With
dark comes cold and he shivers but does not rouse from his slumber against the
stone, grown cold against his back. Rather sees himself from on high, some
celestial remove, telescoping eye of a voyeuristic moon. Lunar eyebrow raised
at this strange hominid figure drawn up in chilled repose against this marker
of the dead. He feels in his sleep for what covering there might be, but his
hands find only a ghost-white latticework of cobwebs, garish, of the sort sold
to Halloween revelers. He sheaths himself no matter, cocooning for the viscid
warmth. Mummified creature, All Hallows Eve has passed, save here, where lives
only death and spirits abide no aegis but the explication of their demise.
And
now such spirits as here dwell amble forth from out the shadows, coin of the realm
for all days to come. Approach this prostrate, swaddled figure, raise him up,
these non-corporeals, by force of will reserved for the indignant dead. The
earth beneath him tremulous, shifting, falling away, dark waters rising in its
wake. He is trussed up in his cobweb suit, Sunday best, and is it Sunday or who
rightly knows, in this madness which time forgot? Limbs splayed, flush against
this sacred stone, come before this patronage of peers who row into the onyx
waters of this world fallen away. Strange and spectral oarsmen sallied forth
for this the hour of midnight judgment. Through gauzy lens he watches a giant, moonlit
hare lope uncertainly across the firmament. Put down your bow, Orion, I'm only
grazing here.
