Reliquary

November 23, 2022November 16, 2022 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 6 Comments

Tiny bones arranged on a bed of cotton. A single daffodil snuggled in golden glory and lavender sprigs – an offering of love and fidelity. A stone from the garden to keep her beloved grounded; Lucy’s favorite toy sacrificed so she’d never be alone. To say her tears could fill a sea would be an understatement, though today they flowed with intent as each drop was captured in a small heart-shaped vial. Once stoppered, this too was placed with care. A final relic, the band she wore the day she came home. A watershed moment in a life yet unlived. With broken heart, the young one spoke the words only an eight year old’s grief could conjure before the lid was sealed and the small box buried at the base of Great-grans favorite tree.

As they turned to walk back to the house, the ground rumbled, the clouds darkened, and the tree began to shake. Brilliant fingers of light spread below them; enchanted, the child ran back to the tree. She hugged the bark and called out to her beloved Lucy, and Lucy answered in vibrant hues of orange yellow and red. As the phoenix burst through the canopy, the young girl began to scream. Flesh melted from bone. Blood ran free to quench the earth. Flaxen strands crisped in the heat.

∼ Nina D’arcangela

Inconvenient

September 28, 2022October 6, 2022 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 6 Comments

Click and whir, the soundtrack to my life. I’m to be grateful, Mother says, Father worked very hard on my new heart. It’s meant to keep me alive, but it offers no life. It ticks and clacks, and occasionally stops, but that’s why I have a winding key in my side. A bit awkward, the weight of it, the mechanical heart, not the key – that would be daft! I know I’m to be appreciative for the inconvenience, but I really would have preferred the key in my back. Dressing is awkward, standing even more so as I always lean to one side. If I’m not careful, I tip forward, making a spectacle of myself. Father says it embarrasses him when I fall, but what am I to do? I asked for a crutch, but Mother doesn’t want a cripple, she says the ladies at the club would shun her if I gimped around like a palsy victim. It would be a blight on our good name if I were to need sticks to walk. So instead, I stumble.

The gentlemen at the club are kind. As Mother lunches with the others, frilly napkins and finger sandwiches that would leave even me hungry, the waiters watch and catch me if I begin to list. Very kind, that. But I’d rather walk, and run, and play like a normal boy and girl. Oh, did I not mention that beyond a failing heart, I was also born a hermaphrodite? It doesn’t bother Mother, she always wanted one of each – a little girl named Suzy, and a little boy named Joseph, so she calls me Jozy. Father is appalled by my duality, says it’s an aberration that God should not have allowed. I suppose I was lucky to be born to a clockmaker, but as others stare and make fun of me as I hobble past, I don’t feel lucky. I feel broken. Not my heart, not my gender, not even because Mother dresses me like the dolly she wants to play with that day, but because if I’d had a choice, I would have chosen crib-death. It’s really not as horrible as you think, at least not as horrible as living as a wind-up freak.

∼ Nina D’Arcangela

Remnant

July 13, 2022July 4, 2022 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 6 Comments

Stone fucking cold. An awareness that emanates from within. I’ve always believed the most grievous pain would come from what is held inside, from emotional wounds that take more than what forever is offering to heal; I was wrong. The worst pain of all is being empty, drained, a vacuous core, a dull resonating hollow that allows for nothing – not even the sting of its own frigid harshness.

What then remains?

The echo – a concurrent wave. The thunderous slamming of logical thought, things I know to be true and by virtue of their own truth, to be right – just no longer right here.

The shadow – of what was conscious feeling; a memory. The memory of warmth, reaching out to it, grasping it; confusion at being sliced to ribbons on its brittle fractured edge, its tensile strength less than that of my own. For once I make contact with it, it can be nothing more than what I am: cold, empty, invisible, alone; the reality of full awareness.

The roar – perhaps the most heinous of all, but no, the echo is far worse for it is the remnant of the roar. Self-recrimination screaming in my head that this is my mind, my sacred territory, my imminent domain to control; my folly, so it would seem. Comical, though I have no laughter to spare in this moment. The thought that my own strength of will, my conscious pattern of thought exerted under strict control for so long – what I consider to be my euphemistic beating heart – would never grow cold. The mocking echo is utterly relentless.

I am a creature of science, one who ascribes to chaos theory. In chaos there is random order to be found that given enough time becomes specified; thus, specified random order within chaos. Some would argue the merit of this statement to be the antithesis of chaos itself, simply order if it is to be qualified as specific; and order is not chaos. But if chaos creates order, and order forms pattern, is it not then a foregone conclusion that the rigid stricture of order will in all occurrences destroy the fluidity of chaos thereby no longer allowing for the existence of the chaos that created the order that formed the pattern that left me stone fucking cold?

