Unexpected Prose

[Sometimes a story mixes with life and becomes something else entirely.  This excerpt from a story writing session might be something like that.  But in the end, all stories are about the human spirit.  Here’s a piece of mine.]

I can’t hear myself think.  I feel a deep dull thudding in my brain as if the machinery was jammed and trying to roll past something blocked, something broken. A metallic boom down in the bowels of my mind. Whose words are these? The questions of a questioner go unanswered.  Where is the spark of my soul?

Nothing is missing.  There is no menacing evil within and yet fear fills my recesses, darkening corners with a light sucking efficiency.

Again.  Whose words are these?

How could I fall so far when my only steps were careful, calculated, even recommended.  My own darkness eats those dying embers that could still be called life.

But no white knight breaks in to rescue me. No gallant captain with shining boots to threaten my enemy into submission.  I am my enemy.  I am the darkness chasing the sun across the night sky.  What was hope is only whispering voids ripe with doubt, denial, and sadness.

I ignore the pain and imagine a perfect world, but everything is gray and muted. It’s drained of color as all false realities must be, as all nightmares should be.  But I ride this mare anyway.  Sweat steaming from her sides in the chill of my consciousness.  A mane of tears and anger leaving the only trail of color in my dying emotionless world.

We are searching, this mare and me, for a spark of belief.  Belief in something I can’t comprehend or even imagine yet.  But with each labored exhale, I can feel it.  The pain in my chest, the thud in my mind, the tears of my mare, prove that somewhere the fire of faith in myself still burns.  I have to find it before it’s too late.

I have seen the walking dead.  The ones who gave up searching for their spark.  And I would rather ride forever through the darkness knowing that the fire of my soul could be just a few steps further, than give in to a zombies sorrow.  Perhaps, one day, I’ll see a new sun that can chase away this cold wet night or find a city built to bring light into the darkness and warmth into my heart.

But I will not fight.  Instead, I will slide through this night and rescue Faith myself.  What else can I do?  What else can I do?  Only I can build the fire of self belief from an ember into a flame.  All I have to do is find it.

Twirl, Swirl, and Fly!