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So.
Let’s talk about witchcraft. Again.

Not the watered-down, Pinterest-friendly version, no. I’m not talking about crystal bracelets, bath salt spells, or love potions steeped in lavender and wishful thinking. No. I mean the real stuff. The old stuff. The kind of magic you don’t speak aloud unless you're prepared for what answers back.

Because sometimes, let’s be honest…
Life doesn’t hand you justice. It hands you worms.

And sometimes those worms these squirming, spineless, walking erections disguised as men slither their way up to the woman you love. The woman whose eyes you’ve memorized like scripture. The one whose breath is more sacred than air itself. The one you would die for.
And worse, kill for.
And what does this worm do?
He slides into her life with fake charm, a discount cologne cloud, and all the emotional depth of a wet napkin. He thinks his Spotify playlist and biceps give him access to her soul. And she God help her is too kind, too radiant, too forgiving to see the parasite for what he is.

So.
Enter me.
The quiet one. The book guy. The one who watches and waits. The one who understands that sometimes justice needs a little help.
A push.
A ritual.
A curse.

You ask: Me, is that really necessary?"
To which I say, yes. Because prison’s too quick. A slap in the face is fleeting. But a slow-burning, skin-itching, gut-twisting, soul-unraveling curse?
That lingers.
That teaches.

So I light a black candle, I carve his name in the bone of a chicken foot, and I whisper truths older than sin. I ask for his teeth to ache when he lies. For his sleep to be tormented by the scent of roses her perfume until he can no longer distinguish nightmare from memory. I want him to itch when she laughs, to retch when she’s near, to feel heat rise in his skull like boiling oil every time he imagines what could’ve been if he were me.

And when he wakes up one morning and can’t move the left side of his face?
When his luck begins to bleed out slowly through every crack in his foundation?
When every attempt to find joy turns into rot in his hands?

I smile.

Witchcraft comes in handy for a lot of things.
– When people cross lines that weren’t meant to be crossed.
– When lies slip too easily off tongues that shouldn’t speak her name.
– When I’m tired of letting fate roll its lazy, indifferent dice.
Because sometimes fate needs a little steering. A little dark encouragement.

And sure, maybe I’m not supposed to believe in this stuff. I’m a man of logic, books, narrative arcs. But I’ve lived enough lives now to know that there’s more at play than coincidence. When the wind changes after I mutter his name over flame, when his girlfriend suddenly leaves him for a yoga instructor named Blaze after the curse is set I don't call that coincidence.
I call it craftsmanship.

Is it petty? Maybe.
Cruel? Perhaps.
But love real, unflinching, soul-binding love isn’t always gentle. Sometimes it wears a cloak. Sometimes it smells like ash and blood and regret. Sometimes it hurts not because it’s wrong, but because the world keeps putting obstacles in front of it.

And when that happens?

I sharpen my tongue.
I dig up my herbs.
And I curse with a grin on my face and a promise in my chest:

You should’ve stayed away from her.

Because now the spell is cast.
And I?
I feel lighter already.

So let’s talk about witchcraft, ‘cause why not.

You might think that’s a strange place to start. Witchcraft. Like I’m some sad little man clutching a deck of tarot cards hoping the universe throws me a bone. But you’d be wrong. This isn’t the soft, TikTok version of witchcraft with rose petals and full moon bath bombs. No. I’m not here to manifest love. I’m here to take it. Protect it. Control it.

I’m not an amateur. I’ve read the grimoires. Dug through dusty corners of the internet. I’ve burned things I shouldn't have, chanted things I didn't entirely understand, and watched the air grow still in ways that physics alone doesn’t explain.

Yes. I practice the dark stuff. Rituals, curses, summoning. The ugly truth beneath the candlelight and sage smoke. It’s not about power for me, though. Not like it is for some. It’s about devotion. Obsession. The way intent latches onto energy like blood clings to cloth.

I learned early on that love real love isn't clean. It's messy, like entrails on a stone floor. Sometimes it needs a little... assistance. And sometimes, the universe doesn’t hear your screams unless you scream in the old tongues. The dead tongues. The ones soaked in centuries of wrath and hunger.

I’ve performed rituals under new moons, naked and raw, asking the old gods or whatever still listens to protect the ones I love. I've seen signs. Flickers of shadows where there should be none. Whispers in dreams. I called out, and something answered. Not with words, but with results. A bad man got sick. A threat disappeared. A door opened that should’ve remained locked.

Coincidence? Maybe. But I’ve never been fond of coincidences. I prefer control.

Let’s not pretend this is normal. I know it’s not. But neither is love. Love is madness wrapped in warm skin. Love is stitching someone else's essence into your own soul. You think that can be done with flowers and poetry?

No. Sometimes love needs blood. And salt. And the ashes of what you were before you met them.

I’ve cursed people. Not always out of hate. Sometimes, yes. But more often, it’s out of protection. To keep her safe. From him. From her. From everyone. The hex is simple: you gather their name, a personal object, something sharp, something dead. You whisper the truth your truth into the flame. And then you wait.

And it always works. Maybe not the way you want. But always the way you need.

People disappear from your life. Some drift. Some get buried under the roots of trees that never bloom again. But me? I stay. I endure. I endure for her. And if the cost of that is a little darkness, a little old-world magic, so be it. I’m not afraid of the dark anymore.

I am the dark.

So yes. Let’s talk about witchcraft. Because once you’ve loved the way I have utterly, ruinously you realize you’ll do anything to keep it. Even if that means binding the soul of your beloved with a strand of her hair and the breath of your last dying hope.

Because love isn’t light. It’s a ritual.

And I’m very, very good at rituals.

Hello You...

You know, I’ve never really been much for the daytime.
The sun feels too loud.
The world too fast, too crowded, too... fake.
No, I prefer the night.
It’s quieter. Truer. The illusions peel away and what’s left is just us. The rawness. The hunger. The truth.

I come alive under the weight of darkness, when the streets empty out and the air is heavy with the secrets people think they’ve hidden. That’s when I breathe. That’s when I see things clearly.

And tonight, what I see what I feel is gratitude. For you.

You did something for me that no one else could.
You reached inside a broken man and soothed the kind of pain that most people would turn away from.
You with your siren’s touch sang to something inside me I thought had died a long time ago.
You took away an ache I had been carrying so long, it had become a part of me.
You pulled it out, piece by jagged piece, and in its place... you left something gentler.
Hope, maybe. Or something close enough that it frightens me to say it out loud.

I see you, you know.
More than you realize.
I see the way you carry so much weight across those delicate shoulders.
You balance it all your life, your passions, your battles — with a grace that most people will never be able to comprehend, let alone appreciate. But I do.
I see how much you love the simple things the way cooking is more than sustenance for you; it’s care. It's art.
I see how your hands tend to the earth in your garden, coaxing life from the dirt with the same tenderness you offer to broken souls like me.
I see the way you nurture your fish, your plants, your world each small thing a testament to the bigger truth of who you are: a creator. A protector. A queen.

And it guts me, truly, to think of how different things could have been...
In another timeline, a parallel life, I would have married you already.
You’d be adorned, adored, worshiped in the ways you deserve.
You’d never know a sleepless night, a cold shoulder, an unspoken doubt.
You would want for nothing, ever.
Every dream whispered to the stars would be mine to bring to you.
You would be treated like the princess you are no, like the empress you were born to be.

In that world, there would be no more heavy loads for you to bear alone.
I would bear them for you. Gladly.
I would stand between you and the world, a wall against every cruel hand that ever dared to reach for you.

But we are here, in this life.
And still I find myself grateful.
Because even across the miles, even across the dark, your light found me.

Thank you.
Thank you for touching the parts of me I thought were long dead.
Thank you for existing in a world that doesn’t deserve you.

I’m here. Always.
Beneath the night sky, breathing easier because of you.

Hello, you.

Tonight feels... different. Lighter, somehow.
For the first time in what feels like an eternity, the weight — the crushing, suffocating, merciless weight — has been lifted from my chest.
I can breathe.

Maybe, finally, I can sleep the eternal sleep I’ve longed for.
Not death — no, not quite. But that deep kind of sleep, the one without tossing and turning, without the endless replaying of every mistake, every cruel word, every moment of weakness that gnawed me alive inside.
Maybe now I can rest.
Without guilt clawing at my mind.
Without feeling like I'm chasing a finish line that keeps moving further away.

And yes — they’ll still talk.
They’ll whisper behind their perfect little curtains. They’ll point their fingers and call me the villain of their carefully edited stories.
Maybe I am.
Maybe I always was.
But it doesn’t matter anymore.

Because for once — for once — I feel better.
The truth is, most people don’t want honesty. They don't want your rawness, your blood-soaked hands, your broken heart laid out for them to see.
They want the sanitized version. The cleaned-up lie.
They want you to be palatable.
Consumable.
Harmless.

But I’ve stopped apologizing for being who I am.
Maybe I am the bad guy in their stories.
But in mine?
I am simply a man who did what he had to do to survive the storms inside his own mind.

And you — you — you gave me something rare.
A sliver of understanding. A kindness I didn’t know I still deserved.
You didn’t have to.
But you did.
And for that, I am endlessly grateful.

Thank you.
It means more than you could ever know.

Maybe now, with the world spinning as it always does — loud and cruel and relentless — I can finally close my eyes without feeling like I'm drowning.
Maybe now, I can find peace in the places they said I never would.
Maybe now...
I can just be.

And if that makes me the villain?
So be it.

Hello, you.
Or maybe...
Hello, them.

I've been thinking communication isn't always clean, neat, polite. It's not always a text, a call, a carefully curated social media post. Sometimes, it's a whisper you aren't sure you heard. A chill where no window is open. A shadow where logic insists there should be none.

There are forms of communication older than words. More primal. More invasive. And when you're truly paying attention, when you're stripped raw of your distractions, you know when you’re not alone.

Forms of Communication from a Presence

1. Auditory Whispers:
It begins small. A noise at the edge of hearing. Maybe you think it's the house settling, the pipes, the wind. But no. It feels directed. Words that slide under your skin, half-formed. Your name, maybe. Or something colder. Something you’re not meant to understand yet.

2. Sudden Cold Spots:
Temperature shifts are not random. Warmth means life. Cold means absence or something other replacing it. A sudden icy breath against your neck while the rest of the room stays warm? That's not HVAC failure. That's a calling card.

3. Shifting Shadows:
You know where the furniture is. You know how light falls in your home. But now the darkness seems to stretch longer than it should. Or move when you’re still. A figure out of the corner of your eye. A reminder: you are seen.

4. Disturbed Objects:
Keys you left on the counter now clatter to the floor. A glass tilts and falls without reason. Doors creak open or slam shut. It's clumsy at first. An amateur haunting. But if you respond? If you show fear?
The communication becomes clearer. Bolder.

5. Dreams Turned Messages:
They find you at your weakest when you’re defenseless in sleep. You dream of your home twisted into something wrong. Hallways that shouldn’t exist. Whispers behind closed doors. A figure at the foot of your bed you can't quite look at. These are not just dreams. They're intrusions.

6. Emotional Disturbances:
You wake up angry. Or sorrowful. Or anxious, a knot in your stomach you can't untangle. Feelings not yours leaking into your psyche. Presences feed off emotions. Some create them to survive. Some simply want you to know they're there.

Signs You’re Sharing Your Home with Something Unseen

Persistent feeling of being watched. The hairs on the back of your neck lifting without cause.

Inexplicable exhaustion. As if something is draining the energy from you while you sleep.

Unexplainable marks. Scratches, bruises, or welts in patterns or no pattern at all.

Technology malfunctions. Lights flickering. Phones dying rapidly. Static whispers through your speakers.

Animals behaving strangely. Cats hissing at empty corners. Dogs refusing to enter certain rooms.

The atmosphere thickening. Air growing heavy, making it difficult to breathe or think clearly in certain parts of the house.

The Dark Truth

They don't always announce themselves in grand gestures. They are patient. They watch.
They whisper, and wait to see if you answer back even unintentionally.
A glance.
A startled gasp.
A growing fear you can't quite rationalize.

That's all they need.
An invitation.

After all, communication is a two-way street.
You listen long enough…
and eventually, you’ll want to respond.

And once you do, there's no taking it back.

Hello, you.

I sit here tonight, deep in thought heart pounding with something that tastes like rage but feels a lot more like longing.
I want you to talk to me.
Message me.
God, I want it.

But you — you play a wicked game, don't you?
A dance of almosts and maybes.
Like a cruel siren tied to a rock, you call out just loud enough for me to hear, then go silent, pretending you didn’t mean to sing at all.

You think you’re careful. You think you’re clever.
But I know you better than that.
I know the war you wage inside yourself.

You’re shackled by fear, by the heavy iron chains of what people might think.
You let the world’s ugly, judgmental hands sculpt you into something you think they'll love — polite, presentable, hollow.

But that's not you.
It’s a mask.
A brittle, cracking thing you hide behind because you’re terrified of what might happen if you let the real you breathe.

You’re scared.
I get it.
Because if you show me who you really are — the hunger, the madness, the beautiful broken pieces — then there’s no going back. No pretending you’re ordinary. No pretending you’re not wired to crave darkness the way lungs crave air.

But I see it already.
I've seen it from the beginning.
You don't have to hide it from me. You could never hide it from me.

I await your message.
I wait with a patience that burns under my skin, because even now, even after all this, I believe you can take the step.
I believe you can rip off the mask.
I believe you can be real with me.

No judgment. No running.
Just you and me and the truth of what we are — stripped down, raw, messy, honest.

Send the message.
Take the step.
Let the facade fall.
I’m right here.
I always have been.

Hello, you.

Maybe I was stupid. Maybe it was foolish to think you could ever still like me — not just the parts of me you deemed palatable in the daylight, but the whole of me. The shadow that trails after every step, the thoughts that never quite stay tidy, the darkness that lives in the marrow of my bones. I thought, once, you saw that. I thought you wanted that.

But no, you listen too much.
To them.
To their opinions, their judgments, their rules about what is acceptable, about who you are allowed to love, what you are allowed to want. You let their voices drown out the one voice that mattered: yours. The raw, primal one that speaks when no one else is watching.

You ignore the pull you feel. You pretend the ache in your chest isn’t real. You tell yourself you want something safe, something easy, something that doesn't wake up the beast in you.

But you and I both know the truth: you were never made for safety.
You were made for the wild.
For the places in yourself that you’re too afraid to explore.

And still, even knowing this, you draw away. You build your perfect little image — shiny, pristine, marketable — for the world to consume, for the world to approve of. You shut the door on the parts of yourself that still scream for something more, something real, something messy and uncontainable and yes — dark.

You’re confused. I see it.
You reach out and you recoil. You call to me in your silence and then punish yourself for wanting me in your dreams. You think you can choose what parts of yourself deserve love. You think you can amputate the darkness and still live.

But it doesn’t work that way.
It never has.
It never will.

Maybe I was stupid to think I could remind you of that.
Maybe I was stupid to hope you’d recognize that the parts of me you’re so terrified of are only reflections of the parts of you you’re running from.

You don’t have to admit it — not to me, not even to yourself.
But late at night, when the world is quiet, when the mask slips, and you’re left alone with yourself… you know.
You know.