I’ll opt to believe in chaos, in the randomness of the order and the disorder that it also brings. I’ll choose to feel the nothing that gnaws a pit through my existence as there is something worth feeling the nothing for. What that something is – herein undefined.

It’s something that was created by chaos, and is being consumed by the stricture of random structure. It is a string that unifies me with a plane that is a more desired reality, a place where warmth still exists – where an echo is to be feared no more than a comforting howl carried along with the breeze.

Welcome to my happily never after.

∼ Nina D’Arcangela

Ripe

April 20, 2022April 5, 2022 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 6 Comments

“Gather only the ones that are near to bursting. They grow on the south side of the cliff, their hue that of the melon’s meat. Bring me only what I ask, boy, the ripest. An extra shilling in it should you be back before the sun crests the sky.” Off the child went as the old crone began collecting the necessary herbs to hide the sweet taste.

Several hours later, the boy burst through the doorway, his speed so quick, the weathered skins that served as a barrier flapped in his wake. The gwrach turned from her steeping brew. The child’s face was rouged the hue of dark jostaberry; not a healthy shade to say the least. He panted and gasped, berries coddled in his filthy tunic. He held the thread-bare garment gently in yellow stained fingers. She stared for a moment, then pointed to the oaken table. The boy stumbled to it and unburdened himself of his precious load. As his pallor shifted from crimson to deep purple, she asked if he’d eaten any of the fruit. As he began to deny it, his knees crippled collapsing him to the dirt floor. She hobbled over with walking stick in hand, poked his distended gut, and watched as juice flowed from the cracks between his teeth. “Foolish,” she muttered. The witch leaned heavily on the staff as she knelt to collect the liquid that flowed from the corner of his mouth as she pressed upon his stomach. The boy twitched, lost to the nightmare world the engorged pods brought on. Finished, she tossed two shillings on his hitching chest, not as payment for the errand, but to pay the man that would dispose of his remains.

∼ Nina D’arcangela

Revelation

February 9, 2022January 15, 2022 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 6 Comments

Creeping slowly from the deep, the creature within obeys without question – as do the others. The line marches forward; the shelf shallows by inches. All the while, whispers gurgle malicious intent. Too long have they resided below, an army dormant while another presumes apex stature. Alone, they are helpless, hapless, unwitting; far too fragile to cause effect. But together, united by His call, they will once again lay claim for they are legion. Shallow cuts in the sand mark their passage as the echo within grows. It resounds not the hark of angelic horns, but a violent thrumming of reclamation. Lining the shores, they wait as the flaming sky sizzles into crueler darkness.

∼ Nina D’Arcangela

Forgotten

November 24, 2021November 12, 2021 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 6 Comments

Hell has laid claim to places on this earth, places that are lost, forgotten, for all intents and purposes, no longer exist. I woke in such a place. For days I screamed for help, but none came. A failed attempt to climb the walls left me with a broken ankle and no hope. From time to time, I would hear creatures snuffling at night, but even they wouldn’t approach the edge of my open-air coffin. Daylight would come and the glass above this pool of no pools amplified the sun’s rays to the point of roasting me. My mind wandered to time spent in the Polynesian Islands, the pua’a I enjoyed with such gluttony – no thought given to what the creature may have endured when lowered into the roasting pit. Far from those days, I’m left to consume every bug and rodent found in my living crypt, to lick dry the weep from the concrete walls. Now I wait. Death will find me, it’s the only thing I’m sure of.

∼ Nina D’arcangela

Slivers

September 2, 2021 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 6 Comments

Slivers, that’s all I ever saw – it peered through the crack of a door that didn’t seat in its jam, between window and sash where the slightest breeze blew, below floorboards that had shrunken leaving the barest opening. Slivers, as it watched and waited. For what, I dared not imagine in my waking hours, though I’d suspect it was for my guard to falter.

Closeting myself in a fully sealed room with no chinks each night, I allowed myself sleep when it would come; my dreams invaded by visions of that godless eye. It stared at me relentlessly, the light absorbed by its depth-less void; a lie of beauty hidden among the allure of its iridescent skin. But I knew far better than to be fooled by its camouflage. Looking into that eye, I could see what it promised – it promised pain, it promised torture, it promised an end that would not come swiftly or easily. Worse yet than the uncaring, unfeeling eye were the endless rows of teeth. They glistened, dripped with saliva. Translucent and viciously pointed; some jutted straight upward to pierce and stab, others curved backward toward its bulbous throat, insuring that once it had snagged its prey, there would be no escape. Teeth designed for ripping, tearing, rending chunks of flesh from bone to be swallowed whole. A gruesome death awaited any that it caught. I did not wish to die that way.

