SibilantMacabre

Does it hurt to know that you've found someone just as empty as you?  That even as you gaze down at those squirming beneath your heel, there is still someone laughing at your affected numbness, at your utter invulnerability? We are unforgivable people. We are a breed that God never intended because we were too like Him. When we pray, we look in the mirror. When we would cross ourselves against evil, we pick the blood from beneath our fingernails. Looking down for the pleasure of their pain is a tired pastime. And in a moment you'll look up and realize that exactly what you desire most is right in front of you. The first time I was almost int

The overhead chandelier was on its dimmest setting at this time of night, leaving the candles to reluctantly fulfill the work of lighting the sanctuary.  On a smaller, almost farcical scale, at least fifty candles for the dead sagged from a skeletal multi-tiered metal tree on the table at my right arm, each votive entombed in a small glass holder. A pair of seraphs flanked the fire, wrathful guardians usurping the place of gentle watchers. Each tongue of flame represented a departed loved one to be remembered and for whom to pray. Some of the candles were marked with names or initials, others utterly nondescript. I lackadaisically considered

Crimson soaked tatters flutter against a wine-coloured haze, as though feebly clinging to some fragment of mortality left in the wearer. The scent of mouldered fruit, of promises too sweet to be kept and left to rot. This world is an aria of suffering, my symphony of agony. The blood splatters my face, quivering on my eyelids and lips though I don’t remember anyone being that close, and I sigh uncontrollably, drinking in the rotten air. Never once in my life have I been happy, never once have I felt complete; but there is only this moment, in which all gods, all the lies of morality, goodness, home, country, amity, and faith are removed

I covet your fear, your desire, your joy, your anguish, all that constitutes a life. I long to drink you in, to imbibe your essence and let it flicker through my veins like blue fire, swooning intoxicated with you racing inside me. The lingering tannins of your phobias astringent in my cheeks, the rich syrup of your darkest memories heavy on my tongue. I yearn to plunge into your skin, bathing in the lurid light of your consciousness, writhing languidly in your dreams like amniotic fluid, rocked to purring, calculating near-oblivion by your heartbeat. Your eyelids will flutter as I swim about, curling through and stroking every painful memory

During the late spring or early summer, I acquainted via the internet a handful of people who would be attending the school where I am now. They called themselves, with what I did not perceive as pretentiousness at the time, a group of metalheads. I talked to one about a limited scope of literature, albeit one that we both know well. I politely asked the females which buildings they were staying in. They seemed like a pleasant crowd, and having recently withstood some difficult events, conversing with them was a welcome distraction. Accustomed to the lassitude and myopia of most, I quickly, independently arranged the circumstances of our firs

In the night of my final sacrifice I sent my soul Into the vast and fathomless unknown to find a word A word, that indicates the beyond. It came back later and spoke: "I am myself heaven and hell." I adore the aesthetic of late autumn. The other afternoon, unwilling to restrict myself to the cycles of public transportation after wandering in a daze through a public area in search of some fragment of vitality, I walked about a mile in fog and misting rain. Streetlights flickering in the four p.m. dusk; leaves shimmering dully, leeched of colour, their skeletal frames ground into the humid earth. Boots filthy like my pride. The streets gre

A table set for two, a white shroud draping its length, a hundred tapering candles sighing, brushing shadows against the walls, their whispers of flame the only breath in the windless chamber. Twin place settings selected meticulously to match; two silver platters, bare, two goblets brimming. I lifted the glass before me, admiring the candlelight writhe torpidly in the liquid velvet churning darkly within, in a toast to my guest, before lowering the goblet to my lips. “Wine?” I offered. Viktor glanced warily down at his goblet, making not the slightest movement towards the vessel. “Why so kind?” he asked in a cold voice

And so I sailed, brotherless, alone, back to Romania, back to a home that had hardly been a home in my fleeting, half-remembered years there. I commandeered a private ship manned by seafaring vassals of Murad’s; it was not a difficult thing to attain for an officer in the Turkish army. We set our sails upon the Black Sea in December of 1447. I was barely sixteen, but had aged decades since I first entered the gates of Edirne. The crewmen regarded me as an eccentric and a recluse, and respectfully left me to my devices. The days I spent cloistered in my cabin, poring over a tattered brown letter dashed in crude ink. I gazed with unseeing