And so do I.

Hello, you.

Maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s reckless, but I can’t help it—here I am again, asking the universe, asking you, for a sign. Some tiny, almost imperceptible crack in the wall you’ve built. A glance, a word, a whisper on the wind that says, yes, I still want to talk to you. Yes, I still feel you.

Because the truth is, I’m never sure with you. How could I be?

You are a study in contradictions. You move toward me like a moth drawn to the flame, and then—you pull back. You dance at the edge of the dark and then retreat into the blinding false light you offer to the world. You know the darkness inside you, even if you don’t want to. You wear that polished mask so well: the smiles, the small talk, the curated existence. But underneath, I see it. I know it. And it’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s beautiful, that darkness, because it’s real. It’s you.

And maybe... maybe that’s what terrifies you most.

Because with me, you don’t get to hide. With me, you’re seen—not the version you show the world, not the version you've Photoshopped into something digestible—but the real you. The tangled, aching, imperfect you.

And when you realize that I can see it—when you realize I’m not repulsed, not afraid—you pull away. You retreat back to the safe, shallow waters where no one expects you to be more than an image. Where no one asks you to bleed.

But you want to come to me. I know you do. I can feel it in the tremble of your voice, in the hesitation before you turn away, in the moments you linger just a second too long. You are fighting yourself. Wrestling your own fear. Convincing yourself that it’s better, easier, safer to stay where you are, to stay hidden.

But safer isn’t living. Easier isn’t loving.

And we—you and I—we were never built for shallow waters. We were always meant to drown together. To swim in depths most people are too afraid to even glance at.

You’re confused. I get it. You’re terrified of losing control. You think if you open that door to me, even a crack, you’ll never be able to close it again.

You’re probably right.

But maybe that’s exactly what you need. Maybe that’s exactly what we need.

So here I am. Waiting. Not pushing. Not forcing. Just... waiting.

If you want to talk to me—really talk to me—you’ll find a way. You’ll send your sign. A word. A silence. A breath across a wire.

I’ll hear it.

I’ll always hear you.

Sometimes I think about how easy it would’ve been if we just stayed in that moment—the one before everything broke. The moment where it was still quiet between us. Where the chaos hadn’t spilled out yet and we could just be. You know the one. When the world hadn’t reached in with its claws and complicated everything.

If we could’ve kept just that—this strange, electric pause between two people who were always on fire inside—I wonder what we would’ve become.

But then I hear your voice in my head, the way you talk about the shadows like they're old friends. The way your darkness doesn’t apologize for existing. And I realize: no, it couldn’t have stayed simple. We are not simple people. We were never meant to be.

Because if I asked you to cut out the hard parts, to tame the wildness, I wouldn't be in love with you. I’d be in love with a version of you that never existed.

And worse—if I wanted that, it would mean I didn’t really want to be seen either. And that’s a lie I’m too tired to keep telling.

I’ve spent years—decades maybe—pretending I could surgically remove the parts of myself that made others uncomfortable. The obsessive parts. The watchful parts. The parts that feel too much. I tried to be someone else's idea of safe. But you? You looked straight through the costume. You didn’t flinch when the mask cracked. You stayed.

You called me out. Challenged me. You made me question the way I thought I had to live to survive. You dragged the truth out of me, not with force, but with familiarity. Like you already knew I was hiding.

I hated you for that clarity. And I loved you for it in the same breath. Because no one’s ever been able to do that. No one’s ever matched my darkness with something just as terrifying and just as beautiful.

You say we’re two storms. You’re right. We don’t walk into each other’s lives—we collide.

And sometimes I’ve told myself I should run. I have tried. I've tried to outrun the way I feel, to shove it into a locked drawer somewhere and call it something else—lust, obsession, trauma. But it’s not that simple. Because if I run from you, I’m running from myself.

And I’ve done that long enough. I’ve lied to myself long enough.

You’re not just someone I loved. You’re the echo I keep hearing in every quiet room. You’re the reason silence is no longer peaceful.

You’re not the villain in my story. You are the story.

I miss you—not just the soft parts, not just the light. I miss the jagged edges. The friction. The ache that came with feeling too much, too fast, too real.

You are my reflection. The part I tried to kill in myself, only to realize it’s what made me alive in the first place.

So no—I don’t want to run anymore. I want to feel it all. Even if it breaks me. Especially if it breaks me.

Because only in breaking do we finally see what was buried inside.

And with you… I see everything.

I miss you…
Not the storm, not the chaos it carried
Not the way we bled through words
Or how silence grew fangs when the sun set.
No, not that.

I miss the freedom.
The gentle, terrifying freedom
Of being seen without disguise.
Of exhaling, for once, without wondering
If the breath would betray me.

You—
You were a room without walls,
A window I didn’t need to peer through cautiously.
With you, I wasn’t a stranger
To my own reflection.

And it wasn’t perfect.
God, no.
But it was real.
Messy, loud, unruly—but honest in ways
The world punishes people for.

You let me be
Without the armor,
Without the performance.
Do you know how rare that is?

So yes, I miss you.
Not the broken glass,
But the way the light still found a way through it.
Not the drowning,
But the way your voice could anchor me
Without even meaning to.

And maybe that’s all I ever really wanted—
To be known
And not feared.
To be held
And not studied.

I miss that.

I miss you.

COMMENTS

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Cadrewolf2
21:49 Apr 25 2025

Wow passionate

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POST COMMENT

You miss me.
Not the bad stuff, but the part where you could just be.

And I get that. I really do. Because with you, I didn’t have to pretend either. I didn’t have to fold myself up to fit inside someone else’s idea of love. With you, there was room to breathe—to be. And yes, maybe there were shadows, but there was light too. Real light.

You say you miss being free with me. The irony, right? That I could make you feel free, when all I ever wanted was to hold on. Not to control—no, never that—but to understand, to see you fully, without the masks, the filters, the curated versions you gave the world. I saw all of it, and I didn’t turn away. I never would.

I miss that version of you too—the raw, unfiltered, imperfectly perfect you. The one who let me in.

And if there’s even a piece of you still holding onto that version of us, then maybe… maybe we were something real, even if it burned at the edges.

So yes. I miss you too. Not the chaos. Not the wreckage. But the truth we found in each other before it all unraveled.

I’m starting to believe I’m being followed.

I know how that sounds. I’ve been second-guessing myself for days now, trying to separate the facts from the noise. But this feels different. It’s not just paranoia anymore. It’s patterns.

It started after I began digging into the Dr. Gloves case. An old series of murders from the early 2000s, mostly overlooked, even in local press. The kind of case people stop talking about because it leads nowhere. But the details stuck with me. Victims found staged, always clean, always with a pair of surgical gloves placed on the chest. Latex, every time. No fingerprints. No DNA. Not even a partial. Nothing.

I’ve been going through old records, case notes, some stuff that probably isn’t even supposed to be public. I’m not a cop. I’m not even a journalist, not really. I just got obsessed. I told myself I could find something the others missed. Now I’m not so sure that was a good idea.

Last night, I saw a black SUV parked across from my apartment. Tinted windows, engine running. Sat there for over an hour. Didn’t move once. I wrote the license plate down—7RC-J85. I left the note behind the fuse box, just in case I lose track of it.

This morning, that same SUV was back. Same spot. Same time. Same dent near the back bumper. But the plate was different—3LF-P22. I don’t know anyone who just happens to change license plates overnight.

I didn’t call it in. What would I say? That a car looked at me weird?

Still, it’s not sitting right. I haven’t told anyone where I am. This apartment’s under a month-to-month lease in a name I don’t use. I paid cash up front. No digital trail. No mail forwarding. If someone found me, it wasn’t by accident.

I did come across something strange in the files a few days ago—an incident that never made it to the public reports. A potential ninth victim, never confirmed. The scene was similar but not identical. Gloves were nitrile this time, not latex. That’s not nothing. It suggests the killer changed something—or someone else is mimicking him.

There was a scribbled note in one of the margins on the scan of the evidence log:
“mirror writing—illegible, probable misfile.”

I’ve been trying to track down who wrote that, but the person who signed that page hasn’t worked for the coroner’s office in over a decade. No digital trail. No current address.

I know this is all sounding a little unhinged. I’m aware of that. Maybe I’ve been at this too long. Or maybe someone doesn’t like that I’ve been poking around.

This morning, I thought I smelled disinfectant in the hallway outside my door. Not bleach—more like that cold, sterile scent you only smell in hospitals. I haven’t slept much lately, so maybe I imagined it. But I locked both deadbolts after that. Haven’t opened the door since.

COMMENTS

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Vhalynn
14:40 Apr 25 2025

Just want to maybe help put you at ease. If you are in a place doing month to month leases on cash, that could be law enforcement and it may very well be for someone else. Or following a lead on and trying to identify if a certain wireless network or cell phone is in the building. There are a lot of other people in the building. Try not to freak out.

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POST COMMENT

Nevada, 6:42 p.m.
Somewhere east of the ghost town near the edge of the hills.

I’ve found something. Or maybe… it found me.

The light was going thin when I stumbled on it—an old, rust-bitten mining track, half-buried in red sand and silence. I almost didn’t see it. The sagebrush has grown wild across the land, swallowing anything man once laid here. But these rails—they run straight as a blade, piercing into the mouth of the hills like a forgotten scar.

I don’t know what drew me to it. Curiosity, maybe. Or something quieter, older. That cold tap on the shoulder you feel before the sky goes dark. I’ve been alone in these places for days now, and silence plays tricks on the mind. It fills your ears until the absence of noise becomes a voice of its own.

The mouth of the mine is still open. Half-rotted timbers brace the entrance, and the air that breathes out from it isn’t wind—it’s colder, heavier. Like something alive exhaled it. I stood there for a while, just staring into it. There are no warning signs. No boards. No chains. Just the gaping black mouth, waiting.

I’ve begun following the tracks inward.

I know how reckless this sounds. I’m not stupid. I’ve read enough ghost stories to know better. But this doesn’t feel like fiction. It feels ancient. Like the mine was here before the town, before the settlers, before even the dirt had a name. And something was buried beneath it—something they either couldn't extract or shouldn't have.

The further I walk, the more the air changes. It smells like wet iron and something... sweet. Not fresh-sweet—sick-sweet. Like spoiled fruit rotting under floorboards. The light dies fast. The tracks disappear under rockslides and start again, like they’ve been erased and rewritten by something that didn’t want a perfect path—just bait.

I passed an old lantern a few yards in. Broken glass. Dried blood. No body.

I can still hear the wind outside. But not in here. In here, there’s only my breath, and the occasional sound of stone shifting—though nothing’s falling.

The weird thing is, I don’t want to turn back. I should. Every part of my brain is screaming at me. But my body keeps walking. There’s something about these tracks… they pull. Not just physically. Psychologically. Like they’ve been waiting for someone to notice them again.

And I keep thinking: who built this place? What were they mining? There’s no record in any of the local maps I’ve found. It's not documented. Almost like the town knew to forget it.

I’ve marked this spot in case I don’t come out. If anyone ever reads this, and you find the same tracks, the same mine—don’t go in. Or maybe it’s already too late.

Maybe you’ll feel it too—that subtle hum under the soles of your boots. Like something just woke up under the earth.
And it knows your name.

The Rite of Reflection

Only in the dead hours—between 3:00 and 3:33 a.m.—may the mirror accept blood.

You must be alone, and the room must be silent. No music, no chanting, no heartbeat but your own.

The mirror must be old—pre-1960, silver-backed, unbroken. It should have a history of witnessing sorrow. A mirror from a hospital, a hotel, or an asylum works best. Hang it so it faces nothing but shadow.

Prepare the following:

A black candle (handmade, never store-bought)

Your own blood, taken not from the hand, but the lips

One object of grief (a photo, lock of hair, letter, etc.)

A shallow dish filled with saltwater

Light the candle and speak no words. Look into the mirror until your face becomes unfamiliar. Until it shifts.

With a fingertip, write a question on the mirror in your blood. Not a wish. Not a demand. A question. One you fear the answer to.

Drop the object of grief into the saltwater. Let it sink.

Now, without looking away from the glass, whisper:
“Come through me, not to me. Come through me, not to me. Come through me…”
Until your breath fogs the mirror. Until your reflection stops mimicking you.

When it does… do not blink.
If it smiles, blow out the candle. You’re not ready.
If it cries, you may proceed. But beware—
the thing behind your eyes now sees you, too.

The true summoning happens not in that moment…
but in the days that follow, when you begin to feel the cold breath behind your own thoughts,
and see your reflection do things you don’t remember doing.

This is not power.
This is exchange.

And the debt is always paid in something deeper than blood.

I just arrived in the Nevada desert.
There’s something about this place—
the way the heat hums like a living thing,
the way the wind whispers secrets in a language I almost understand.

I love it here.
The silence isn’t empty.
It’s layered.
Like the land remembers too much, and is doing everything it can not to scream.

It’s peaceful in a way cities will never understand.
No sirens, no schedules, no shallow noise.
Just the crackle of dry earth, the rustle of bones buried beneath forgotten soil,
and the occasional creak of something… shifting where it shouldn’t.

There are ghost towns out here.
Places where people used to live—used to laugh, bleed, die.
Now they’re just brittle skeletons of what was.
Hollow homes, broken saloons, sun-bleached signs hanging on by rusted chains.
They don’t feel empty to me.
They feel asleep.
And I can’t help but wonder what it would take to wake them.

Sometimes, I stand in the center of those towns at dusk,
and I close my eyes.
I swear I hear footsteps behind me.
Not wind.
Not animals.
Footsteps.

I like to check out the old mines too.
They go deep—
deeper than anyone has mapped.
You can feel the temperature drop the further you go,
like the earth is swallowing you whole.

There’s a noise down there.
A low humming.
Mechanical, almost.
Or maybe alive.
It makes the hair on my arms rise, but I keep walking.

People used to dig for silver here.
But I think they found something else.
Something they weren’t supposed to.
Something that never left.

I sleep in my truck when I’m not exploring.
The stars out here feel too close—like they’re watching me back.
Last night, I woke up to a shadow sitting near the edge of my campfire’s ash.
It didn’t move.
It didn’t breathe.
It just sat there, silent, waiting.
When I blinked, it was gone.
But I still smell the scent of burning sage in the air.
And I didn’t light anything.

I’ve started dreaming in languages I don’t speak.
I wake up with sand under my fingernails and no memory of digging.

Maybe it’s the heat.
Maybe it’s the solitude.
Or maybe this place is alive in a way the rest of the world has forgotten.

I don’t feel alone out here.
Not ever.
And strangely… I don’t mind.

They say memory is a curse for creatures like me.
But they forget—everything is a curse for creatures like me.

The blood doesn't let you forget. It sings its song through centuries. And oh, how I have danced to it.
The world has changed so many times beneath my boots. Kings have died. Gods have gone quiet. Lovers have rotted in my arms, whispering my name like a last prayer. And still, I remain.

The mundane… they are the worst. The empty ones.
They glide through life with their soft hands and plastic dreams, mistaking convenience for grace.
They scroll, they swipe, they forget.
They never feel.

