• (“Quit hiding from me, it'll never work”)

    I remember, a long time ago when a white cat would constantly follow me. Fat, lazy, and quite the scare it was only my footsteps that it would trail. It also lingered around places that I normally dwelled as if waiting for my presence. Every day when I arrived home it was always perched with an ironic poise on the black doormat in front of our door. Every morning, I would wake with fright to see its ice-cold stare scrutinizing me through my window and each time it pawed and meowed like a hungry demon. This monster would also kill and eat everything that was in our garden; birds that were found it would also become predator to. At first, I didn't mind the animal, but later I hated this creature because it had made prey out of one of my childhood entrapments- Tragedy.

    Tragedy was a gray and white rat that I had always kept close to me- traveling with me to every place- usually on my shoulder (or even buried within the confines of my pocket). She was such a vital treasure, that on bus rides her very life was protected and even more coveted if she were to travel the subways. My eyes would dash from one angle to the next while I pet her and kept her hidden from the rest of the oblivious world. In coming home from school I would automatically make my way to her holding tank in my room only taking her out to cavort for. These small things could only draw us closer and I could almost affirm that she had learned to talk- speaking to me in a language that only I could understand. Tragedy even knew how to distinguish all the different cards in a playing deck when I asked her to pick out one specific one. She was the largest part of my existance.

    I remember that it was a Friday when I came home after a tremulous day of school: around three-thirty. Before long the gallant sun was going to lay his head near the point of sleep, letting his mother moon rise for the time being. I ran the flight of stairs- two or three at a time- to get to my bedroom. But while his last few rays trampled through my window, I looked upon a place of chaos, an utter pen of madness. The image of seeing my open window, red curtains swaying like a phantom over to my bed and dancing over a white devil who was licking the bloody red chops that were the evidence of its deed. My eyes glazed with anger, while I surveyed a gray and white carcass, torn apart on now red-inked sheets.

    (“Don't worry; vengeance will be our mistress...”)

    I do not have the slightest inkling of how, but the next morning I was aware of a wet and sticky texture near my half-awake, half unconscious face. I did not want to wake for I was tired, more so than when I originally lay down to drowse and dream. But alas, it was to be that I should arise. While sitting up I brought one hand to my face to wipe away the sleep. My hand was cold and damp as it touched my cheek and I opened the other eye in my sudden confusion. Only alarm greeted my vision with a red-gloved appendage, which made my body shoot forward from its reclining position and try desperately to rid myself of its deceit. As the momentum of my fright compelled me forth, I placed the other hand on a cold pillow of white ice. With the contact I became petrified, but was forced to dare my eyes to go towards the visage that I feared. The white demon that held the respects of my anger lie in death with unmoving ribs and a throat that held the marks of anguish- eyes wide with a sense of terror. The cat lie next to my own quivering, but fully alive form, as a corpus delicti.

    (“Heheheheheha....”)

    Ever since that pivotal point, the corpses of random creatures have haunted me. The time frame ranges from every few months or so to every few years. I would be greeted with another cat, usually white or gray, with a very similar cold stare. Even still- now-while I dwell in time as a twenty-year-old man, these illusions creep into my continuance.
    But I digress. My life is far different that it had been those ten years ago, and a new obsession in my life is my paramour, Phobia. A beautiful lady I must say, though she would disagree with those words. She is short yes standing only five foot tall, but that is only a physical difference to my monstrous height, for there is far more than what the eye could actually envision. You see, her eyes are a bright hazel, enough to rival the Sun himself in their strange hues. Her hair is a dark brown, a cascade of Swedish chocolate, cleverly hiding that mischievous gleam within them. My new nymphetamine, the pain-killer that keeps my life going. My Phobia, my sanity. She makes the world for me twist, turn, and contort so painfully, so blissfully that if one were to leave, it would be... madness.

    (“Don't forget about Erick...Tell them about Erick.”)

    I observed him myself. Every night, I would take the liberty that I was vehemently granted, and also took precise measures to stalk my prey. In doing so I was in fact creating much the same relationship that an owl has with a mouse. I knew everything about him. Where he worked, when he worked, and I kept close eyes on all of his contacts and lackeys. It really was such a mere task, made even easier seeing how he slaved for my company, Century Inc. He was up to something, and I wanted to know what the hell it happened to be. Of course, Erick never knew that I was always watching him: stalking him. I was far too careful to let something like that happen.

    It was late     as I looked upon the clock to see when Phobia was coming home, and it was taunting me with the numbers 7-0-0. At once I was pacing through the house half angrily and half nervously because I had something very special planned for her tonight that I did not want to cancel or postpone. I stopped only momentarily to gaze into the strange Aztec-influenced mirror Phobia insisted on having. The thing dwelled on the wall opposing the door, always the first to witness incoming guests. Ice-cold blue eyes that could freeze hell, yet at the same time posses a center flame that could melt steel gazed back at me and creating a truculent chaos. My hands were also running through my thick and shaggy mane of black hair brushing it away from my face: That has been a habit of mine as long as I can remember.

