As I sit at night against my headrest,
In the darker hours of a long cold night,
Our room warm with a luminescent pink glow,
My girlfriend sits at the foot of the bed,
as we engage in conversation,
She turns her head:
“Are things ok?”
I’m ponderously asked.
I tell her yes, with a bit of a laugh.
She looks away, but then turns back:
“At what point do you think?”
Her question confuses
At what point? I ask back…
She guides her eyes,
Right to mine, and speaks of things unnerving....
“At what point? I said, `
`Do you think those who used to be angels realized how far they descended?”
Anxiously I responded, what the hell do you mean?
And of exactly that she spoke further:
“They thought they’d be alright you know? Once they first saw hell....
We are beings of art and beauty, our talents while all we have are plenty...
Look around, even here a gift of resources, all on our own we will build a better city, they said of their new home.
We are as angels a piece of God, to think he’d leave us in torment forever is not a thing of his nature.
It wasn’t until they started to build did they truly realize their real position.
While what they had built before in heaven did have that godly nature, in hell it reflected only them, and the city they built was one that could never be heaven...
Their work showed greed and lust, torment and degradation, all the things one might feel once love and brace turns into total isolation...
While their art, that had once been so beautiful,
Now it was foul and morbid.
With buildings structured by evil this truly wasn’t the worst.
For you see…
Building Hell wasn’t enough,
they desired to be god, so they attempted his greatest feature.
What they made never lived as man, being born outside holy creation,
but deep within darkness, rot and ruin…
It couldn’t be life, but a creature.”
She then turns her head, facing me again
“Do you remember those nights?
Much like this, when you’d hide in your blanket away from the window?”
I looked to my window side,
And heard an imminent tapping...
“I’d tap it 3 times just so you knew I was watching”
And as I turned my head back,
I finally looked down,
Only to see my girlfriend,
Resting her head on my chest,
Sleeping ever softly.
In shock I yelled,
Or thought I could,
But now my lips were sealed.
The creature at the end of my bed,
Mimicked the form of my love;
Only to now distort it
Revealing now it’s true apparition.
The color was lost,
A being all black, with red fire in place of eyes,
It’s arms so long; with fingers of knives;
not of metal or blade…
No, a piercing darkness incarnate,
torment inherent began crawling towards us.
I tried to move, to no avail;
My body became a prison.
Please! I begged,
Wishing within my head,
for the beast to never hurt her.
And when all felt lost, in true despair…
I was yanked out of hell in a holy instant.
Two worlds colliding,
My love was yelling and shaking me.
“Are you ok? You were screaming my name?”
And to her I said:
“I’ll tell you in the morning…”
——Brett Colby