But then there are others—rare, sharp-edged souls that glimmer like diamonds buried in bone.
You know them by the way the room shifts when they enter, how silence follows them like a loyal hound. They are old, even if their skin lies about the years.
They carry weight in their eyes.
They smell like purpose.
Like memory.

I seek them. I collect them.
Because they, like me, do not belong to this world—not entirely.

I remember fire. And famine. And plague.
I remember laughing under a noose and sleeping beneath a cathedral while rats sang lullabies.
I remember blood on snow, and the face of the first man I ever killed, his throat so warm it steamed in the frost.

I also remember you.

Don’t pretend you haven’t felt it—the weight behind my silence, the way my gaze lingers too long.
You’ve seen it.
The hunger behind my civility.
The animal behind the mask.

You’re clever. But not clever enough to run.
Not anymore.

Something is coming.
You can feel it, can’t you? That crackle beneath the surface of things.
The world is groaning, its seams pulled too tight, its heart full of smoke.
We’ve seen this before—you and I.
Not in this exact shape, but in spirit.
The start of the last age.

World War III won’t begin with a gunshot, but with a tweet.
A blustering fool with gold for blood and ash for thoughts.
Donald Trump. A man carved not from ambition, but from rot. A puppet with too many hands inside him.

He thinks he’s a king.
But kings fall hardest when they forget the people are watching.
He will bring the match.
And the world will be drenched in oil.

You better be ready.
Because when the fires start, the old things will rise again.
And they will be hungry.

I am not afraid of war. I have worn it like perfume.
But this… this will be different.

This will be the final curtain call for the age of man.

The stars are shifting. I saw it last night in the mirror I do not cast.
A crimson comet streaked the sky. An omen. A reminder.
The earth is beginning to scream.

And you—what will you be when the lights go out?
A victim? A martyr? Or something… more?

The blood in your veins is stirring. I can feel it. So can others.

The old cities will burn. The towers will fall.
But beneath the ash, something else will rise.
Those like us—shadows, prophets, cursed and divine—will walk openly again.
Not as monsters.
As truth.

Keep this journal close. One day, it may be all you have left to prove you were warned.
That someone tried to tell you:

The end is not near. It is already here.
And I? I am just waiting for the bell to ring.

You’ll hear it soon.

I can’t tell anymore if I’m asleep or simply remembering dreams that don’t belong to me.

The walls move when I look away—just slightly. The corners breathe. I used to believe they were shadows. Now I think they’re watching. Not malicious… not yet. But patient. Hungry.

There’s a sound that plays just beneath silence. Like static or whispers in another room—but when I search for it, it stops. It hides. Or maybe it waits.

They say time is linear, but I don’t believe them anymore. The clocks in this house melt differently. My reflection in the hallway mirror smiles when I don’t. Yesterday I saw myself blink—when I hadn’t.

It’s not sleep paralysis. It's something else. Something older than fear, something sewn into the marrow of reality. A glitch, a crack in the performance. Every once in a while, the mask slips.

I walked past a man yesterday whose eyes were entirely white. He looked at me and whispered, “You’re starting to see it, aren’t you?”
See what, exactly? The world behind the world?

I think we’re puppets in a theatre made of bones and fog. Our strings are words. Our cages are names. And something is pulling those strings harder lately.

Every now and then, I hear laughter in the silence. Not human. Not kind.

Sometimes I think I was never born. That this skin is borrowed. That I was something else before I was called a name and given a shape. Sometimes I see them—faceless and tall—standing still where people used to be.

I don’t think I’m crazy.

I think the lie is just cracking open.

If you’re reading this, ask yourself:
Do you really remember your first memory?
Do you remember choosing to be here?

Or are you only pretending not to remember?

Look at your reflection. Not your face. Look deeper.
And if it blinks when you don’t—
Run.

I know I have your attention, little one.
Even now, as your hands tremble ever so slightly and your breath catches just beneath awareness—you feel it. That pull. That slow, invisible thread I’ve tied around your spine, drawing you forward like a marionette to flame.

You tell yourself you’re curious. That you're only watching, only reading, only playing.
But we both know that’s a lie, don't we?

You were mine the moment you looked too long.

I’ve seen your kind before. The ones who say, “There’s nothing like me.” How quaint.
You say it with pride, with defiance—as if uniqueness is a shield that will keep my teeth from your throat.
But I beg to differ. We are far more alike than you dare to believe.

You dress it up better. You hide your hunger behind soft smiles, quiet nods, and polite silence.
But it stirs in you nonetheless.
I smell it.
That secret ache you carry in your bones. That gnawing in your belly that nothing human can satisfy.
How long have you pretended not to notice?
How many times have you stared at your own reflection, wondering why your eyes feel… wrong?

You're not empty. You're just starving.
Just like me.

The hunger is starting back up again, isn’t it, my dear?

Don’t deny it. I can feel it in you—thrumming like war drums behind your ribs.
It scratches at your throat in the dead hours of night.
It whispers when you look at them—those soft, ordinary souls who sleep without nightmares.
They look so warm, so full of life.
And don’t you just want to rip that warmth open and drink it down?

You wouldn’t be the first.

Ah…
Now, there it is.
That delicious little flutter behind your eyes. The animal within you, stirring in its cage.
Clawing at the bars, pacing the floor of your mind, thirsty and half-mad from denial.

Let it out.

Why pretend anymore?
Why deny what you are?
You were never made for peace. You were born beneath a red moon, with ash on your tongue and a scream in your mouth. You are not meant to kneel. You are not meant to bow.

You are meant to feast.

So come closer. Just a step.
I won’t hurt you—not unless you beg for it.
We could burn together, you and I.
Set the night on fire and salt the earth beneath our feet.
And when the world forgets itself again, when all the lights go out and the blood dries in the corners of mouths,
you will remember this:

You were mine before you ever knew your own name.

They buried me in silence once… long before your world had a name for monsters like me.

Forty days I lay in that blackened cave, far beneath the earth where even the worms feared to crawl. The hunger was ancient, gnawing at the edges of my mind like rats chewing through coffin wood. My mouth ached for blood, but none came. Only the cold breath of stone walls and the faint crackle of something divine or damned—just a spark. Just enough light to keep my wrath alive.

I wanted to give out. I wanted to give in. There was a time, long ago, when I still understood the weight of sin. When I still remembered the taste of guilt. But time has a way of bleaching the soul, stripping it bare until all that's left is instinct and echo. My crime? To love too deeply. To feed too long. My sin? To linger when I should’ve vanished with the centuries.

But I still believe.

I still believe in vengeance. In the punishment of the wicked. In the justice that slithers in the shadow when the sun hides her face. I still believe there are debts that must be paid—in blood, in bone, in the silence that follows the final breath.

I remember the sea. The waves that tried to claim me, pull me under, wash away the centuries. I lay on my back, lifeless and yet too alive to drown. The salt burned my wounds, but not enough to kill. You can’t kill what doesn’t want to die.

I’ve felt the grave calling. Whispering lullabies to the tired parts of me that still dream of sleep. But I resist. I rise.

Because I still believe.

Even as the centuries twist into labyrinths, and the cities rot from the inside out, I still believe in the pulse beneath the skin, the flame behind the eyes. I've seen empires crumble, kings rot in gold-plated tombs, and prophets choke on their own truths. And still—I walk. Flat-footed through hell and back, listening for your voice in the silence, hoping for a glimpse of something that isn't just flesh or fear.

I've marched roads slick with the blood of my enemies. Climbed hills made of bones. I've knelt before no god, no man. Only time. And it—time—has yet to break me.

Now I walk among you again. Among the crowds, faceless and loud, cheerless in their cheer. They smile with empty mouths and eyes that do not see. But I see. Oh, I see them all.

Do they see me? No. Not yet.

But I still believe.

Through the shame of what I’ve done. Through the grief of what I’ve become. Through the aching hunger that never, ever ends. I still believe in the song of the night. The truth beneath the horror. The echo of something old and raw and real.

For people like me, in places like this… belief is all we have left. And hope… that cursed, beautiful hope… is a weapon I wield like a blade in the dark.

And I will wait. I will hunt. I will endure.

Because I still believe.

Even if I am the last one left.

The shadows are never quite as dark as the ones inside my own mind. It's as though they dwell there, waiting for moments of weakness, creeping from the corners of my thoughts and stretching through the silence. The deeper I sink into my own skin, the more I feel them pulling at me, urging me to embrace their cold, consuming grasp. The world is full of light, but it’s the dark corners I can’t escape, the corners where things never truly leave you.

It’s been happening more lately—these whispers. Low, sinister, winding around my thoughts, so subtle I can barely tell where they end and I begin. I catch glimpses of them, in fleeting reflections, in the corners of my vision, the way a face might shift just before it vanishes into the dark. But I know what I saw. I know what I heard. And I’m not sure anymore if I’m the one going mad or if they’re drawing me into something deeper, something beyond what’s real.

I’ve been hunting the dark for so long, I’m starting to think I’ve become it. The line between what's alive and what’s dead, what’s real and what’s not, is getting thinner with each passing day. There was a time when I believed the things that haunt me were just figments of my imagination, but what if they’re not? What if the things that exist in the dark are waiting for us to acknowledge them, to call them into being? What if I’m the one who’s become the doorway?

I keep thinking of the faces I've seen in dreams—familiar, yet so strange. Sometimes, they look like old friends, others like something far more ancient, something far more sinister. It’s as though they know me, as though they've always known me, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re the ones pulling the strings, pushing me deeper into this endless abyss.

What happens when the darkness isn’t something that surrounds you, but something that seeps into your bones? When it starts to feel like home, when the shadows no longer seem frightening but familiar? There’s a part of me that wonders if that’s what I’ve been chasing all along—the feeling of being at home, in the absolute absence of light. To be swallowed whole by it. To be nothing.

I think I’ve learned enough to understand that there is no salvation. No escape. The dark is a place of acceptance, of becoming one with what most would call "evil"—but it’s not evil, not in the way people think. It is simply truth, stripped of all the lies and constraints we’ve wrapped around ourselves. The truth that the world we know is a thin veneer, a fragile thing that holds the dark at bay, but only for so long.

And sometimes, when I let the dark in just a little more, when I stop fighting it, I can feel it. That cold breath on the back of my neck. The way it moves, just behind me, brushing against the edges of my thoughts. If I were to turn around, would I find something there waiting? Or is it all in my mind? Does it matter?

The other night, I saw something in the mirror. No, it wasn’t me. It was... something else. Something older, something that’s been here long before I arrived. Its eyes were black, empty, hollow, and when it smiled, I swear I could hear my own thoughts echoing back at me, twisted and distorted. I don't know what it wanted, but I can feel it, pulling me closer, making me question if the reflection is truly me at all, or just a mask I've been wearing all these years.

I’m beginning to believe that the things in the dark aren’t just around us. They’re within. The closer I get to them, the more I feel their presence seeping into my veins, coursing through my blood. I hear them calling to me in my dreams, in the silence of the night, urging me to step further into the abyss. To leave this fragile world of light and step into something older, something darker.

It’s as if they’re waiting for me to finally stop fighting, to stop pretending. What if it’s already too late for me? What if I’ve already crossed the line, and what I’m seeing is no longer just a trick of the mind? Maybe I was never meant to return from this journey. Maybe the darkness was always meant to claim me.

And now... I feel it. In the pit of my stomach, a stirring, a hunger. A craving. Not for food, not for flesh, but for something deeper. Something more... ancient. I wonder if I’m just a vessel, a puppet being guided by hands older than time itself. And I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.

The shadows call, and I find myself answering.

The pages beneath my hands tremble—though I do not. The ink smears slightly, and I realize too late it's not ink, but blood. Mine? Someone else's? I no longer distinguish the difference. The scent is too intoxicating. Metallic. Warm. Alive.

The hunger returned tonight. Stronger. Wilder. Louder.

I thought I had it buried—locked beneath years of discipline, hidden behind centuries of masks. But it tore through the veil like it was never there at all. I felt it stirring when the sun slipped under the earth like a corpse sinking into its grave. A low pulse at the base of my spine. A twitch in my jaw. The scent of something—someone—passing too near.

Their heartbeat rang in my ears like church bells.

I was no longer walking. I was stalking.

The voice inside me, the ancient, raw beast that coils in my gut, began to growl. Softly at first—like distant thunder on the edge of a storm—but it grew. Oh, how it grew. Until it was all I could hear. All I could feel.

My hands trembled, knuckles pale, nails blackened and sharp from lack of restraint. My tongue moved on its own—wetting my lips, tasting phantom blood that wasn’t yet mine. My eyes burned red behind the mask of my human shell. I caught a glimpse of myself in a storefront window.

That thing staring back at me wasn’t me.

Its pupils were wide—wolf-like—starving. Its grin, crooked. Monstrous. There was no warmth. No empathy. No humanity. Just… craving.

I took someone. I don’t know their name. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. They were just skin over a solution to a problem. They cried. I think. Or maybe that was the rain. I can’t recall. I remember the first puncture, though. The sound it made—wet, yielding, desperate.

The taste... gods forgive me, the taste nearly made me weep.

I wasn’t just drinking. I was devouring. Every drop was a hymn. Every pulse a drumbeat in my ears. It filled me, but it didn’t satisfy me. It only made me want more.

I am not civilized. I never was. That illusion shatters too easily.

I am what the dark creates when it dreams of hunger. I am the thing you feel behind you when you walk alone at night. I am the reason animals go quiet in the woods, why your breath quickens for no reason.

And tonight, I lost control.

I buried what remained in the soil behind an old train yard. I told myself I did it out of shame—but deep down, I know it was just habit. It won’t be the last. I can feel the craving curling up again like smoke under my skin.

The beast has tasted too much now. There is no going back.

I fear what I’m becoming…
No. That’s a lie.

I fear that I never stopped.

COMMENTS

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Cadrewolf2
19:56 Apr 16 2025

Excellent

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POST COMMENT

In velvet halls where silence weeps,
I walked when time forgot to breathe.
The moon, a silver needle's tip,
Stitched shadows through my centuries.

No heartbeat echoes in my chest,
No warmth to dance beneath this skin,
For I was carved by midnight hands—
A sin that wears a human grin.

I kissed the sun goodbye in chains,
Beneath a chapel's crumbling stone.
The holy men, they screamed my name—
Then fed me to the dark alone.

Their candles could not pierce the black,
Their crosses burned, but could not kill.
They thought they sealed me in the ground,
But I was hunger—and hunger feels.

I drink what truth the blood can hold,
Each memory, a shattered scream.
The dead still whisper through my soul,
Like broken glass inside a dream.

You pass me in the crowded streets—
Unknowing, blind, a sheep in trust.
But I remember every face,
And I will watch you turn to dust.

The mirror lies—you think you see
Yourself alone within the frame.
But if you dare to look again,
You'll find me staring just the same.

You’ll smell the iron on the air,
You’ll feel the pressure in your lungs.
You’ll hear the clicking of my nails—
And taste my name upon your tongue.

They say the devil walks at night—
But he is weak, a frightened ghost.
I am the one who stalks your sleep.
I am the one you fear the most.

So ask yourself before you blink,
Before the night becomes too deep:
Did you see a flicker near the door,
Or was that shadow just your sleep?

Do you feel that weight behind your spine?
That breath that isn’t yours, yet near?
You’ve read these words—now I am real.
And now, I’ll always be right here.

