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Most content below is strictly in a fiction setting, focusing more on writing in first or third person in the effort to post rather than tell a longform narrative story
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Have you ever had a tune stuck in your head? Some song you could not forget?
Maybe you had a poem repeating in your mind, a certain phrasing that you cannot forget.
They say soldiers would sing songs and chants when in war, something to keep their minds active as they find themselves in times of war. The mind correlates these experiences with actions, often remembering what sensations and feelings occurred when such a repeated tune entered their heads.
A violin plays a tune in the distance as a soldier crawls through a trench, playing a haunting refrain as he pulls himself forward, combat knife in hand as he slinks towards his enemy. His mind connects the feeling, the urge to sink his blade into the soft flesh of his enemies neck now forever tied to the gentle song of a violin. Tragic, horrific, and primal.
Hands soaked in blood, mind filled with images of viscera and gore, and surrounded by a symphony of strings. A veteran, a victim, a haunted man.
What happens when he returns from war? Does he live a life that is normal, or does his mind always drift back to the horrors of it all?
What happens, when his daughter gains an interest in orchestra? What happens, when his house is filled with the gentle song of a viola, echoing through the halls?
Man is simple, and when the mind falls back into old mindsets, who will be surprised when he walks out of his home, bloody with the same look in his eyes he had all those years ago. Vacant, primal, and never able to be satisfied.
Can you hear the strings of war?
I had a friend awhile back, worked in a morgue. Never went there myself, but they were very happy to talk about the things that came through their doors. It wasn’t until they started showing me photos that I realized how things rot. I mean, I’ve seen food rot, I think we all have at this point. Things growing off of old food while something far worse oozes out of it at the same time. Maggots and bugs swarming forgotten leftovers and meats.
But a body? It’s sickening in a way that feels cold, not nauseating. You don’t expect to see someone go the same way last week's take out went. Things growing off of them, and a persistent ooze leaking from them. Congealed blood, sallow flesh, they look wrong. Like if someone took a person’s skin and stretched it over a skeleton too small for them.
I think after about the 30th photo they showed me, I realized there was no difference between the deli meat I threw out after it started to reek and the bodies in the photos. Meat is meat, and it rots in a way that overwhelms the senses. A Petri Dish of rot and disease.
What happens when that rot is left to its own devices? When pathogens and viruses slip into it and infect it? Does it develop? Does the puss that leaks from its eyes and mouth turn rancid and acidic? Can it burn through metal? Wood? Flesh?
Disgusting stuff to think about, honestly.
Those of you who lock yourselves away before sundown and rise with that warm star in our sky, this post is not for you. You, who keep all your lights on in your houses– this post is not for you. This post is for those of us who call the night our home, who drift from street lamps to dimly lit buildings through the sea of that potent, unending dark.
Have you heard of the King? Our ruler of the night? We spend so much time, walking through his streets and slinking through his courts, that it is surprising not many of us know him. I do, though. I have met him often, though this is nothing to brag about. I’m sure you have met him too, though you likely never realized it. Quite the trickster, this King of ours. He is kind, friendly, the sort of man who approaches you as if he’d known you for years despite never quite getting your name.
None of your friends know him, and the ones that did… Well, when was the last time you spoke with those friends? No no, this King is a stranger who asks you to take a walk with him through his own domain.
Now this king, our King of that rich darkness that coats our streets and obscures so many fresh horrors, is actually quite close with me. You see, he has stolen something from me. Something I once held dear. That is the sort of man he is. He takes, dear friends. Well, let me rephrase. He takes dear friends. I know the man who walks down the streets, whose will shut off the street lamps without a second thought. I know the man who greets those strangers in the bar, whose creatures stalk and roam through that eternal dark to grip and tear and take. I know that man, that friendly smile, for he took the one thing that I cared for.
And one day? I will arrive in his domain, in that Court of the Night Time Streets, and stand before that throne. And I will take back what is mine, no matter how cold that corpse has become. My only hope is that I will be as I am now when that day comes, and not a part of his subjects when it is time.