Perhaps worst of all were the moments sleep did not come in my tiny sanctuary. I’d crouch listening as it scratched at the walls, the floor, the ceiling above me. It knew where I hid; it was only a matter of time before it breached my woeful defenses. This we both knew, but still I longed to live just one more day…

∼ Nina D’arcangela

Forest of Sticks

June 16, 2021June 21, 2021 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 8 Comments

In a forest of sticks, three await while the fourth summons. Eleven cycles have passed since the calling was last performed. The youngest breaks the silence; patience not yet a virtue she can claim. Eager to know what will come, she inquires. The eldest cautions a quiet tongue while the chant continues. As the moon crests to its zenith, the mantra ends and an eerie stillness falls. Even the young one stands in awe of the thrumming current that churns the air. The caller turns, beckons the last of the three to stand with her sisters. As the kaiju rises, the winds cease. The girls tilt their heads upward in reverent worship. A snort stirs their hair, a tinge of fear sets in. The youngest is not the only child to begin squirming. Their familiar halts their retreat with a slash of glittering eyes before leaping to the ground below. Perched on the brittle limb, the children unknowingly offer the blood of the innocent. The Rule of Three now satisfied, the feline begins to sup then preen as it erases all evidence of the offal left behind.

∼ Nina D’arcangela

Black Wings

January 13, 2021January 6, 2021 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 8 Comments

The first appears, then another. Soon the creatures are gathering; forming an indecipherable mass as each blends into the next. The assembly grows as evening deepens. They believe the shadow of late dusk masks their movement, but their eyes give them away – wet, shining, filled with hatred and unshed rage. One breaks from the pack, just one. It thinks itself brave as it postures for the others; foolish is a far more apt term. We stand at the ready, waiting for the melee to begin. As the first rock is hurled, the murder descends.

∼ Nina D’Arcangela

Reny’s Room

October 28, 2020July 16, 2020 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 14 Comments

The clack of patent leather shoes could be heard racing up the wooden staircase of their new, empty home; the home they were meant to make together now that Mommy was ‘no longer with them’ according to Father. Round and round she ran until the thwack of tiny feet came to an abrupt stop on the fourth floor. As father’s pen scratched across the papers that finalized the purchase of their new property, Reny’s fate was sealed as she spotted a small stairwell set in a far corner; its door open only a crack. She approached it with all the trepidation that could be expected of a precocious nine year old – bow tails and locks trailing behind her, her favored Teddy held tight to her chest, she dashed to the door and threw it wide. Glancing up the rickety stairs, she hesitated for a moment, then began to creep up the shadowy risers while imagining that she alone would be the one to find a hidden room that no one had ever seen before.

The dark, ascending flight ended at a tiny landing barely large enough to accommodate her size two Mary-Janes. She could see light as it spilled from the gaps surrounding the ill fitting door in front of her. As she wrapped her hand around the ornate glass knob, she could hear the echo of her father walking through the grand foyer mumbling politely with the white haired lady who’d sold them the enormous house. Turning back to the threshold that barred her way, Reny gave the diamond-cut knob a twist, a shove, then finally a good hard tug. The glass ball and metal stem came free of their housing and almost sent the child tumbling backwards. A small screech escaped her lips before she could capture it. Luckily, her father was either too preoccupied or too far away to hear. As the door swung open, rainbow colored light filled the space and her fright from a moment before was all but forgotten. A large alcove with glowing glass panes caught her full attention. She raced toward it and skidded to a stop in the dust just before the ankle-high sill.

Outside, and well below, she could see her father walking the elderly woman to her car. She started to tap, then slap the glass intermittently while waving her arms to catch her fathers eye, but it was no use – he simply couldn’t hear her. In her haste and excitement, Reny threw open the window and stepped onto the surround of the widow’s walk. Proud of her find, she shouted again for her father’s attention and took a single step forward. She never heard the crack of rotted wood, nor did she feel her toe dip as her body began to pitch forward.

From the ground, her father watched in horror knowing there was nothing he could do to stop Reny’s fall. Her beautiful yellow dress – the one they’d picked out just for the occasion – a near match to the painted clapboard background of the old manse.

Teddy still clutched in her hand, Renata Mueller hung impaled on the ornate iron railing that decorated the uppermost portion of her father’s new home; her bow tails and locks fluttering in the gentle breeze.

∼ Nina D’Arcangela