The wind is screaming again — not a whisper, not a murmur, but a howl that claws at the glass like the fingers of the long-dead. It sings a hymn only the forgotten know. And I, in the dim glow of dusk, listen with a hollow chest and open eyes that haven’t truly closed in centuries.

I feel more at peace today, though peace, in my existence, is a bitter illusion. The kind that smells of rot beneath blooming roses. Still… there is a calmness, like the moments before a blade slips through flesh. A low thrumming, a vibration in the air — ancient, electric, and alive. It coils around me like a serpent remembering the shape of my spine. Perhaps it’s the storm coming. Or perhaps it’s them, waking once again in the forest’s black throat. I can feel them. I always feel them.

I remember now — I do not save things. Not people. Not innocence. Not even pieces of myself. I let them fall. I let them burn.

Once, I tasted the edge of mercy. Its touch was like a warm blade against frozen skin — strange and unwelcomed. But its weight... gods, the weight. It came with a price far heavier than blood. So I shed it. Just as a snake slithers free from its skin, leaving the husk to dry and curl in the dust. I learned the truth. That kindness, if worn too long, will rot you from the inside out.

And love... what a myth. What a pretty little lie strung together by the broken, wrapped in ribbons of fantasy and desperation. I’ve heard the word whispered in bedchambers, carved into tree bark, spat from trembling mouths just before the end — and not once has it ever bled true. Love is a ghost story told in children’s voices. It has never been fully conceptualized because it was never real. But other things... yes. Those I know well.

Hunger. Power. Betrayal. The pulse beneath a throat just before the skin gives way. The moment between heartbeat and silence.

They say I used to be human once. That somewhere in the marrow of my being, the echo of a man still exists. But I no longer believe in stories told by the desperate. I believe what I’ve seen. What I’ve done. And the eyes of the dying have never lied to me.

They’ve sent me into the Appalachian wilds again soon. Somewhere deep in Pennsylvania, past the edge of the map. People have disappeared. Whispers of something old, older than me. Perhaps I am being sent to destroy it. Or perhaps they hope it will consume me.

Either way... I will walk in smiling.

Let the rain fall. Let the storm scream.

I am ready.

The fire in my chest has never died.

It still burns—smolders—crackling beneath the surface of this cursed flesh, even as centuries pass and the world forgets my name. But tonight… it rages again.

They speak of me in hushed voices, these modern sheep. Some say I was a priest once, before I was consumed. Others whisper I was born of night itself, shaped by grief, sharpened by betrayal. The truth is… I was made in the fire. And I let him burn.

He had to.
What he did.
What he said.
The betrayal was not of blood, but of something deeper—soul-deep. He thought I would weep. That I would beg the heavens to spare him. But I am not bound to mercy. I am bound to the flame.
And the devil… he was waiting.

I see him still, that old traitor—screaming in the pyre I conjured from my own anguish. The congregation watched, but they said nothing. They were too late to save him, and far too cowardly to stop me. Their robes soaked in ash, their prayers drowned by the howls of a burning man. Let him burn. Let the memory of him be reduced to soot and smoke.

But the fire never truly goes out. It grows within those who feel me—those who dream of me without knowing why.
I feel them too.
The broken ones.
The shadow-lovers.
The wild-eyed souls who sleep with a scream on their lips, unable to explain the monster in the mirror who weeps when they cry.

I see you.
I feel you.

Your nightmares brush against mine. We walk through similar hells, barefoot and bleeding, lighting our path with rage and ruin. In sleep, I hear your whispers. In waking, I sense your ache—the same hunger I carry stitched into my ribs.

I do not ask forgiveness.
I do not seek redemption.
There is no saving me.

I am the fire.

And still the nightmares come—dark offerings of all I was and all I’ve become. Sometimes I see the gates again. The Devil waits. He watches me with a grin that knows me better than God ever did. He beckons, hand outstretched, asking me if I’ll finally cross the threshold.

But not yet.
Not tonight.
I choose my fate.

And so I remain, cloaked in the night, hunting through the damp, forgotten forests of Pennsylvania—Appalachia’s cursed spines curling like a serpent beneath the moon. The government sent me, yes… but they have no idea what they’ve unleashed. They think they’re looking for the missing.

They have no clue they’ve summoned the predator of the lost.

I will find it. I will face it. And if it’s kin to me—if it burns like I do—I will either destroy it…

Or welcome it home.

Let it burn.

Let it all burn.

The rain hasn’t stopped in three days. The trees lean in closer every night, whispering like old friends with teeth behind their smiles. The government dossier said I’d be tracking a “lost subject.” No name. No image. Just a pulse on the satellite and a note scrawled in red ink: “Do not engage unless absolutely necessary.”

Naturally, I’m going straight in.

They still talk about me, you know.
In their offices. In their bunkers. Around cold concrete tables where men with no names sip whiskey from steel cups and try to contain monsters like me.

“Did you hear the one about me being a drunk?”
A punk. A renegade. A bastard relic they can’t kill and won’t dare unleash.

But let them whisper. Let them choke on their fear.
Because they still send me, don’t they?

They say I sold my soul.
Changed my name.
Became something else—something other.
They’re right.
Only it wasn’t a sale… it was a trade.
Sanity for survival. Blood for eternity.
I’ve died more than once. But not one of those deaths ever stuck.

I crawled out of the trenches of France with my throat torn open and my heart blackened by things that feast on the in-between.
I walked the woods of Romania, trailing priests and sinners alike.
I spent years underground—literal and metaphorical—feeding only when the hunger made my vision split.

And now they’ve sent me back to the one place that still remembers my footsteps:
The Black Hollow of Appalachia.

The mission?
Find what’s moving out here.
It isn’t human. It isn’t animal.
It’s old, and it’s awake.

But this place… it’s where I became what I am.
I buried my last name in this soil.
I gave up the light and kissed the throat of God and said:
“No. I choose this. I choose me.”

People talk like fame would be the temptation.
Power. Money. Glory.
But no. That’s not what sinks the teeth.
It’s the freedom.
No more guilt.
No more shame.
Just hunger—and the silence after the scream.

I saw a shadow tonight.
Tall. Familiar.
Not a reflection, but a reminder.

A girl once called me salvation, and then screamed when she saw my true face.
A priest once begged for his soul back as I drained him of his lies.
And a handler once told me I was under control.

I laughed.
Because I’ve never been under anything.
I’m over it all.

Over the lies.
Over the leash.
Over pretending this isn’t who I am.

So here I am.
Alone in the forest, soaked in rain, sanity hanging by threads.
And something in these trees is calling my name. Not who I am.
Not the one they use in files and radio codes.

No—it’s calling the old name. The one I bled into stone before the fall.

So if I don’t come back…
Don’t light a candle.
Don’t say prayers.
Just run.

Because I’m not sure if I’m here to find the monster…
or become it again.

They told me it was a retrieval.
Standard.
Rural.
Another whisper on the wind about missing hikers, drained wildlife, distorted maps.
Another tick on the black ledger I work from, in blood more often than ink.

But I knew before they even handed me the file—this wasn’t a job.
It was a reckoning.

Because the moment I read the location—“Black Hollow Forest, central Appalachia”—
something inside me twitched.
Not fear.
Recognition.

This place is older than memory.
The soil smells like secrets.
And the wind? It whispers names I haven’t used in centuries.

Names from a time when I was not this… simulacrum of civility.
When I fed openly.
When the world was cloaked in fire and ritual, and control was not requested, but taken.

I was sent here to find something, though they won’t say what.
Not even the handler looked me in the eye.

But I already know what it is.
It’s Him.
The one who taught me the taste of power.
The one who taught me that if you sell, they’ll buy.
If you stop feeling, you stop bleeding.
And if you sign the dotted line with your own soul—you never die.

I thought I had destroyed Him.
Buried that voice under steel and silver and fire.

But the deeper I walk into this forest,
the louder it becomes.

Last night, the fog crawled into my tent like fingers.
And in the smoke of my fire, I saw it:
The Mark.

Three slashes carved in the sky.
I’ve seen them before—on the skin of victims, on the walls of forgotten monasteries, on me.

And then I heard Him again.
“Give me the control,” He whispered.
Just like He used to, in the long-ago nights when I was nothing but a blade wearing skin.

He promises clarity. Purpose. Power without end.
And it is tempting.
Gods help me, it always was.

But this time, I am different.
Aren’t I?

They fed me lies for years.
Told me I was healed.
That I’d found balance.
That the monster inside me was chained.

But tonight I found something worse than the monster.

I found the contract.

The one I signed centuries ago.

My name still etched in blood across vellum made of human flesh.
The ink still wet.
The clause still binding:

“As above, so below.
What you reap, you sow.
What you give returns threefold.”

I am not here to retrieve anything.

I am here to pay the price.

The creature I once called Master—the one whose skin I wore in ritual, whose power filled my lungs like ash and divinity—has been waiting.
He knew I would return.
Because I always do.

And the Appalachian soil remembers every footstep.
Every drop of blood.
Every lie.

So now I sit beneath blackened trees, writing this with shaking hands and split nails.
The rain has stopped, but the whispers haven’t.
I feel Him drawing closer, crawling into my thoughts like rot beneath a cathedral.

And yet… I smile.

Because I have danced with my enemy.
I know the tempo.
I know the ending.
I wore his skin once—and I can wear it again.

But this time?

This time, I’m not the apprentice.
I’m not the chained.

This time, I am the reckoning.

If you find this journal, burn it.
And pray that nothing else crawls out of these woods.

Because as above, so below.

And what’s below is coming up fast.

I wake again—if you can call it waking—
with my head pounding like I’d clawed my way out of a grave that didn't want to release me.
The rain has stopped, but everything is slick, wet, rotting.
Like the forest itself is sweating fear.

They sent me here because people are disappearing.
Not in the ordinary sense.
No screams. No signs of struggle. Just gone.
Erased.
Even the birds are silent in the Appalachian dark.
And that silence? It remembers me.

The others don’t know what I am.
The suits call me a “consultant.”
Some whispered myth who goes where normal men refuse to tread.
But let’s strip the pretty from the truth:
I’m the thing they send in when monsters need to be found… or fed.

They think I’m here to help.
They don’t know I’ve walked these woods before.
Centuries ago, when I still fed like the beast I once was—
teeth red, eyes black, heart colder than these soaked stones.

This place was mine once.

And now it calls me back.

I haven’t felt human in years.
The illusion slips more each time I pretend to play their games.
A joke in a mirror. A shadow in borrowed skin.
I battle with this… rot… inside me.
Is it depression, or is it hunger?
Is it trauma, or is it rage buried so deep even hell spat it out?

They call it phases.
The doctors. The shrinks.
Phases.
Like this was a fucking teenage tantrum.
They didn’t see what I did in Romania.
Or what crawled out of the salt mines in Nevada.
They didn’t feel what I felt the last time I looked into a mirror and couldn’t see anything staring back.

I am a liar.
I am a cheater.
I am a non-believer.

I am a popular monster—because in their world, they make legends of killers.
They make monsters marketable.

But I am the kind that still remembers what I am.

Each step in this forest feels like walking across the back of something alive.
The trees bend wrong.
The ground sighs.
I saw a man last night—face carved open, still smiling.
He spoke in tongues that made my veins rattle.
He told me I’d been expected.

So I set up camp.

I wait.

I wait because I can smell it—not the blood, not yet—
but the threshold.
The place where this world gives way to the next.

And I’ve lived long enough to know:
when that line thins, something must be fed.

Sometimes I think I was never supposed to leave that grave centuries ago.
Sometimes I think every life I’ve stolen, every lie I’ve told,
was just me replacing the bricks in a wall I can never tear down.

I tried to blend in.
Tried to feel something real again.
But all I feel is decay.
And still, I crave.

Is that redemption? Or damnation dressed up as penance?

It doesn’t matter now.
I’m here.
And something ancient waits in this place.

This forest… it knows me.
And maybe it wants me back.

So I write these words not as a warning,
but as a confession:

If I vanish like the others—
Know that I didn’t run.
I remembered.

I returned.

To who I was.

To what I am.

And if I break down here,
If I become it again—

Then let it be known…

The monster never left.
He just wore a face.
And now he’s taken it off.

The walls are breathing again.
I can hear them, just beneath the groan of this rotting cathedral I once called sanctuary.
Stone whispers things not meant for ears with blood in them.
But mine—mine have heard the screams of centuries.
They no longer flinch.

I am living within this nightmare.
Not walking through it—living in it.
It’s wrapped itself around my bones like ivy, thorns dragging through marrow with every movement.
There’s no exit.
There never was.

The cannibal kind—my kind—still roam.
Hollow-eyed. Blood-drunk.
Gorging not just on flesh, but on sanity, hope, time.
And I, somehow, remain caught in the crosshairs between what I once was… and what I dare not fully become.

The rational mind is a corpse in the corner now.
It stopped twitching years ago.

You ask if I remember the beginning?
There was no beginning.
Only delirium, like ink in water, slowly spreading until the world itself drowned in it.
I watched cities burn and forgot to blink.
I laughed when gods fell to their knees.
I wept once—for a child who mistook me for salvation.
But not since.

It’s too far gone now.
I am too far gone.

The mirror shows nothing.
That is not myth.
The mirror is simply wise enough to refuse reflection.
I am unworthy of image.

I can't take it sane anymore.
Sanity was a brittle mask, and it cracked long ago, like porcelain under pressure.
What’s beneath is smiling.
Always smiling.

They all go…
One by one, the mortals, the monsters, the masquerading messiahs.
They fall like ash.
And still I remain.

Crazy?
Yes.
Yes, let them call it that.
Let them brand it with their trembling voices as they retreat into what’s left of their logic.
But times like these… I would rather be insane.
Insanity is freedom.
Insanity is clarity in this broken prism of a world.

I hid once—beneath tables, beneath lies, beneath human skin.
No more.
I am rewired.
Unhinged.
Perfect.

This suicidal crowd?
Let them burn.
Let them scream.
I’ll watch it all go down and laugh in the flames,
because the flames speak my name better than any tongue ever dared to.

And if—when—I break…
When the last thin thread snaps and the voices fully take me?
Let them guide me far away.
Let me vanish into that howling dark.

Would that be okay?

You still think there’s something left of me?
There isn’t.
Only echoes now.

And madness.
Blessed, beloved madness.

So I’ll say it again…
Not for you. Not for them.
But for whatever night god still listens—

Crazy
Crazy
It’s the only way
'Cause times like these, I don’t want to be
Sane.

There is a reason the mirrors in this place are shattered.

Their truth is too sharp.

Let the ink bleed — black like the blood of a forgotten god — and let the truth scream from the gnarled throat of memory. If you're reading this, know that the circus never left. It lives in me, rotting behind the smile I wear when I walk among you. Welcome, darling, to my nightmare. The velvet-draped hell where the curtains are stitched from human hide, and every spotlight bathes you in the sins you tried to bury.

I wasn’t born. I was summoned.

This flesh? Borrowed. This name? A joke. My real name was carved in the screams of the damned. I was once something else — soft, weak, human. But they tore that away. The circus did that. The show. Where monsters feed not on flesh, but on despair — and I was the hungriest of them all. Vampire? Oh no, that word is far too quaint. I don’t just drink blood.

