The
Bringer of Darkness
Mickie Bolling-Burke
My days are fear and watchfulness and the
counting of the dead. My parents’ days, ‘the old days’, were holiday
celebrations and laughter, people opening their curtains and their windows, and
leaving their homes without carefully planning their routes, without packing
weapons and traveling in groups. Of
friends who ran in and out of each others homes without struggling at doors
studded with locks, and sitting on their front porches calling out to the
neighbours walking by.
Our front porch is empty now, except for the
wooden swing hanging from the ceiling where my sister and brothers gathered,
drinking their lemonade and swinging so hard the chains would rattle. Sometimes
the chains rattle even now. I pretend it’s my siblings. I stare out the window
for hours. My sister and brothers’ days were playing out there, with balls and
bats. I still have them – their playthings. Sometimes I hold them and pretend
we're going to have a game. My sister and brothers have been gone for longer
than I can tell. I want to have played with them, to feel the soft, sweet sun,
to smell the new mown grass.
The darkness comes earlier and stays later now.
The screams are louder, shriller and wilder. We turn up our radios, our
stereos, our televisions to drown them out, but we hear them. We always hear
them.
When the darkness first came, we gathered
together; safety in numbers we assured each other. That just made the carnage
easier. I didn’t know which was worse, the blood or the bits. Because that’s
what the darkness left us: bits of eyes and fingers and tongues clotted in
blood. In the beginning, we tried to piece them together so we could have
proper burials, but that left the Piecers open to slaughter, so burials became
another relic of ‘the old days’. We learned to huddle in no more than twos or
threes. That saved lives for a while, but the darkness was canny and quickly
learned our ways. The killing continued. Maybe not as fast and efficiently, but
still the death toll rose.
This evening, I sit quietly in the front room,
rocking back and forth in my chair, mesmerized by my shadow on the floor. I
hear my parents upstairs, their voices rising. Fights are another thing my days
are filled with. I'm sick of their battles – I wish I could stop their anger,
make them be quiet. My rocking speeds up when I hear my name; I close my eyes
as their argument escalates.
A stupor comes over me; it would be a relief to
escape into its comfort, to accept its embrace. I've always welcomed it before,
but this time I push it back and refuse to go into it. I white knuckle my grip
on reality and refuse to lose my way. I hear my father screaming – I have to
help him. I search for a weapon to save him. I’m confused when he backs away
from me, and I follow.
I’m startled by my face in a series of
reflections – I barely recognize my bulging eyes and mouth frozen in a snarling
rictus in the blade of the butcher knife clutched in my hand...oh my g---
END
Originally an actor, Mickie
now lives in the Southwest, where she spends her nights writing stories of
horror and suspense inspired by her beloved rescue cats, Pal and Lassie. She
spends her days sleeping with her fists clenched because Shirley Jackson taught
her that not everything that wants to hold her hand is a friend. Find her on
Twitter @MBollingBurke.
