Shards of darkness (watty awards 2012)

The devil speaks

Ana barely noticed a change before it happened. His visits became more and more frequent, longer. Like the hours of daylight as the nights grow shorter, the winter over…  But still he stood. Motionless, silent, watching her, as if waiting for an unknown cue. Then he spoke. His voice was thick and soft as velvet as it passed between his lips and, like smoke from a chimney, it simply drifted in to Ana’s ears. She did not understand his words for the language was alien to her. It consisted of speech and simple clicks of the tongue and gentle rasping hisses. It was slow and melodic then fast and paced like a drum beat. Ana clung to it and drank every word, no longer caring if she was ingesting poison or wine. She was intoxicated. Drunk. Heavy…

She drifted into sleep, sailing on the wings of angels as dreams bore her to nirvana. The clouds were soft yet firm and they could bear her weight as she strode across their backs. She was in a wilderness of heaven. Instead of sky above her, there was a vast ocean where silver fishes flew.  She longed to join them, wished it so hard it came true. They sat a noose upon her neck and she followed, up up up.  Their scales trapped the light of a million suns as she found they were not fish but stars! They called her and she was dancing. She had never danced in her stilted, ugly, forgotten human life. It did not matter. Now to her, dancing was as simple as eating and drinking. Natural. She was a natural! She could dance! She laughed at the idiocy of such a prospect and danced on far into the night where stars burn brightest. Another light added to the darkness. It was more enticing than anything she had ever felt before. Delicious. Forbidden. She was tasting the sacred fruit in the garden of Eden. The stars were the snake egging her on to take another bite. There was no such thing as God to stop her. Like a moth she clung to it. Laughing! As she bit deeper, the sweetness began to sour as bitter memories filled her mind. Memories of drowning under the moonlight. In a hated life of cruelty. She could make no more sense of her vision before it was gone. She was once again dancing but this time something was wrong. Like grease, she was slipping from the hands of the merry stars… Falling down

          down

                   down.

She was not alone. The light that had so captivated her attention was falling with her. She clung to him as the fell. Even if he shattered into a million pieces, she would find the pieces of his heart ‘til her body hurt with love. As they collided with the ground, she was driven into the very thing she fought not to loose and it cracked. She was weeping, her tears combined with a sulphur yellow vapour that steamed from the wound that she had made. What had she done?

She sensed the light fade from the broken husk she clung to. All her desires for this one entirety faded also. She stepped back. Only to be grasped by the thing before her. Fresh delight faded as she realised that this shallow corpse wanted her, would consume her. She was to be lost. She pulled away, begging and crying ‘til she realised that there was only silence she was dead. And so he stole her from the stars to replace his heart they lost. And so his powers began. And so the seeds of destruction were sown. And so the shards of darkness embedded themselves into the very flesh of the universe…

Ana awoke. Crying and screaming into the dark of night. She turned to her jailer, the very eternity that had locked her in this shallow void from where she could hardly tell if she was asleep or awake. She screamed but one word.

“Why?”

One word filled with infinite unanswered questions. He understood. He knew but still he held his silence. Stubborn.

Filled with fury and confusion, Ana gave a little shriek of frustration before falling backwards onto the sands from where she cried herself to a fitful sleep.