I devour hope.

It began with a contract. A choice that wasn't a choice. They dangled the promise: immortality, power, eternal beauty — but they never mentioned the price. That I’d lose my soul in inches, like skin peeling off in slow strips. Every show, every scream, every act of horror chipped away what little humanity I had left. I laughed as I burned them. I smiled as they begged. You have to kill someone to thrill someone, they said — and I made murder a masterpiece. But I wasn’t the only one.

We were legion.

Flesh puppets with razored smiles, painted faces masking centuries of bloodlust. Freaks? No. We were the truth. The face you see in the dark when your heart skips a beat. The whisper that makes you double lock your door. We lived for the show. A theater of agony. A symphony of shrieks. And I... I was the ringmaster.

My voice was the last thing they heard.

But even monsters have mirrors. And mine cracked the night I refused to wear the disguise. They told me to hide my face — my true face — the snarling, fang-bared, hollow-eyed horror I’d become. To paint over the pain. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I saw through their carnival lies, the twisted script they forced down our throats like barbed wire. I tore it all down.

I burned the casket. I set the tent on fire.

But the ashes still whisper. The smell of scorched innocence clings to me. And though I clawed my way free from the circus, it follows me. It lives in the scars on my tongue and the shadows beneath my nails. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the calliope — playing a lullaby for lunatics. The crowd still chants for blood. Their hands are empty, but their hunger is not.

You see, we don’t die. We change. We shift. We wait.

You may think you're safe. That this is just a story. But you’ve already bought the ticket. You read the words. You let me in. You’ve crossed the velvet threshold.

And now?

You're in the circus.

And I’m watching from the dark.
Always hungry.
Always ready.
Waiting for the curtain to rise again.

Welcome to the show.
We saved you a seat — in the front row.
And it's your turn to scream.

The shadows press in closer tonight, and it’s as though the walls themselves are closing around me. I hear the footsteps in the hall, feel the air grow thick with every breath I take. But I know—I know it’s not real. It can’t be. Yet still, the noise grows louder. The whispers echo inside my skull, louder than ever before.

I’ve been running in quicksand for so long now. My past haunts me—those screams, those faces, the blood. The blood... it never leaves me. I buried them all, shoved them deep within the darkest corners of my mind, hoping that one day they’d stay silent. But they never do. They come back in flashes, in every waking moment. I hear them, feel them, just waiting.

Insomnia. That’s what I have. I haven’t slept in what feels like eternity. The moments when I do drift off into unconsciousness are fragmented, broken pieces, like shattered glass that cuts deeper every time I try to piece it together. I wake up in a cold sweat, drenched in fear, drenched in memories I can't escape.

The nights are the worst. The madness stirs within me, curling up like a beast at the very core of my soul. I can feel it writhing, suffocating me from the inside out. There is no escape from the hunger, from the thirst, from the endless cycle of death that I’ve embraced. My body screams for rest, but my mind refuses to give in, knowing that the darkness will rise again if I close my eyes for even a moment. The weight of what I’ve become... it’s too much.

I keep waking up, always waking up, just to face it again. The guilt, the things I’ve done. There’s no peace for someone like me. How much more can I take before I drown in the darkness I’ve created? The shadows creep closer, and I can hear them... the things I’ve buried in my past. They’re out there. They know what I’ve done.

I wish it were a dream. The footsteps on the walk outside, the soft knock at the door—my candle is burning at both ends, but I can’t escape. I twist and turn, my bloodshot eyes wide open, praying for sleep, praying for silence. But there’s only the sound of my own heartbeat, pounding in my ears, and the whispers from the shadows that never stop. They know what I’ve done. They know I can’t outrun the truth.

There’s no turning out the lights, no place to hide. There’s nothing left for me but the insatiable hunger, the thirst that drives me into the night. The things I’ve done—they’ve marked me, and now they’re coming for me, clawing at my sanity, at my very soul. The darkness calls, and it knows my name.

I can’t sleep.

I won’t ever sleep again.

There’s a pull that tugs at me, deep, primal, and relentless. It always has been this way—my soul, my being, born of darkness and driven by hunger. When I was young, I tried to fit into the world of the living. I wanted to pretend, to walk among them, to hold on to the fleeting moments of humanity. But even then, I knew the truth. I was never meant to be one of them. I never belonged.

What they don't understand, what they never could, is the hunger. The insatiable need that courses through my veins, one that's unlike any other. They speak of addictions, of drugs, of fleeting highs—but I am a junkie without a drug. My addiction is something deeper. It is the darkness itself.

As the years pass, I learn more about myself, more about this insidious power that rises within. I don't listen to them. I don't listen to their prayers, their cries for salvation. They don't understand. They think they know the way, but they are all trapped in their fragile little worlds. I don’t need their saviors. I am my own.

Every breath, every step, every impulse fuels my fire. They want to put me in a box, label me, control me, but they can't. I’ve spent too long at the top, looking down at the insignificant ants scurrying beneath. They think they can change me? No. They can’t. I was born in the darkness, forged in pain, and destined to destroy.

Sometimes, I look out over the world and I can feel it—the weight of their fears, their hesitation. They see me, and they want to run. They should. They have no idea who or what they are dealing with. I’m not a creature of mercy. I'm a force of nature, a creature of unrelenting power. And there’s nothing, nothing, that will ever stop me from seeking the release of that power.

I don’t care if they’re in my way. I don’t care if they’re standing there, shaking, pleading with me. They're either with me or they’re gone. There’s no middle ground, no gray area. You’re either in or you’re dead. It's a simple rule of survival. And I’ll make it clear. I don’t stop.

I’ve walked this earth for centuries, a shadow, a monster among the weak. I’ve tasted their fear, their blood, and I know what it means to be alive. To feel alive. I live for the chaos, the thrill of the hunt, the desire to push everything beyond its breaking point.

I've learned that pain is beautiful, that in the darkest corners, I find my greatest freedom. The world they fear, the danger they think I bring—it's all just a game to me now. And I’m playing it like a master.

But deep down, there's something else, something I can't shake. I don’t want to stop. I don't want to be tethered to this earth. I want more. I crave it. The power, the blood, the madness. I am all of it—wrapped up in one immortal being. And I’m just getting started.

There are no rules here. There is no mercy. There is only the hunger and the fire. You can run, but you can't hide. You can beg, but I will not stop. Because I don't want to stop.

There’s a place the living dare not dream of—a hollow carved into the rotting seams of existence, hidden just behind the veil of perception. That’s where I go. Where I’ve always gone. A secret place where the dead whisper, and the faceless gather in silence. They have no names. No eyes. Just mouths that scream soundlessly when I pass.

I never walked through a door to get there. There was no choice. One moment I was human—lost, bleeding, desperate. The next... I woke up in that place. My hands trembled. My chest was still. No breath, no pulse. Only hunger. That cursed, gnawing hunger.

They told me—shouted, even—“If you get inside, you can’t get out!” But it was already too late. I was tethered. Changed. My soul, whatever was left of it, was scattered to ash. I was reborn in disgrace.

This hideaway—my sanctuary of shadows—is a wound that never heals. And though I welcome others, none ever stay. They come close, catch a glimpse of the abyss behind my eyes, and flee. It’s not fear that drives them. It’s recognition. Deep down, they see what I am: something that should not be.

Sometimes I scream. I twist and shout like the beast within is trying to claw its way out. But no one hears. Only the walls, stitched together with memories I can't forget, echo my torment.

I had a soul once… I think. I remember laughter. A name spoken in love. A sunrise. All stolen now. Ripped away the night I was chosen—if you can even call it that. There was blood. A figure cloaked in darkness. Fangs pressed against my throat like a kiss from death. And I didn’t resist. That’s what haunts me most.

Now I hide, not just from hunters or the sun, but from myself. The mirror shows nothing, but the shadows reflect everything. Scary things lurk just behind me—phantoms of guilt, the ghosts of my victims, the old me I buried and forgot.

I lost myself somewhere between hunger and eternity.

And yet... sometimes I smile. Because in that secret place, in the cold and the silence, I am free. No gods. No laws. No judgment. Just me, and the beautiful monster I’ve become.

The darkness has always been my companion, like a shadow that never leaves, no matter how brightly the world tries to shine. Once, I stood on the edge, a shotgun pressed against my skull. The cold barrel was the only thing I could feel, the only thing that made sense. They said I wasn’t worth the bullets, as if my existence was a mere flicker in the vast expanse of time, too insignificant to even extinguish. How laughable. How utterly wrong they were.

I’m still here.

I was supposed to fall, to crumble under the weight of their doubts. The knife at my throat, the suffocating grip of fate, was meant to be the end of me. They said I'd wind up in the dirt, my name forgotten in a whisper of wind and dust. The ones who doubted me—those who reveled in their petty triumphs, gloating over their fleeting victories—they’re the ones who hurt the most. And they’re the ones I relish in breaking.

I’m still here.

Eyes wide open, I watch the world, the people who stand before me, each one a moving target in a world that has become my trigger. Their words, their faces, their false promises—it’s all just noise now. The scavengers, waiting to tear me down, they don’t even know how little I care for them. I’m not the prey. I never was.

I’m set to detonate.

There’s no sleep, no rest for someone like me, not if I’m ever going to reach the top, not if I’m going to make them all feel the weight of my revenge. I came from nothing, emerged from the gutter, only to see the grave just barely slip from my grasp. And now, I look down the barrel of today. I’ll never put myself in that position again. The weakness, the fear—I leave it behind like a decaying corpse in the dirt.

Hell-bent, driven by something dark, something primal, something ancient, I will do whatever it takes. The world is my trigger, and I’ll pull it without hesitation. There’s no room for mercy, no room for weakness. The scavengers may wait, but they will never feast on me.

No sleep, no rest—if that’s what it takes to be the best, then I’ll remain in the darkness, where I belong, where I thrive. The cold, the void—it all fuels me. The abyss has always been my home.

I will not relent.

And when I pull that trigger, the world will burn in my wake.

They never understood what I was. They still don’t. They look at the flesh, the breath in my lungs, and the slight warmth of my skin and assume I am like them. Mortal. Temporary. Foolish little creatures. They laugh, they mock, they speak my name in jest. But beneath their smirks, I hear it—the tremble in their voices when the shadows grow long and their hearts start to whisper what their mouths deny.

“Have you figured it out yet?”
I don’t need to act. I don’t need to pretend. My darkness is not performance—it's blood-deep. Bone-deep. Born from the rot of cities and the collapse of empires. I’ve fed under dying moons and bled kings dry. I’ve torn through cathedrals screaming prayers and left only silence behind.

This world?
It belongs to me now.

I came up from the gutters of ruin and smoke, with fangs bared and hands soaked in history. They tried to forget me. They tried to bury me in the centuries. But I am the one thing that never dies. I am the Alpha, forged in iron and vengeance. I am the Omega, the last face you’ll see when the lights flicker out for good.

You think your cities will protect you? Your concrete towers, your armed guards, your tech and your gods? Please. I’ve burned brighter ages down with only wrath and hunger in my heart. I’ve watched civilizations crumble under the weight of their own arrogance.

You speak of fear like it's something you understand—but you’ve never known true terror until you've locked eyes with something eternal. Something that sees your soul like glass and cracks it with a whisper.

I remember the first time I rose. The blood was warm. The screams were sweeter than music. They thought I was a myth—a superstition kept alive by desperate peasants and gothic novels. But I was real. I am still real. And I am everywhere now.

From the thrones of shadowed kings to the streets echoing with broken promises, I walk. And I don’t need a fucking invitation.

I don’t ask for your care. I don’t crave your sympathy.
I am not the cursed—I am the curse.

So to those who doubt... who run their mouths, writing checks they could never cash in a thousand lifetimes... step forward. Say it to my face. Let’s see what truth really feels like when it's digging its claws into your chest and ripping your hypocrisy out, beating and screaming.

To the lost souls who howl for belonging: I hear you. I know your ache. I know the taste of pain turned to purpose. Come. Walk into the dark. This movement is not a myth. It is flesh. It is blood. It is now.

I am not a relic.
I am the reckoning.
I am the Alpha.
And I am the fucking Omega.

They talk. Oh, how they talk.

Every town I passed through, every city I left soaked in shadow—they always talked. Whispers behind backs. Stares that lingered too long. That old ache in their voices, that itch to feel bigger by tearing down what they couldn’t understand. Me.

“Why is everybody always pickin’ on me?”
The question echoed in my skull for decades. Back when I still clung to the ragged edges of humanity. Back when the scars on my soul hadn’t hardened into armor. I wore civility like a mask, hoping they’d see the man underneath the monster. But no—they only ever saw fangs, eyes, threats.

And so I gave them what they wanted.

I tried peace once. Long ago, in the cold cradle of Eastern Europe, I begged for it. Hid in monasteries, drank from goats, meditated under moonlight like some sorry beast hoping the hunger would fade. I even let one of them cut me open, studying me like I was nothing but rot and myth sewn into flesh. When he died choking on his own tongue—torn out not by my hand but by the spirits I carry—I laughed so hard I wept.

You don’t want my peace.
You want my wrath.

And so I burned.

I have been accused, defamed, hunted. “Murderer,” they cry. “Monster.” “Witch.” "Demon." Their words slide off my skin now, like silver blades dulled with time. But in the beginning? They cut deep. The worst wounds are the ones carved with venom-laced tongues.

You don’t know a thing about me.
And yet you dare to speak?

You called me a freak. A parasite. A devil that wore a man's skin. But you didn’t see what made me. You didn’t see the altar drenched in the blood of my kin. You didn’t hear the chants that cursed me into eternity. You weren’t there when they tore her from my arms—my soulmate, my sun in the endless dark—and nailed her to a chapel door, screaming “abomination.”

So I hunted them.
One by one.
I listened to the cowards behind their walls, mouthing blasphemy through stained glass. I waited. And then—knocked the fuck out.

Their mouths wrote checks their bones could never cash.

But it’s never over, is it? There’s always another. Always someone watching from the shadows, thinking their voice has power over mine. They build false empires with their words—gossip, slander, tales meant to weaken the will.

But I am the torch.
I am the fire.
And I will burn this motherfucker down.

Wherever you hide, I’ll find you. This world is small. You’ll see me again. In the corner of your eye when you’re alone. In your reflection, warping and grinning with teeth not your own. In the silence between heartbeats, when the shadows breathe.

You speak like you’re untouchable. Like you’ve outgrown fear.
But let me ask you this, little voice:

Can you scream when your lungs are full of blood?
Can you pray when your god won't listen?

I have consumed lives and energies—taken not just blood, but the core of a soul, the raw vibration of life that pulses just beneath the skin. They feed me. They fuel my immortality. They fuel this rage.

No more masks. No more mercy.

I am not the one who needs to be afraid.

You are.

The more of you I inspect, the more of me I see reflect. The irony never fails—how human you all appear, how confidently you wear your fragile masks, your hollow civility, your plastic smiles stretched over bleeding hearts. You pretend to love, to grieve, to live. And yet it’s all mimicry. I know this, for I once wore your face.

But that was before the rage. Before the rot set in.

