Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Here be Dragons

Posted by A Great Liar

After the sun goes down and the surrounding forest becomes quite dark, you begin to hear noises of almost innocent birds or mammals. They may sound strange to you, but the cynic within would holler and pretend they are nothing. The left hemisphere of your brain, the curious Sméagol within, seeks solace in common sense. As you prepare to sleep and lay your head down, you hear a spine-chilling wail almost like a coyote.

With his one good eye deeply shut, the old man could see them, and deep in his sleep, he hears the whispers of the specter in the remote wanderings, closing in with its weight, with the bones of the universe breaking, giving in beneath its feet, and the silence holding the woods deep in its snare. The imprints left on the patch of barren gray, sulfuric and they glowed against the dark.

You don’t come out into the Pine Barrens for a nice camping trip.

He spent most mornings hiding from the sun, while the heaven beyond the stone-age roof of his abode is stirred by the endless flights of nameless birds above. His starved fingers groping, fumbling into his cowboy leather saddlebag, gaping holes and all, taking out the yellowed bunch of parchments he had long discovered from his deceased grandfather's basement, locked and forgotten in their revered family vault. The parchments looked old, older than the world as the man had always known it to be.

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