I waited for one of them to embrace the challenge
And understand the concept that life
Was an insignificant portion of their existence.
A clinch in the jaw of the advisor was evident enough.
A lunge forward allowed for the blade
To enter the king’s stomach.
My council had its first member
And I had my first servant.
III: PRODUCTION
Within my new city,
Torches aligned the corridors and courtyard
To provide passageway through the blackness.
The dead roamed without purpose,
But eventually found tasks that needed completion.
The stench of living flesh was removed
And replaced with an aura of damnation.
Every essence of the former king was dispelled.
Every celebratory element of the city was torched.
Every flag was buried deep within the ground.
My underground sanctuary was left unchanged
And was forbidden to all who dwelled within the realm.
The most pressing matter about my new kingdom
Was the dead that seemed to arrive daily.
At first I was shocked by the appearance of so many.
I had no idea if it was God’s will or my own doing.
Either way, I had to deal with the dead.
All mortal minds are born with a simple gift from God;
His idealism, a complete understanding of his presence.
My burden was to cloud that existence
Through sinful encounters.
My demons and I sought out hesitations toward God.
And those arriving at my gates
Had obviously fallen for my temptation in some way
Hidden deep within the earth,
Far from the eyes of the sun,
The city was becoming a realm of prosperity.
From the trenches of the land,
The condemned ones found their way to my haven.
Their punishment would vary
Depending on their overall acceptance of sin.
Although all fates would prove unfavorable.
My fellow demons were hesitant
To show appreciation for the city
And the constantly overpopulated dead.
I could not dwell within their emotions,
As there was much work to be done.
They would have my ear,
Just not at that present time.
***
Warnings sent through the wind flowed through Hell,
Speaking of God’s displeasure.
The cavern ceiling would often tremble,
Sending large boulders to the buildings below.
Stealing an entire city from the land of God
Was an unruly punishable offense,
But necessary for my vision.
I was not about to construct a new city
When Hell accommodated me
And offered me a sanctuary.
I did not consider myself a rebel,
Nor did I take a different path away from my task.
I desired a dwelling to conduct my ventures.
I did not view it as greed to take a city
So corrupt in atmosphere and dead in population.
However, God apparently did not hold a similar view.
His wrath still lingered within my mind,
Knowing that he could strike unannounced.
I would not have to wait long, as a low hymn
Echoed through the caverns
And danced with the flames of the torches.
An evil breeze snaked through the corridors
And shivered the souls of those unfortunate to hear.
The city stalled and froze beneath the sound of silence.
My heart sank deep into my chest.
She was here within my cavern; within my realm.
I walked to the gates and greeted the guards.
Their skin shook beneath their armor.
Their presence remained strong,
But their souls struggled internally.
I stepped between them
And gazed upon the large field leading to the city.
Nothing but the sound of song existed.
However, I knew that when there was a hymn,
Pain was not far behind.
In the horizon, she appeared.
From what I could decipher, she was in her hag form,
Wobbling along the path with the help of a cane.
Her song grew louder as she neared.
Slowly she crept, her cane stabbing the land.
My mouth moistened;
My heart pounded, rattling my rib cage.
I was forced to wait
And could do nothing but anticipate.
What fate did she carry? What fear did she bring?
Her hood concealed her eyes.
Her white, straggly hair extended past her rotten teeth.
Her hand held tightly to her cane to push her along.
Options streamed through my mind,
But none would match her strength and hatred for me.
God’s servant could not be reasoned with;
God’s servant could not shed pity.
She was close; I could smell her stench of death.
Her eyes remained hidden as she walked passed me.
The guards gripped their spears as she approached.
That small gesture of misunderstanding halted her.
Her hood turned slightly to gaze upon the guards.
Their armor hid the suffering of their lifeless bodies.
Twisting sounds of flesh leaked through the metal.
Crackling bones distorted the wind.
The structures of their armor remained intact,
But only God knew the kind of devastation
That was occurring within their casings.
As the guards crumpled to the ground,
She walked through the gates.
No attention was given to me.
One step into the city, she stopped.
Her hood rotating from side to side.
Her eyes of God surveying my abode.
She held up one hand and quickly
Pulled a hidden citizen from a nearby corridor.
His dead soul rotated with a sway of her fingers.