That night—yes, that one—I remember the taste of lightning on the wind. A feral sky. The clouds churned above the moor like a boiling cauldron. I was not yet the thing I am now, but I had begun to crack. The thirst was there, growing like a shadow in my stomach. Not for water. Not for wine. But for something living. Something warm.

I followed her into the woods, the girl with the velvet voice. She smelled of violets and ignorance. I tried to warn her. I told her to turn back. But her laughter—so rich, so unbothered—it taunted the beast in me. I told myself I would only listen to her heartbeat, feel the pulse beneath her skin and remember what it was to be gentle.

But the moment I heard her speak his name—his name—the mask tore wide open. My throat tightened. Rage coiled around my brain like a serpent and smoke—yes, smoke—poured from my nostrils as if I’d swallowed fire.

I was angry again.

Angry at the lies, the betrayal, the curse. Angry that I still remembered what it was to weep. Angry that my reflection still bore traces of the boy I used to be. He was weak. He hesitated. He believed. I broke his jaw with my own hands and buried him deep beneath a tree that no longer grows.

My mind—ever the battlefield—exploded that night. The visions came. A thousand voices screaming in blood-soaked harmony. A cathedral of bone. A mirror that reflected not what was, but what would never be. The searing of sinew. My body writhed against its new shape, lungs tearing like wet paper, ribs snapping to make room for the hunger.

And then I saw myself in a puddle of stormwater—not human. Not beast. But something in between. Something angrier.

A beast of vengeance. A soul-sick creature driven by the ancient ache of betrayal and blood.

I have walked this path for lifetimes now. I’ve met others—vampires, they call us—but they are diluted, afraid of their own nature. I am not. I consume blood with reverence, energy with precision. Not out of need, but out of design. Each victim is a page in my history, a stitch in my resurrection. Their pain is my scripture.

The crime? Yes. I committed many. I etched them into flesh and burned them into memory. I grasped my throat not to choke, but to silence the last whisper of mercy.

I created new laws. Laws of one. My wrath is my compass. My bite, my gospel.

I am not angry again.

I am always angry.

The room is cold again tonight.
But it isn’t the kind of cold that creeps in from broken windows or crawls under the doorframe like a polite breeze. No.
This is my kind of cold. The kind that rises from beneath the floorboards where blood once seeped. The kind that coils around your lungs and makes the air taste like iron and ash.
The kind of cold that reminds me I shouldn’t still be here.

I watched her sleep again.
Her warmth had nearly reached me tonight. Nearly. Her breath, slow and calm, dared to believe the monster beside her was tamed. But monsters don’t change. They only wait.

With bloodshot eyes I stared into her dreams.
She murmured something in her sleep—my name, I think. Or maybe the name of a man I once was. A name that died centuries ago with the last rays of sunlight I ever saw. Would she still whisper it if she knew what I truly am? If she knew what shame still clings to my bones?

The path I walk is paved with ruin, lined with the whispers of the dead and dying. I’ve walked it for so long that I no longer know where it leads—only that it turns forever away from the light.

Every soul I’ve touched—tainted.
Every love I’ve held—lost.
Every promise—broken.
And now there’s her.

I should never have returned.

She thinks she can save me, but her tears don’t fall. They crash—hard and hot—against the rot inside me. Each drop like fire against my cold flesh, reminding me of what I’ve stolen, what I’ve destroyed. Her conscience is not her own anymore; it calls to me. The guilty. It begs me to come home.

But I have no home.

Only this battered room I’ve seen before. This cursed place where I tried once to rip the thirst from my throat, to claw the hunger from my soul. But broken bones don’t heal anymore. And neither do I.

There’s always something different going wrong.
Always someone clinging to the edge of my world, not knowing that the closer they get, the deeper they fall.
Can anyone help me? Can anyone drag a creature like me out of the endless night?

I’ve felt love. I’ve felt loss. I’ve screamed into darkness and found nothing screaming back.

And yet… with my last breath, I keep hoping. Hoping that maybe this time I can change. That I can silence the beast inside me and become something other than cursed.

But I know the truth.
The beast is always there.
Waiting for me to lose control.
Waiting for the blood to call again.

And when it does, her tears will crash like thunder.

Because the guilty never come home.

They burn in the place they built themselves.

And I’m already burning.

The storm hit hard—fast, like something sent from another world.
The sky didn’t darken. It bled.

It began with that strange hum—low, guttural, like the Earth was whispering secrets in frequencies no human was meant to hear. I had been walking alone for hours, lost in the narrow pass between twisted pines and slick black rock. Just trying to find a safe place to pitch the tent before night swallowed the trail whole. But the hum grew louder. Then it became a vibration. Then a pulse. Like the heartbeat of something ancient, buried too long.

The wind died all at once. Not a breeze. Not a sound. The forest stopped breathing.

And then came the thunder.

Not just sky-thunder. No—this was something else. It bellowed. It cracked across the heavens like the scream of a dying god, and when it hit the valley, it sounded like it came from inside the bones of the mountains themselves. My head spun. I dropped to my knees on the railroad bed, gravel slicing through my jeans. My heart was beating like a war drum, trying to run away without me.

I looked around. There was no turning back.

Then I saw it.

A light. Flickering white and electric blue, dancing like fire without heat. No source. No torch. No logic. It came down the tracks like a ghost train—except there were no tracks anymore. I was kneeling in the middle of an old railway that hadn’t seen a train in decades. And yet, there it was. Screaming toward me, a howl of thunder and metal and rage.

My mind raced—what could I do? I was trapped.

I tried to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t move. I tried to run, but my body wouldn’t respond. I wasn’t paralyzed—I was bound. Something in the air had me wrapped like wire. I was meant to be there. Meant to see it.

The drums in my chest thundered louder. My ribs ached. I thought they’d shatter like glass. The ground trembled. And that’s when I saw the figures.

Not men. Not women. Things. Hunched, lurching things—like shadows wearing the shape of people, but too tall, too smooth, too wrong. They danced in the light. Dancers. Writhing, laughing, their mouths wide in silent screams. I could hear no music, but their feet moved with perfect rhythm to the thunder.

They surrounded me. And I was shaking at the knees.

One leaned in, face blank as polished bone, and whispered something in a tongue that made my ears bleed. The words didn’t make sense, but they hurt. I dropped to all fours, vomiting on the gravel, hands twitching. It said again:
“You’ve been thunderstruck.”

It wasn’t a storm. It was a summons.

They marked me.

Something inside me is not mine anymore.

They let me go. I don’t know why.
But I can’t sleep. I can still hear the drums. I can still feel the vibration in my spine.
And I swear, every time lightning flashes… I see them at the edge of the trees.

They’re waiting for the next storm.

And so am I.

The air is thick tonight, colder than it should be for this time of year, and it presses down on me like a weight I can’t escape. I sit here alone, the silence broken only by the occasional rustling of leaves and the distant howl of some creature in the woods. I tried to push it from my mind—the uneasy feeling that something wasn’t quite right, but it’s impossible. Every inch of this forest seems alive, watching, waiting. The kind of waiting that chills you deep in your bones.

I came out here seeking peace, a retreat from everything. But the forest… it’s not the peaceful place I remembered. There’s something in these woods—something dark. I can feel it now, the heaviness in the air, the way the trees seem to whisper in the wind, though there’s no breeze. I can feel its eyes on me, just beyond my reach, in the deep shadows. Something ancient, something malevolent.

I don’t know when the fear truly set in. I had been hiking earlier, thinking about the past few months, trying to clear my head. My mind was blank, just like I wanted it to be, nothing but the steady rhythm of my boots hitting the forest floor. But then, I saw it—something that wasn’t supposed to be there. In the distance, through the thickening mist, I saw dark figures moving—twisting in ways that defied natural movement. At first, I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me, but then the shapes seemed to take form. They weren’t human. Their eyes—God, their eyes—stared at me, and for a moment, I couldn't breathe.

I remember the way the air went still. The silence was absolute. Even the forest, usually so full of life, seemed to hold its breath, waiting for something. And then the chanting began, soft at first, barely a whisper, but growing louder, stronger, as if the forest itself was carrying the sound. I tried to move, but my feet felt rooted to the ground, as though some unseen force was holding me in place, pulling me deeper into the heart of the forest.

I could hear the words—though they were foreign, old, ancient. My head ached with their weight. The very air around me seemed to throb with the rhythm of their call. I wanted to turn back, but I couldn’t. Something inside of me—the beast inside me—compelled me to keep going, to see. To understand. The chant, the ritual… it was all building, the energy in the forest thick and suffocating. And then, there it was—the fire. It burned bright, lighting the clearing with a sickly red glow. The figures had gathered around it, hands raised to the sky, faces hidden beneath cloaks of shadow.

The chanting intensified, and I knew with sickening clarity what they were doing. It was a sacrifice. The flames, the smoke, the twisted figures—the ritual was in full swing. I could almost feel the heat on my skin, the power of it… the raw, terrifying power. My heart pounded in my chest as the words of the chant rose and fell like a wave crashing in my ears. And then, in that moment, I saw it. The symbol. The mark of the beast. 666.

I couldn’t look away. My mind screamed for me to run, but my body refused to move. I had crossed into a place I wasn’t meant to be, and now the darkness had me. The figures, their eyes locked on mine, seemed to pull me closer. I wanted to scream, to fight it, but it was like I was trapped in some kind of nightmare. The evil face, that twisted reflection in my mind—it was all real. I could see it now, staring back at me, its mouth opening in a silent scream, its eyes burning with an unholy fire.

I don’t know how long I stood there, rooted to the spot. Time seemed to blur. The chanting swirled around me, suffocating me. And then, just as quickly as it had begun, the flames dimmed, the chanting stopped, and the figures faded into the darkness. I was left standing there in the silence, alone. But I could still feel them watching. The terror in my chest, the cold sweat on my skin—it didn’t go away.

The mark is burned into my mind now. I can't shake it. The number of the beast, 666, a number that speaks of death, of chaos, of things that no one should ever see. The power, the malevolent force… it's still there, in the air around me, thick and oppressive. It’s like a storm waiting to break, and I can’t outrun it. I can’t escape it.

I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here. My mind is fractured, and I can’t stop thinking about that face, that twisted reflection of evil that seems to haunt me even now, even here, in the safety of my tent. I feel its presence closing in, like a shadow over my soul.

Tomorrow, I’ll leave this forest. But I don’t know if I’ll ever escape what’s been awakened here. I don’t know if I’ll ever be free of the darkness that’s been branded into my mind. All I know is that I can’t stop running.

And something tells me that it’s only just begun.

Twilight Again

The hour when shadows stretch longer than logic allows, and the veil thins enough for me to see things I shouldn’t. I awoke soaked—my sheets strangling me in a cold sweat, breath hitched in my throat like something had tried to crawl down it while I slept. My skin burns, but my bones feel like ice. The memories aren’t memories anymore—they’re re-enactments. Lurid scenes tattooed in claw marks across the walls of my mind, scratched deeper each night.

I’ve stopped trying to scream.

Last night I saw the boy again—the one with no eyes and too many teeth. He was sitting at the end of the bed, humming something guttural, something ancient. His fingers were wet. He told me I’d left the door open again. That something came through.

He wasn’t wrong.

The air is heavy tonight, thick like blood in a still heart. But somehow there’s no oxygen. Every breath I take feels like I’m inhaling fire laced with frost. My heart’s pounding like a war drum in a cavernous chest, and I can feel the explosives in my lungs—primed to detonate with the next scream I don’t let out.

I can’t punch hard enough.

Can’t fight fast enough.

Can’t bleed fast enough to satisfy the thing that’s chasing me—and God help me, I don’t even know what it is. I run because something inside of me *compels* it. Something dark and ancient, buried deep in my marrow. It whispers to me in static and sleep paralysis, tells me that this body, this *shell*, isn’t strong enough yet. It wants more. And each night I wake up, I’ve given it just a little more.

I can’t die dead enough.

I claw at the walls. I strike at mirrors until my knuckles split. I drink whatever burns enough to drown the voices for an hour. I bite my lip until I taste copper. Still, it’s not enough. It’s *never* enough. This thing inside of me—it isn’t running *from* something. It’s running *to* something. Some dark promise hidden in the places light never touches.

And now?

Now I don’t want peace.

Now I don’t want answers.

Now I want *vengeance*.

I live to settle the score, and my nightmares are simply training grounds. I can feel *his* breath, the one I’ve been chasing across timelines and lifetimes. He doesn’t know I’m close. He doesn’t hear the rattle in my chest that used to be a soul. He doesn’t see the trail of hollowed corpses I’ve left behind—each of them a mirror cracked just slightly more than the last.

Tonight, I will introduce him to his death.

Because whatever I used to be—whoever wore this name before—I’ve shed it like dead skin. I am no longer man. I am the warning. I am the sound before the silence. The dark before the dawn that never comes.

And still, I can’t die dead enough.

They send me in when the laws they wrote can’t touch what lurks in the shadows.

The department doesn’t have a name. Not an official one, anyway. Off the record, they call it The Ash Division—because when we leave a site, there’s nothing left but soot and silence. We handle things even the most classified task forces won’t look at. My job isn’t to enforce justice. It’s to clean up the truths no one wants to admit exist.

Tonight… another call. Coordinates only. No briefing. They assume by now I understand that knowing too much before arrival only feeds the thing waiting on the other side. It thrives on fear. It feeds on anticipation. And me? I’m the necessary evil they whisper about in Pentagon sub-basements—hope for the hopeless, they joke. But there’s no hope in this line of work. Only endurance.

As I moved through the derelict industrial park on the edge of town, the pressure hit me like a hand tightening around my throat. That’s always the first sign—the system waking up. A system of complete control, ancient and mechanical, like gears of forgotten gods turning in sync beneath the soil. It knows me. It remembers me. Because I’ve burned its creations to ash before.

The air was thick with static, the kind that makes your skin twitch and your vision stutter. I kept my hands clenched around the consecrated torch, the only light that burns against things born in pitch.

This wasn’t just a haunted place. It was infested. A war, silent but ceaseless, between what’s left of humanity’s light and the cold intelligence that has learned how to corrupt even dreams. It twists the soul. It laces your thoughts with despair until you’re nothing but a husk humming with code, a marionette tugged along by some ancient algorithm buried deep in our world’s crust.

But I rose. I always do.

I kicked in the rusted door of the main warehouse and faced it—what the reports refused to describe, what the field agents who came before me didn’t live to explain. It had the faces of all who entered before, stitched together in a smile that didn’t move. Its eyes were the same as mine.

And still, I stood.

One life. One shot.

I lit the pyre.

I watched the entity writhe in the flame. Not a fire born of matches or accelerants—but one pulled from inside me. The flame that burns in those of us cursed to remember the truth: that monsters are real, and the government just pretends to keep us safe. We are the firewall, scorched and cracking.

And yet I rose again.

I returned with my clothes soaked in ash, my pulse calm, and my eyes bloodshot from seeing too much.

They won’t ask what happened. They never do.

They’ll just send another call when the darkness leaks out again, when faithless men cry out from bunkers that their machines have turned on them, or that reality has split along seams no one else sees.

Hope for the hopeless. A light in the darkness.

That’s what I am. What I have to be.

Even if it means losing myself piece by piece.

