It stirs...

Unsure if anyone remembers me ( it's been awhile), but I recently stumbled upon my account and just wanted to say hello and see how everyone is doing...if anyone is even active anymore

Soul in the Memories

Night’s veil had swallowed both moon and stars leaving the landscape a barren and vast emptiness. Each foot fall seemed to only carry him further into the void, senses all but muted and rendered extraneous as he knew neither where he came, where he was nor what direction he was going. It was the noiselessness that grew like madness, a silence which could be felt like a dagger piercing flesh. Lips moved in fruitless pursuits as hands and fists beat against his bod without so much as a dampened thud to warrant the abuse. With quickened pace his direction was determined but aimless as he traversed the eternal black.   Attention fixated on what had been the first variation in a seeming reality tantamount to absent uniformity. Having breeched through the crust of darkness a singular tusk of ivory arched unapologetically into existence. 

Realization struck as he followed the root he’d tripped upon to its source, one among a ghastly forest of leafless alabaster oaks which filled the eye in all directions.  The legion varied, the bleached wood surrounding him standing as individuals in every regard.  Some appeared nothing more than a sapling, others loomed above like monoliths against the stark emptiness of the sky. There were those who stood in complete isolation while others touched upon their neighbors with bough or root. The further he traveled the greater a sensation of understanding to the depth in the meaning which came from these differences. Dipping to clear a particularly low hanging branch he could feel the sharpened make of her fingers tearing crimson trails down his back, the warmth of her beneath him as each quiver of flesh was plucked like an instrument by his hand. The taste of her sweat as they melded into one entity of desire, writhing upon the sheets without heading or course before he pulled himself from the catching brambles of the tree. Dumb struck he looked upon the pearly make of the ensnaring timber which carried a more vibrant sheen than those neighboring its vicinity.

“Meaningless.”

The disembodied voice hit upon the shell of his ear like thunder and sent him spiraling in pursuit of its source. “All of it…” Returning to the tree he’d recently pulled free of, a bubble of darkness popped from one of the many cracks of its bark. With each growing heart beat more and more of the tar sputtered and poured from its source like an unholy fount. From within the churning black an arm tore itself into the ether, clawed fingers sinking into the supple wood. “Destined to wither, and rot...as you are.” Trembling in effort the rest of the blackened form pulled itself into existence with a curdling hiss before the featureless entity set itself to rights before the oak. “After all…” Tearing horizontally across the expressionless expanse of its face appeared an impossibly wide mouth filled with sharpened tiers. “What’s a man without a soul?”

Eyes snapped open as Amadeo laid at rest in bed, flesh covered in a glistening aura of sweat. Moments ticked on in succession as the rhythm in his chest slowed, pale azures fixating aimlessly on nothing in particular. Quietly he found his lips pulling into a bemused rictus.

“Not a man at all…”

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Amadeo Blackmourne