through the blood he has spread upon me, marking me as his own – this beast that will not be tamed, this beast that does not rest; this beast that shall never release me from my eternal damnation of bondage. He has taken what he will and that much more; caring nothing of the husk he leaves behind until the next moment in which he wishes to taste his satisfaction. His fangs, they tear at me; his claws, they rend me from creamy flesh to a shuddering mass of broken bone and torn exposed sinew. How, you may wonder, does a creature like me, one so full of grace and charm find herself ensnared in the wolfs clutch? He asked of me and I gave… now I shall forever give under his watchful gaze as my body, the body granted that of a goddess, heals time and again only to serve as a meal for his rabid snout and its unrelenting desires.

~ Nina D’Arcangela

You have found us

April 20, 2012March 7, 2018 ~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

Enter.

Sit before the Tale Weaver.

You are now in the presence of the Damned. Within these pages, an eclectic gathering of dark writers and poets. Each a distinct voice. Each a bent mind. Each a tortured soul. Here, the fabric of reality twirls round our malevolent fingers. Here, light comes to die.

Our world is beautifully charred compared to your own. Beneath your polish lies our rust. Beneath your glory exists our taint.

We hide not behind masks. We cringe not from the raw. The Damned speak truths you dare not utter. The Damned expose all you shamefully hide.

Indulge upon our sanguine prose. Bloat with our anguished muse. Exalt in our blatant gluttony. You deserve it all. For the Damned are merely reflections of yourself, and portraits do not lie.

No longer are these your safe surroundings. Eternally damned you shall now be.

Until we choose to summon you again…be gone.

So the Tale Weaver speaks.

~ Joseph A. Pinto as the Tale Weaver

Deep… Dark… Seething…

April 19, 2012June 8, 2016 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 5 Comments

I sit here awash in a seething rage that has my hands shaking and my mind honed to a razor sharp edge – an edge I would most joyously implement in the destruction of the seat of this anger. Seething is an emotion so primal that it leaves me frothing with the brutal urge to end something – something that does not deserve to be. I exist; this world exists; this world feeds my existence in equal measure to that in which I feed it. I wish to extinguish from my world that which pollutes it.

Darkness is something I am no stranger to; my meandering path has lead me in this direction many times before, yet I have chosen the dim shadows over the darker abyss as I believe myself to be a creature worthy of the lifeline that pulls me back from this dismal pit of consumption. Oh, but to allow myself to be fully submerged in the smothering inky damnation is to be free of my self constraint; to allow the dark to have me gives my soul the chance to sing its song of destruction so alluring that even I beg to succumb to it. It is my Succubus; it is my sacred muse; it is my damning salvation; and it is saved for the worthy. I have found a worthy receptacle, and into it I shall pour my darkness with the glee of the insanity that grips me and rips the vital air I breathe from my shrunken, shriveled lungs – lungs that have filled with the fluid of my disdain; corrupting all that flows from them; this disdain darkening my mind, my heart and my soul…

So deep is this angst of revulsion and shame that I find myself soaring on the wings of darkness; plunging into it’s depths; gliding to it’s apex; and begging those opposing currents to tear me asunder and allow for my full transformation in it’s most hidden recesses.

Darkness, take me deeper into you, allow me to feel you vibrate in every cell of my no-longer worthy yet satiated self. Give me the freedom to soak in the deepest crevasses of a blackened soul. I shall breath you, as a gentle deer breaths the air around it; I shall lavish in you, as an Emperor’s concubine is lavished in the finest silk sheets before being torn to pieces by the beast that owns her; I shall live off your vital fluid as a scorpion lives off the poison it delivers with it’s sting; I shall cherish you, hold you to my bosom and profess my undying devotion to your malevolent enthrall. I shall, if only for this briefest of moments, live you as my own existence – the destroyer of my world; the all encompassing bringer of corruption that feeds my every desire; the baron of my essence – for now you own me Darkness; you own a prize beyond compare, one that will only be yours in the deepest, darkest, seething rage of anger and brutality.

I submit to you while allowing you to enfold me in your soothing, gentle wings; your embrace so deliciously sweet, your stroke so tender and gentle, that I cannot help but melt backward into the darkness that has been unleashed within me… Deeper I go, darker I become, a seething mass of incorporeal sensuality poised in longing for your suckling kiss to drain me… I give myself to you for the taking… though I believe you may have already taken me.

~ Nina D’Arcangela