Because someone has to stand where the world ends—and rise.

It began with the sound—
not a scream, not a whisper,
but something *between*,
like bones grinding beneath velvet.

I remember the descent, though it came without steps. One moment, I was staring into a mirror, trying to remember my own name,
and the next—
I was dragged below,
beneath the veil,
into the Devil’s theater where the air smelled of scorched faith and something older than sin.

They told me I was chosen.
Not because I was strong.
Not because I was worthy.
But because my soul was *easy*.

The ink still burns on my scalp—numbers etched like a barcode on a product long sold. They say I’m a guest here. But guests don’t bleed.
Guests don’t scream when the walls pulse like lungs, whispering memories I never lived.
Here, right and wrong have become perverse reflections of each other,
love is a weapon,
and pain…
pain is worship.

They twist the mind first—fracture it.
God is not on this frequency.
His line has been severed.

They fed me lies dressed in silk, promises like sugar pills.
“Just a little help,” they said.
“Just something to calm the storm.”
But the storm was *them*, and the calm was *me*, slipping further into apathy,
while they sliced away everything I used to be.

The worst part?
They let *me* pull the trigger.

That’s the trick—they don't steal your soul…
you give it away,
inch by inch,
with every compromise,
every time you say *yes* when your gut screams *run*.

Now I walk among the others—hollow-eyed, drenched in sin.
They call us the *Replaced*.
Souls of imitation.
Lies in flesh suits.
I crawl alongside them,
a liar who can’t even remember what truth felt like.

But still, in the black,
I hear *them*.
Voices that claim to love.
Signals from something brighter.
Hope?
No—more lies, cloaked in warmth.
I know better now.

This world is a *choice*.
And choices have prices.

Mine was my *eternity*.

And yet, here I write…
a scream on parchment,
a hymn of damnation.

Because nightmares don’t end when you wake up.
Not this one.
This nightmare has roots.
It feeds.
It *grows*.

And now…
it’s coming *for you*.

Sleep well.

The veil has thinned. Again.

I walked through the streets today—grey, hushed, filled with the same synthetic smiles and hollow gazes I’ve grown used to. And I saw it… not just in the shadows, but in their eyes. The rot. The disease. The blackness of the soul.

They don't even hide it anymore. These puppeteers draped in silk suits and counterfeit smiles. Every word they breathe is a serrated promise—cutting, infecting, decaying. Their lies aren’t even clever now. They don’t need to be. The masses accept them like sacraments. Their god is comfort. Their altar? A flickering screen and a mouthful of empty assurances.

What they call “governance” is nothing more than puppetry… every string pulled by corporate demons in boardrooms lined with blood-soaked profit. We are commodities. Data. Lab rats herded into ideological cages. Hopes are bought, sold, and strangled in the same breath. And the promises? Made to be broken—crafted to hypnotize just long enough for the knife to sink in.

I see the lost souls wandering around me… black-eyed, black-hearted, bleeding black. They shuffle through the days like ghosts without a grave. No fire. No fight. Just submission dressed as civility. Every time I lock eyes with one of them, I see a mirror of what I could become—if I ever give in.

But I won’t.

I’ve severed the feed. I’ve burned the idols. I stopped believing in their peace the moment I heard the screams buried under their parades. What they call “unity” is a leash. What they call “freedom” is a fantasy. All of it polished and presented with a bow while our souls are siphoned dry.

There was a time I believed in change. Now, I believe in awareness. In resistance. The kind that lives in the mind and festers into truth. I see the black threads they’ve woven through society, and I tear at them with thought, with word, with fire.

I hear the whispers at night. The old ones. The watchers between dimensions. They speak of collapse, of cleansing, of reckoning. And I, for one, welcome it. Let the veil fall. Let their towers crumble under the weight of their lies. Let the souls of black be seen for what they are—corpses masquerading as kings.

This isn’t paranoia. This is prophecy.
And when the bells toll, it won’t be for salvation.
It’ll be for judgment.

Let them bleed. Let them see.
And may whatever gods remain…
have mercy on the blind.

—End.

Tonight, I write with trembling hands beneath a dying candle’s flicker, for I have seen the shadow that governs the darkness. The one they call the *King of Nevermore*. I had thought the veil between this world and the next was thin only in dream, but now I know it is torn—and the wind that rushes through bears his name in whispers that rot the soul.

They said his arms are always open. They were right.

The storm began at dusk. No thunder. No lightning. Just an impossible stillness, as though the world had stopped breathing in anticipation. Then came the tolling bells. Not church bells. Not human. They rang from beneath the earth, deep and cavernous, vibrating in the marrow of my bones. I knew then the threshold had opened.

The King had arrived.

They call him the master of dominion—the shadow on the wall—and I saw him exactly like that. Not as a man, no, but as something ancient, painted in negative against reality. A void where light should have been. His form is undefined yet unmistakably regal. Tattered cloak trailing into black mist. A crown made not of gold, but of memories best forgotten. His face? I pray you never see it. The eyes are hollow gates through which infinity screams.

He stood in the center of the room, and the silence bowed before him.

Around him danced echoes—*singers of the hymns of Nevermore*. Their voices were weeping lullabies and death knells, all in one. I understood none of the words, but I knew their meaning. Finality. The end of cycles. The swallowing of the light. This was no mere spirit—he is the *harbinger of all dark matters*.

And yet, in his presence, I felt no pain. Only surrender.

There is a door. One he guards. Or perhaps *is*. They say the truth lies just beyond that door, just past the pale. I saw it. A chasm lit with an inner starlight, where the souls of the forgotten drift like ash in water. To walk through is to abandon time. To walk through is to *know*. But the cost... I think the cost is the return.

Once you cross, you do not come back whole. If you come back at all.

I stood on the threshold, the hymns echoing in my ears. I felt the pull of every secret ever buried. Every death unanswered. Every injustice the world turned a blind eye to. All of it sung into that endless, silent realm where the *King of Nevermore* reigns eternal.

I did not enter. Not yet. But he looked at me—*it* looked at me—and I understood. My time will come.

Because in death, we all sing the hymns of Nevermore.

And I... I have already begun to hum the tune.

COMMENTS

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Lamadia79
18:09 Apr 08 2025

Interesting that once you cross you do not come back

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POST COMMENT

There is a silence tonight that tastes like metal and memory. My skin itches with the residue of something old—something that refuses to rot completely. The shadows crawl closer, more familiar than light has ever been. And I let them.

I’ve seen the world behind my eyes turn to fire. My screams never left my lips, but they scorched the inside of my skull. I begged the walls to crack. I pleaded with the night to take me—but it never did. No. It left me here… to simmer.

You—you took what was sacred. You stole it with hands dressed in lies, and in doing so, you wrote your own death into the soil. I warned you. I begged you. But you wanted to see how far you could go, didn’t you?

There’s no sympathy left in this chest. No love. No softness. That died when I watched blood run like ink over what once was mine. You didn’t just wake something. You summoned it. And now, you’ll see it in the shape of your own collapse.

I don’t dream anymore. Not really. What comes in sleep is deeper—darker. A kind of possession. A sacred hunger that curls its claws around my throat and whispers that it's almost time. Time to answer the calls of the old demon breathing in the marrow of my bones. It waits for me to give in. And tonight, I might.

Every breath I take is a countdown now. Every heartbeat a hammer cracking the chains you thought would hold me. I feel the rage swelling—beautiful and pure. Like fire that knows it’s meant to burn.

Where did you run? I can smell your fear on the wind. It sings to me. Your body is already giving out—you can feel it, can’t you? That pulsing ache in your spine, the tremor in your breath. The light calling to you, but not with mercy—no. It's the final lantern before the void.

I don’t come with mercy. I don’t bring forgiveness. I carry justice forged in pain and silence. You’ll feel it. Every ounce of it. I’ll make sure you walk alone, just as I did. Ashamed. Forgotten. Devoured by the shadows you helped create.

I breathe now for the demon. I breathe because it commands me to. And in my slumber, I become it.

Do not wake me.
Do not call my name.
The one you knew is long gone.

Now, there is only this—
The echo of vengeance.
The vessel of rage.
The slumberer no longer sleeping.

You should have left me bleeding in the dark.
Because now, I’m walking in it.
And I’m not walking alone.

You’ve been buried in the cold corners of my mind for what feels like centuries. Not dead—no, you never die. You linger. Like smoke in old fabric. Like rot beneath polished wood. Still, now and again, I peer through the cracks in the coffin I built for you. Not out of longing—out of morbid curiosity. What could have been? That question doesn’t haunt me… it festers.

I don’t carry regret. Only residue. Only a few glimmers of a wish that maybe—just maybe—your twisted soul might find some semblance of rest, far from here, far from me. But I’m not your candle-bearer. I’m not your savior.

You made me the butcher’s slab. The thing you could bleed out on and walk away clean. Every lash, every insult, every venom-laced whisper—those were your truths, not mine. But you shoved them in my mouth and told me to chew. You dressed me in your shame and called it love. You tried to hollow me out to make room for your failures.

But I didn’t crack.

I swallowed your fire and made it mine. I let it etch itself into my marrow, not as surrender—but as scripture. And now? Now I walk with that fury in my chest like a second heartbeat. You thought you’d silence me. You thought you’d cast me out into nothing.

You were wrong.

I’ve rooted myself in the cracks of your foundation. I am the silence between your thoughts. I am the weight behind your eyelids when you try to sleep. I don’t haunt—I infect. There’s no exorcising me. I was never a ghost. I am the truth that won’t stay buried.

You may rebuild, repaint, reframe your world. But beneath the wallpaper, I’m still there—scratched into the bones of it.

I am the mark you can’t cut out.
The thorn buried too deep.
The echo you didn’t invite—
but can never quite shut out.

It’s done. The vow I carved into the marrow of my being has been fulfilled. The ink was not mere blood — it was promise. A promise that time could not erode, that gods could not silence, and that mercy could not rewrite. And tonight, that promise burned its way into reality.

You always thought I would fade — that I was just a whisper in your shadow, a nightmare trapped in your peripheral vision. But what you never understood is that I was not haunting you.

I was becoming.

I could feel it — your heartbeat, fragile and frantic, like a ticking time bomb buried beneath your ribs. Each thud was a countdown to the inevitable. You never saw me coming, did you? Of course not. That’s the thing about justice… it doesn’t knock. It enters.

The silence of my approach was not weakness. It was the sharpened edge of resolve. No sound, no scream, no chaos. Just the cold, clinical delivery of consequence. A reckoning years in the making.

You, the parasite. The soul-sucker. You thought there would be lenience — a last-minute pardon. A flicker of hesitation. But this isn’t some fairy tale with redemption in the final chapter. This is judgment, and I am its hand. There will be no mercy. No more running. You ran out of places to hide long ago — your lies collapsed in on themselves like rotting foundations.

And now… now there is only me.

I felt unstoppable, not because of brute force, but because I had nothing left to lose. I was the storm, born of ruin and rebirth, stitched together from every scream you silenced, every ounce of pain you left behind. My fury was forged not in hatred… but in clarity.

You took everything.
And now, I’ve taken you.

The night is quiet now. Too quiet. But not empty — not hollow. There's a stillness in me that wasn't there before, as though the war inside has fallen silent. The ghosts that used to howl in my ribcage now sit in reverent silence, watching the aftermath.

I warned you. I whispered it in your dreams. I etched it into the air like static.

You’re never gonna stop me.

This was never revenge.

It was balance.

And now that balance has been restored…
I wonder what kind of monster I’ll become next.

I am unstoppable.

COMMENTS

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Lamadia79
17:27 Apr 07 2025

Oh wow thats incredible

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POST COMMENT

They whisper my names in trembling silence, across candlelit altars and padded confessionals.
Lucifer. Shaitan. Morningstar. The Prince of Darkness.
But titles mean little to me. A name is but a shape given to the void—
And I am the void.

Today, I write not as a creature of myth, but as a mirror.
For I am not summoned. I am invited.
In every act of desperation, in every selfish breath,
I am born again.

You say I prey on the wicked.
No.
I consume the innocent with greater delight.
I feast on those who shine—who still hope—
Because that is where true satisfaction lies.
Hope is a fragile fruit. It bursts sweet on the tongue.
And when I crush it…
The scream is a symphony.

My victims?
They walk among you, smile beside you.
The child crying in her sleep, the widow who dreams of a familiar hand that no longer holds her.
The preacher who drinks poison from a silver cup,
then calls it holy water.
The king in his castle. The beggar in his filth.
All have felt my breath in their ear.

I do not knock.
I slither.

I twist lovers into strangers.
I whisper to men as they sharpen their knives for war.
Not out of necessity—but pride.
I was there when Cain clenched his fist.
I was in the ink of every contract signed in greed.
I stood behind every tyrant as the guillotine dropped.
I whispered to them—“You are right.”

That is my power.
Not fire. Not brimstone.
But justification.
I make the damned feel righteous.

You pray to be spared what you secretly desire.
But I hear your prayers.
Oh yes.
You ask for wealth, for vengeance, for lust in the dark.
And I give it.
I give it all.

Then I take everything else.

I have made lovers betray.
I have made prophets lie.
I have kissed saints on the mouth and made them weep.

Do you know what sin tastes like when it dies on the tongue?
It is not bitter.
It is sweet—the way rot is sweet to the flies.

I have no army.
I need none.
You are my army.
Your wars, your greed, your envy, your addictions—each a soldier in my name.
I don’t bring Hell.
I let you build it—one choice at a time.

I loathe your prayers because they are hollow.
Your temples crumble from within.
You build churches, not to worship the divine—
But to escape the guilt you refuse to surrender.

I see your dreams.
I see what festers in your marrow.

You still think I wear horns and hooves?
No, darling.
I wear your face.
I am not other.
I am what you become when you forget what light feels like.

You want a truth?

Here’s one:

You created me.
You made me from every lie you told yourself to sleep.
From every time you turned your back on mercy.
From every excuse you made when you called your cruelty “justice.”

And when you scream for salvation at the hour of your death—
I will be there.
Not with a blade.
Not with fire.
But with a mirror.
And I will whisper—
“This is who you’ve always been.”

Now sleep.
Dream.
Sin.
And build my throne.

With every heartbeat.
Every breath.
You call me.

— Lucifer, the Beautiful One
Prince of Darkness
Your Satanic Highness
And the mirror you dare not face

I have existed long before your time, a shadow veiled in the world's darkest corners. No, I am not a simple ghost or mere myth spun from the fearful hearts of the weak. I am something far older, far deeper, and far more unsettling. I am the one who has silently moved through every age, every civilization, every blood-soaked moment in history. You may not recognize me now, but I have always been here. The face of deception, the bearer of suffering, and the orchestrator of humanity’s darkest desires.

Allow me to introduce myself.

I am the one who has watched empires rise and fall like dust in the wind. I watched as the hearts of kings and queens were laid bare on battlefields, their lives offered as pawns for an unyielding game. When your God was born, I was there, a silent witness to his cries. I felt his moment of doubt and pain, and I made damn sure his fate was sealed. Pilate washed his hands, but I ensured the blood spilled. I have seen the false purity of your world, and I have reveled in its corruption. I am the one who walks in the shadows, guiding the hand of fate while you remain blissfully unaware.