As quickly as he was entrapped,
He was released back into the corridor.
She turned to me as I braced for her onslaught.
Her wobbly arm raised; pointing her cane at me.
The tip touched my chest, hovering over my heart.
The idea of being skewered entered my mind
And sent panic through my veins.
I shut my eyes in hopes of
Helping me deal with my approaching demise.
Instead, I felt the wooden cane unlatch from my heart
And return to its support role.
I stared at her shadowed face for any understanding,
But found nothing.
She turned and wobbled back through the gates.
With her visit, God knew everything.
My plans, my visions, my hopes.
She had scouted my realm,
Not to destroy it,
But for the knowledge of the meaning.
Her visions would be returned to God.
Her song began again, while she walked along the path
Leading away from the city.
I, of course, would need more guards.
I wondered what God thought.
Was I fulfilling his plan? Was I progressing in my task?
I considered the non-violent meeting
With the banshee as acceptance.
***
Instead of dwelling in the unknown,
I began to enhance the city in particular ways.
I aligned the entrance to my realm with human skulls;
The
cobbled, uneven path was to my liking.
While admiring my work, I noticed a lone crimson goat.
The hooves were clashing against the bones.
The color of red about him was not a natural hue;
The animal was soaked in blood.
My hand slid along its body in search for a wound.
I found none.
Another goat arrived, blood stained like the other.
I looked to the horizon as more goats appeared.
My confusion was interrupted
By small droplets landing upon my shoulder.
The red substance tempted my eyes to look upward
Where I witnessed a situation so profound
That I lost all rational thought.
The cracks in the cavern ceiling were leaking blood.
A sea of red rained down upon me.
The sadistic storm coated the city in a blanket.
The blood began to pool within the dirt and rise.
Puddles aligned the corridors and found
Their way into my underground sanctuary.
Underneath, I saw my creek being fed by the source.
The current was agitated, lifting heavy stones.
The blending of the water and blood was empowering
As it carved its way downward.
The shifting sliced through the foundation
And fractured the land forming a deep trench.
The earth shook, swaying the city.
I ran through the corridor and out the gates.
Each pebble, each rock of my realm shuddered.
A huge crevice forged its way in both directions
As far as I could see through the rain.
The rain of blood did not subside.
The downpour bombarded my cavern,
With every pool creeping its way into the crevice.
The city had become stained with crimson.
All were drenched in the demented rain;
All were discolored with a wash of death.
On the seventh day, the rain subsided.
The storm left behind a wide river of red
With a shifting tide that gifted fear in return.
After the storm subsided,
I noticed a vast amount of goat carcasses littering the path.
I followed the corpses until I was led back up to God’s land.
What I saw saddened me.
What I saw altered my mindset.
Lying on the the land that once supported the city,
A pile of rotting goats resided, stretching to the clouds.
Each slaughtered and drained.
Still coated in their blood, I stood in awe at the sight.
No one but God could have achieved such a feat.
I took land from him.
In return, he took the only animal that I admired.
As I gazed, the earth shook once more.
The five cracks that I had created to swallow the city
Reopened, allowing the pile of goats to plummet.
The vast mass of carcasses slowly filtered
Through the ground and rained down upon my realm.
I looked to the Heavens as the last goat vanished
And the earth reformed to conceal the crevices.
I stood coated with the blood from all of earth’s goats,
Knowing that their carcasses had taken over my city.
I could only offer God a smile.
My cobbled path, my palace, my courtyard
Were all concealed by the carcasses.
Destruction of my wall and gates was apparent.
I had no other option, but to set my city ablaze.
Knowing that the basic stone structure
And formation of the walls would survive,
I threw torches into the mountain of goat
And watched as the fire leaped from carcass to carcass.
The inferno spread rapidly,
Leaving behind molten skeletons.
The cavern became a slave to the heat.
For seven more days, the city burned
As the flesh was devoured by the flame.
At the end, a sea horned skulls besieged the cavern.
The stone underpinning of the city remained,
But was altered to a blackened, red grime.
I collected all of the goat’s skulls before they became
Embedded within the thick substance.
The spines were used to align the top of my city wall.
All other remaining bones of the goats
Became a part of the outer wall.
The river of goat’s blood
Had grown in size, carving its own trench.
