Now What They Say…

…is just stay away.

There is a particular order of things. There is the way concepts move and change. Life goes on, in and out, like waves scraping at the shores of silent seas. These motions change the grains of sand, recreate and reconstruct their purpose.

In the winding depths of his mind, Bylah’s tide is changing. It is slowing. This is that smallest death, right before the world swallows him for the night. Lesser beings go dreaming – oh, sleep perchance – but Bylah is above that. No nightmares scrabble for purchase within his mind; Bylah is the a nightmare all his own. No pleasant dreams wake with him, none of which stir at him, be it brain or loins.

But at this moment, at this sliver of time and space between living and dying, sitting and sinking, Bylah is aware of things happening, of last minute thoughts. His head – one of the last parts of him still above the loam and rot of his garden – turned for a moment towards the doe sleeping beside him. She, of the red hide, that reminded him so of fresh blood.

“You do realize…” he asked quietly, whispered secrets behind little girl’s hands, “…that you are never going to leave me, do you not?”

His head rolled back, countless tines slithering down into the soil, the damp of it putting out Hell’s fires, guttering and dying in the black sockets of his eyes.

“I will eat you, before I let you leave.“