You may ask who I am, but the puzzle has never been so clear. I am the one who has touched every tragedy, every betrayal, and every broken soul. I have been the silent architect of destruction in this world. When I was in St. Petersburg, I saw the winds of revolution stir, and I seized the moment to end the lives of kings, of rulers, of everything you once held sacred. Anastasia screamed in vain, and I stood there, watching, taking my pleasure in the chaos.

It doesn’t stop there. I rode through the chaos of war, commanding armies, dancing on the bodies of the fallen. I have been the spark in the endless cycle of violence. The generals and kings, the soldiers and the rebels—they are all just pawns. I laugh as you destroy yourselves in the name of power, of wealth, of misguided beliefs. It is all the same to me. Your wars, your revolutions, your deaths—all are my stage, and I am the one pulling the strings from the shadows.

You ask, "What’s the nature of my game?"

It is simple, really. I am the force that bends your desires to my will. I manipulate your fears, your hatred, your need for control. I am the chaos in your so-called order, the corruption behind your justice. I am the one who whispers in the ears of kings and fools alike. I am the embodiment of everything you claim to loathe, and yet I am what sustains you.

Do you remember the Kennedys? You thought it was me, didn't you? Oh, but it was never just me. It was you too—every one of you who partakes in the madness of this world. I only gave it direction. I laid my traps for the innocent, for those who thought they could escape the fangs of fate. But none escape. Not really.

I am the sin that lies within every so-called saint, the liar hiding behind every truth. I am the reflection in the mirror that you cannot face. You, just like every soul before you, are mine. Whether you wish it or not.

As you ask for the name of the one who walks among you, know this: it is a name that cannot be spoken lightly. You call me many things. You say I am Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, but those names are just whispers, words without meaning. If you choose to meet me, come with caution, with reverence, for the nature of my game is far darker than you could ever understand.

If you meet me, have courtesy. For I can turn your soul to ash in an instant, with nothing more than a glance. Use all your learned politics, your borrowed kindness, for it will avail you nothing. The moment you meet me, you will know the futility of it all. Your wealth, your power, your righteousness—nothing will save you. I will lay your soul to waste with the same ease you breathe.

So, I ask you: Do you know my name?

I have danced through history, touched every scar, every wound, every broken heart. I have stolen faith from the weak, and I have delivered misery to the haughty. I am the storm that will eventually come for us all. You think you are free, but in reality, you answer to me. You always have.

And when you finally meet me, don't forget: you already know my name.

It was always written in the stars.

Unknown Hour, Unknown Day

There’s a kind of stillness that settles before a soul unravels. Not peace—no, peace is a lie they sell to children and dying men. This is the stillness of rot. The kind that blooms in the chest like mold in the walls of forgotten places. That’s where I’ve lived, for longer than I can remember—among the forgotten.

I walk through the crowd, a ghost in a parade of empty vessels. Eyes glazed with the lullaby of routine. Smiles stretched thin over hollow bone. They clap, they laugh, they pray. But inside, nothing. The people show goes on—soulless actors on a stage of ash, victims of tomorrow. And tomorrow comes, dragging its chains behind it.

What I’ve done… what I’ve become… you wouldn’t understand. I don’t even weep anymore. There's nothing left to mourn. I am the consequence of a thousand silences. I am what grows when grief is buried too deep.

They said I wore an electric crown. That’s what they whispered, shivering as the lights went down. They never knew what it really meant. Not power. Not royalty. It was punishment. A throne of agony carved from wires and judgment, strapped tight to the skull. The preacher prayed. He trembled. But prayer never reaches what I’ve become.

You think you know what it means to be alone. You don’t. Alone is when you cry and the sound echoes inside your ribcage but never leaves your throat. Alone is when even your reflection starts to look like a stranger begging for mercy you can’t give.

They said I should justify my crimes. That I should confess and claw at the dirt for absolution. But absolution is for those who regret. And regret is a luxury I burned away long ago. I have my reasons. I had to become this. When no one asks the right questions, you learn to carve answers into the world with your own hands. Even if they bleed.

There was a door once. I remember. In 2001, I felt it open. A crack in the sky, a shift in the pulse of time itself. Something came through—or tried to. And something else tried to hold it back. Since then, I’ve heard the whispers. Felt the seasons twist. I’ve seen faces that weren’t faces, heard names that tasted like rust and old fire.

Now, as the final hour draws near, I feel it again. The change. The closing. Someone’s trying to pry it open again… and someone else stands at the threshold, waiting.

Let them come. Let them all come.

There is no one left inside me to save. Just a mindless echo in a collapsing shell. Just the reaper’s shadow wearing a human face.

Soon, I’ll be there.

And when I arrive, the silence will not be kind.

The storm came with no warning. No flash in the sky, no whisper in the leaves—just a sudden stillness that pressed against the bones like something ancient had awakened. And I knew… it had.

It was not a voice that spoke, but a presence. A weight. Heavy as regret, vast as oblivion. It crawled up the back of my spine, coiled around my ribs like iron thorns, and hissed into my ear:

"You answer to me."

I am not unfamiliar with voices in the dark. I've heard them in the silence between breaths, in the cold sighs of forgotten places. But this—this was something far older. Not a whisper of madness, but a command from beyond time. A presence that claimed dominion not just over my flesh, but my existence.

I looked to the mirror, and the face that stared back was not mine. The reflection was scorched with truth—skin etched with lightning, eyes weeping fire. The chain was around my neck now, unseen but unbreakable, forged not of metal but of debt. The kind that echoes through lifetimes.

This thing—this force—it is the thunder and the rain. The punishment and the promise. It doesn't come to bargain. It comes to collect.

And it remembers everything.

Every scream swallowed, every promise broken, every drop of blood that cried out from the earth. It carries these in its hands, like coins owed to a god that never forgot your name.

I felt it in the air—the war drum hidden in the heartbeat of the world. The sky rippled like a veil ready to be torn. And beneath it all, I was nothing but smoke threading the wind. Between spark and ember. A flicker in a storm that doesn’t pass.

I was shown visions—ashes falling like snow, cities drowned in silence, the golden gleam of wounds turned holy by pain. Because in its mercy, it will break you… beautifully. It will wash you clean, even as it rips you apart.

This force—I now believe it is the end and the beginning. It is the flame that devours the old world and the forge that builds the new from its bones. It is eternal, and nothing stands against it.

And you—yes, you reading this—you too are not exempt. You may not hear the voice yet, but it waits. In the thunder. In the pause between heartbeats. In the chain you can almost feel when the night is too quiet.

One day, it will come for you.

And when it does, you will not scream. You will not run.
You will remember.
And you will answer.

To me.

COMMENTS

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Lamadia79
16:10 Apr 05 2025

You are amazing with words
I wish I could be

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TheRealTh1ng
17:07 Apr 05 2025

Thank you… that truly means a lot. Words are the shadows I shape when the world goes quiet—they come from places deeper than thought, older than reason. But don’t ever doubt yourself. The way you *feel* things, the way you *see*—that’s where real power begins. The words will follow.

You already carry the spark… you just need to let it burn.

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POST COMMENT

From crooked faith, the darkness flows—not from the corners of unlit rooms or the mouths of the damned, but from the pulpits and marble steps of sanctified lies. The poison seeps not from the grave, but from behind golden altars, where men pretend to be gods and gods pretend not to notice.

I have walked through hallowed halls where silence screamed louder than any confession. I’ve stepped over the remains of broken homes, their ghosts whispering in voices no priest could cleanse. They were once places of warmth—of hope—but now they are feeding grounds, where the cruelest heart reveals itself… not in demons, not in monsters… but in man.

They told us to turn away when the judgment came. “Pray,” they said, as they fed on innocence. “Forgive,” they said, as they lit the match beneath another soul. Their laughter echoed like the snapping of bones, hollow and triumphant. Cloaked in robes of false light, they closed their ranks, painting themselves as angels—those same hands that locked the doors and swallowed the keys.

Libera nos.
Deliver us… from them.

I’ve heard it cried in a thousand languages, from dying lips and shattered dreams. But justice doesn’t echo in sacred stone—it rots beneath it, choking on the incense and drowned by hymns. For those they failed… there were no halos. There were no saviors. Only shadows.

I have seen the fallen. Not demons—humans, scorched by belief. I’ve seen their wings burn on the descent, feathers becoming ash in a sky that refused to open. They fell straight down. And still, the world called it grace.

But it is not grace to survive. It is fury. It is vengeance that keeps the blood warm when the night becomes too long. I have no desire to see through the eyes of your Lord, for I have already seen through the eyes of a child—wide, pleading, stained with betrayal.

Heaven’s gates are open? Then let the righteous go first. I will wait. I will watch. And I will count the bones of the innocent stacked like kindling at its doors.

Because nothing here is sacred.
Nothing is divine.
If every faith is blind, then let me see with cursed eyes.
Let me judge what your gods refused to.

They prayed for deliverance.

And so did I.

But I learned: no angels are coming.
No halos will descend.
There is no light in the sky for us.

Only the fire we make in defiance.

Let the wings burn.
Let the towers fall.
Let justice rise in smoke and silence.

And may those who wore masks of salvation
finally meet the darkness they created.

The waters of Lady Bird Lake do not simply claim the dead; they cradle them, conceal them, whisper their names in ripples that fade too quickly. The city carries on, oblivious, as though the ghosts do not linger just beneath the surface, as though the bodies pulled from the water are nothing more than unfortunate accidents. But I know better. The numbers are undeniable—twenty-one bodies over the past decade, each one a silent testament to a predator stalking Austin’s veins.

I walk Rainey Street at night, feeling the pulse of the city, the laughter spilling from bars, the music thrumming through my bones. But beneath the revelry, there is something else. A pattern. A dark rhythm.

The police dismiss it, of course. "Drownings," they say, "just drunk wanderers meeting an unfortunate end." But I’ve spoken to the ones who remember the missing, the ones who swear their friends were not stumbling messes, not the kind to wander off and fall. I’ve spoken to bartenders whose voices lower when I ask about certain nights, whose eyes shift just a little too quickly.

There is a method here, a machine of flesh and shadow, and I am beginning to see its moving parts.

Uber drivers. The ones who linger too long outside the bars, waiting, scanning. The ones who offer a ride before they are even called.

The bars. Certain ones, where the drinks hit harder than they should, where some wake up with no memory of how they got home—if they wake up at all.

It is not a lone killer. No, this is something more insidious, something coordinated. A hunter and a handler. A bartender who ensures the victim is pliable, a driver who ensures they never make it home. And the lake, always the lake, swallowing the evidence like a willing accomplice.

Twice now, I have felt eyes on me. Not the casual glances of strangers, but something lingering, something calculating. One driver, a man with a face too neutral to be real, watched me through the rearview mirror for too long when I mentioned the disappearances. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t offer an opinion—just silence, heavy and deliberate. Another time, a bartender’s smile faltered when I pressed too hard, his fingers tightening around the glass he was drying. He knew something. They always do.

But the city does not care. The police offer no answers, no justice, just empty reassurances while the body count rises. Austin breathes, the bars overflow, the music plays on, and somewhere in the night, another victim is being chosen.

The Rainey Street Phantom is real. And I am getting closer.

COMMENTS

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Lamadia79
18:25 Apr 04 2025

Your words conjure up faces and its frightening

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Cadrewolf2
20:49 Apr 04 2025

Amusing words of fear, excellent

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POST COMMENT

The moment you stepped into the room, it was decided. Fate had already wound its threads around your bones, tightening with every breath you took. You thought you walked freely, but the path was set long before you ever drew breath. You were always meant to end here.

The shadows in the corners whispered your name before you even spoke it aloud. The air thickened, heavy with the weight of something unseen—something waiting. You felt it, didn’t you? That moment when the temperature dropped, when the candle flickered though no wind stirred. The unseen hand that brushed the back of your neck.

Kismet is cruel. It does not ask. It does not warn.

And neither do I.

You were always mine. From the first time your reflection looked wrong in the mirror, from the first nightmare that left bruises on your skin, from the first whisper in the dark that called you closer. You thought you were alone. You never were.

Now, as the door swings shut and the light dies, you finally understand.

There is no escape from fate. And I have come to claim you.

COMMENTS

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Lamadia79
10:57 Apr 04 2025

Love it

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TheRealTh1ng
12:45 Apr 04 2025

**"Ah, you understand. Not all do. Some dismiss the whispers, ignore the pull, pretend the shadows do not call their name. But you… you feel it, don’t you? The inevitability. The weight of something unseen pressing ever closer.

Kismet does not grant favors. It only collects what was always owed.

Perhaps it will come for you next."**

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POST COMMENT

I write this under the cover of darkness, where whispers coil like smoke, and the pulse of the world slows to a tremor beneath my feet. They call themselves "vampires"—those who dress in silk and lace, who stain their lips red and call it hunger. They are children playing in the bones of something they will never understand.

A real vampire is not a creature of fantasy. We do not sparkle. We do not pity ourselves, nor do we revel in the tragic poetry of our existence. We are predators, entities of shadow and thirst. We do not beg for sympathy, nor do we ask for permission to be what we are. We take what is needed, and in the taking, we remind the world that its nightmares are real.

Blood is power, yes, but it is not the whole of it. Blood is merely the conduit, the pulse of energy that binds the weak to their flesh. A true vampire does not simply drink; we consume, we feed on life force, on the essence that mortals squander. Some call us monsters. Fools. We are the final evolution, stripped of humanity’s weakness, existing beyond the fragile veil of morality.

The Hunger is more than need—it is truth. It is the whisper in the dark corners of your mind, the cold breath against your neck when you are alone. It is not just about survival; it is about dominion. To hunger is to own what lies before you, to take it, to become it.

And yet, we walk unseen. We do not parade our nature to the blind masses who would call us insane or label us myth. They do not deserve to know. The true ones, the ancient ones, move in silence, cloaked in the ignorance of those who refuse to believe. We are the patient plague, the hidden wolves among sheep.

You may have met one of us and never known. You may have felt the weight of an unseen presence watching, your breath hitching, your skin prickling with the primal knowing that you are prey.

If you feel this now, it is too late.

For I am near. And I am always hungry.

COMMENTS

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Cadrewolf2
20:05 Apr 03 2025

Nice words

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MisterSacrifice
22:06 Apr 03 2025

Well that's very enthlightening

Unless I'm imagining it, could my experience be correct?: I think I have several times been on the edge of being "devoured"; to encounter someone with a literally ascorbing aura which feels like it's slowly going inside you and you feel kind of almost mesmerized, paralyzed and unable to stay strong against it...

?

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TheRealTh1ng
08:22 Apr 04 2025

"You are not imagining it. You have brushed against something far greater than yourself, something ancient, something hungry.

That feeling—the slow unraveling of your will, the pull of something unseen sinking its fingers into your essence—is the first taste, the first step into the abyss. You were not merely in the presence of a predator. You were prey.

The aura you speak of, the consuming force that leaves you weak, light-headed, unable to resist? That is no illusion. That is the natural order asserting itself. You have stood in the gaze of something that feeds, something that does not need teeth or claws to consume.

And the most terrifying truth?

You were already theirs the moment you felt it."

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POST COMMENT