It was alive with a passion of its own.
The turbulent river flowed in unpredictable patterns.
With the rise of the moon, the tides mourned.
With the rise of the sun, the tides bled crimson.
Much like a servant in need of its master,
The river needed to be controlled.
I had witnessed both its devastation and beauty.
All of the wandering souls feared the river.
They trembled if they were near.
To understand the relationship
Between the dead and river,
I brought a lone soul to the shoreline.
He was reluctant to travel with me, but a solid grip
Allowed for my companion to follow.
I had seen fear before; I had lived through it.
I had seen the human mind scar and bend from fear,
But I had never seen fear
That intense within a condemned soul.
I stopped momentarily, my arms shaking
As if I was holding a wild beast.
If the soul still had bones,
He would have broken them.
If the soul still had flesh,
The shackles would have carved him.
Instead, he merely shook violently in my grasp.
I proceeded to drag him to the shoreline
Where the river could hear us; where it could smell us.
The current churned with excitement.
The river flowed higher in anticipation
With every approaching step we took.
The waves crashed against the rocks
With a power that would shatter all except God’s hands.
It was relentless in its effort to obtain its goal.
However, it was not the soul it clamored for.
My flesh was the prize.
The swell moved as I moved.
To test my theory, I staked a soul to the river’s edge
Close enough for the beastly river to consume him.
I walked to an adjacent inlet aligned with jagged rocks
At a peak that the tide would have to struggle to obtain.
The soul clung to the stake, but his fear was wasted
On an idealism he portrayed as being true.
As the river rose and climbed over the rocks,
Each drop crept toward me.
I bent down and submerged my arm.
The dense blood cleansed my bones of all flesh.
The current moaned, becoming greedy in its intention.
The tide continued to rise as I extracted my arm.
With my intact hand, I calmed the troubled river
By hovering my fingers above the crests of its waves.
Slowly, the current became passive.
The river knew I would tend to its every need.
I immediately halted the ritual burning of any flesh.
Although, I would miss the aroma,
I ordered certain laborers to collect all flesh
And deliver it to the shoreline via meat wagons.
The wheels would transport the deliveries of flesh
To where the cliff’s edge met with the river.
The tumbling of the corpses against the rocky cliff
And the splashing as they collided with t
he river
Was a rhythmic pattern so tranquil and surreal.
The amount of haze omitted by the river
Masked the true vastness of its size.
A complete beast of nature,
Carved from the anger of God himself
And filled with the blood of his creations.
Pain pushes the shifts in tides.
Hatred slashes the rocks with waves.
To all the souls, it was a terrible relic,
To me, it was a wonderful addition to my realm.
One flaw, if ever the river had one,
Would be its inability to consume bone.
The hardened material beset the river bed
And covered the shorelines with a pearl white hue.
The vision reminded me of broken sticks.
When the tides were at its lowest,
The bones revealed themselves.
To make it so only flesh would enter the river,
I burdened a condemned soul
With the task of removing the bones from the dead,
Prior to being loaded into the meat wagons.
The bones upon the riverbed were never added to.
A society was beginning to develop;
A civilization within the underworld,
Far from the land of God and the warmth of the sun.
A rocky canvas became our sky;
Trenches of dirt became our fields;
The stench of death became our wind.
Without having ever been to my realm,
The sinners were able to find their way.
Their eyes were lost, their thoughts emptied.
True nomads in every aspect.
All arriving to hear their fates;
To be held accountable for their sins.
My curiosity desired the knowledge
Of how each soul displeased God.
To learn how I had infected their hearts
Without ever actually meeting them.
To know which stories tempted them
From the path of the righteous.
Their bodies remained intact;
Their souls encased, ready for the reaping.
Once within my outer field,
The condemned souls roamed pointlessly
While their mind struggled to comprehend.
There was no clear path;
No precise method to the madness.
A path through my realm was needed
In order to funnel the souls to where I wanted them.
First, a separation process was needed.
The rotting flesh proved to be a mess
If the soul was imprisoned as they had arrived.
The soul was the true relic of man, the body was not.
A group was created in order to reap the humans
Of all flesh and bone prior to entering the city.
Named the Reapers; the chosen ones.
Four souls, all guilty of spreading my name,
The Harvester Page 6