From: gibson@latcs1.lat.oz.au (Evan Thomas Gibson)
Subject: In the mourning
Date: 16 May 1994 12:08:05 GMT


			In the mourning.
					Copyright Evan Gibson 1994

	He was cold. It was weird, it was summer and the sun traipsed
across the sky, dipping excited fingers in every place devoid of shadow,
but he was still cold. It took him a while to notice, it wasn't the normal kind
of cold. Do you know the feeling of walking out into the blazing midday
light and having the sun graze across your being, everywhere it touches
washing away some invisible chill that you hadn't known you were
experiencing till the sudden heat pointed out it's previous lack? Well, it
was like that; an insidious, stealthy, lurking cold that slowly twined it's icy
claws around all it touched.
	It doesn't take much to change a man, just a constant supply of
even the most minor of irritations will engrave itself irreversibly in time;the
sea destroys a seaside boulder as surely as nuclear blast, and far more
subtly. It's hard to escape the cold when it crawls into your bones and
hibernates within your soul, transforming your interior into the blistering,
frozen caverns it loves so much.
	The depths a man will go to to escape from the cold, as if some
primeval Prometheus lurks within us all, ready to go to drastic attempts,
despite the cost, to warm every desperate, chilled, damned soul.
	At first it was simply little things; it's not as if you suddenly wake
up and look in the mirror and some hideous creature stares back through your
eyes; it starts off slowly. But then, isn't that always the way?
	And what can mortal man do to escape the cold that dogs each
step? Begin with the obvious; stay inside, turn up the gas, wear more
clothes, huddle in front of the fire and drink lots of coffee. No good. Still
the chill nipped at his heels, and somehow others began to notice. He was
more distant nowadays, there was something in his eyes, as if tormented
by some interior demon, dancing in the moonlight in a clearing deep within
the forest of his heart; a forest suddenly coated with wintry frost.
	He snapped at people, and they snapped back, alienation begins
at home. A stranger in a land of strangers, stranger than them all. She
wanted to give him a chance, she so much wanted to believe it was just a
phase, that the man she loved was still trapped within his frame. He
wanted her to believe it too. She felt so warm. Whenever she was near it
was so hard not to drool, the heat pouring from her filled him with such
damnable hunger.
	It was inevitable. The back of the car, his lips brushing her neck,
the heat of the moment. The heat of the moment. The echoes of her life
running down his throat, her boiling heart pumping her tepid warmth into
his bloodied mouth, dripping through his fingers; a final gift, his widened
eyes almost as black as his soul in the waking night. This is not to say that
he felt no remorse, he was yet to become that inhuman, but he sat there.
He sat there, drinking in the fire of her being until she lay there, as cold as
he.
	He was sad, full of regret and guilt down to his core. He was, he
really was. God help him. As the embers of her life finally ebbed away, his
tears turning to ice as they mixed with the blood on his face, he backed
from the car and ran off into the waiting dark; the night embraced him in
uncomfortable arms.
	And what can mortal man do to escape the cold that dogs each
step? He found himself, or perhaps he lost himself, wandering through the
slums; clothed in rags and stumbling, craving anything to alleviate the
winter of his soul. A spark, a light, a barrel in flames, down with the
vagrants, down among the denizens, down where he belonged. But no.
He didn't belong. They backed away from him, as if they could smell his
hunger, but he didn't care, hardly noticed.
	He found himself, perhaps he really found himself, staring into the
rising flames, their own hunger licking the sky. Becoming crazed he made
improbable connections, perhaps by feeding the fire he could quell the
need within himself. A smoking staff branded the night as he ran, more
than mad, towards the tenements, growling in frustration and hope. The
flames carressed the buildings and leapt high in his salute, thanking him
for their freedom, but they gave him no release. No escape. There is no
way out. He howled, and blood and matted hair gave the appearance of
fur beneath the judgemental moon, the pale light of which continued to
highlight and mock his longing for the sun's fiery touch.
	And off in the distance a wretched voice breaths pain unto the sky.
Reaching for the horrible light to burn darkness from it's soul, but all it can
touch is this pale reflection which carresses and softly comforts, but fails to
cauterise interior wounds. The fire, so long denied, remains beyond this
pitiful grasp and a lone howl of anguish rends the occult sky as a heart
drips blood and longing on the hungry earth and the hunt begins again.
	I lift tear-shamed eyes to my ghostly queen, floating in the sky, and
add my voice in concert, crying out my understanding to my brethren. I lick
the blood from my fingers and wait for the mourning.




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