    (“It’s pretty damn annoying habit - it needs to be left in my face...”)

    Finally, the door whispered that it was open and my inamorata faltered in with an unusual cautiousness. Her hazel eyes deviated from anything that held a sense of movement like she was hiding something. Phobia also did not look up while she set her things on the cherry wood coat rack, and immediately my intrigue was spiked. Her antics changed my anger into a worry, and I could not help but become her citadel. Quietly, I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her soft waist, whispering alongside her milk-white throat.

    “Welcome home, my love...”

    She jumped. I heard a sharp intake of breath, and she spun around in my impermeable grip, looking much like a deer that was in the vicinity of a speeding car. It was only a meager second that she tried to fight me, and I tapped the door behind me with one foot so that it closed so none would make false assumptions. The noise of the wood striking the lock brought her thoughts back into the realm of reality and she buried her face into my white cotton dress-shirt. I did the only thing that I knew how to do, and masked my face with her shoulder and chocolate hair, my arms around her.

    (“Something is going on here Paine...”)

    I don't remember when I fell asleep that blissful night, but I do recall how jumpy Phobia was on our date. The place that I had taken her to was in a very lovely locale near the center of the city (Its very own aura exuded from every crack a lavish French cuisine restaurant). Phobia always loved the French. I can also recollect her small hands stressing in my larger pale ones, vying for the comfort of their touch while the waitress took our orders. Actions that Phobia tool had me moving my form as close to hers and I possibly could to soothe her nervousness. The only time that I could get her to calm down was at home, hidden away from the world in our bedroom.

    During other parts of the veiling night thoughts of our upcoming wedding also plagued my mentality: making me ail to the serenity of the situation. The morning really was not that much of a better situation- having a shriek of an ancient apparition insinuate my ears. The bloody sound made me jump up and out of the black queen bed and in the process grab the rifle that was kept within my reach. Upon seeing a gray and white pillow not native to our berth, I could not contain my eyes within their sockets. My hold over the firearm was relinquished, and it plummeted in slow motion with a nonchalant thump on the tile. I looked up- blood driven cold, body still. Phobia was on the opposite wall of my own, bright eyes wide with ataxia and hands shielding the lower portion of her face. Looks like the past brought me another guest of displeasure.

    (“You’ll never escape it...”)

    “Paine...” her voice was cracked, an obvious tincture of awe and fear. “What is...that?” she pointed with one shaking hand to the corpse of the dead feline, only to forthwith draw it back and corner her body even further into the wall.

    “I wish that I had the knowledge to know myself, love.” I could barely even hear my own raspy tone my own form shaking unnaturally.

    After this little encounter, I guided Phobia with placidness up the stairs as if she was going to fall under me and crack open the contents of her cranium. The chassis that I held was trembling with a great and powerful anxiety- it took all of my composure to not pick her up and obscure the fox from the sentiment of humanity. It was not all right to have her...overwrought before the milestone that I would revel in speaking: our wedding. Yesterday was her last day holding her former name and today that name will change to Phobia Augustus. Perhaps this day will be one of perpetual exhilaration much like I had hoped.

    “Mrs. Caligula Augustus...” I whispered under my breath.


    Many people had arrived and were already sitting patiently in the lawn chairs that had been provided for. So far everything was in place as perfect as it was physically allowed; proceeding quite well given no dark clouds overhead are passing through just yet. Every thing that I had asked was not in lieu with my request so that made my mood continue its stability, even though things were running just a few minutes late. I surveyed the grounds again, if only to make sure of the perfection. Both of my hands ran straight through my hair again, this time in pure, unadulterated anxiety. As if almost on some sort of hinted connotation when my foot tapped, the piano started to ring out the blessed chords it was meant to play. The very sonancy of the strings and the hands playing them made me jump up and stand tall- forgetting about any past event, and wallow in the reverence of the situation.

    “Phobia. Mrs. Paine Augustus, Phobia Caligula Augustus.”

    I could hear myself whispering that one name in the shallow pitches of my baritone voice, tuning well to that of the pianos’. The Skeletons of mystery were tapping their canes while the only thing that I could do was watch my saunter lightly and slowly towards me. I was silently pleading for time to slow itself down- so that it may be possible to fantasize what futurity that we have left in us as humans. I cast my eyes over to the white flowered arch visualizing with gaping pupils that finally it was was here that my bride walks...

    I could only smile as her grace taunted me with the cascades of white silk and satin gloving her physique tenderly. Filled with warmth that was an ardent caress to any noble mien, my eyes betrayed me to envision such beauty. The nymphetamine in my life was nearing overdose and all I could do was take even more... Even     as the piano dies down to a gentle hum, I could see the music still in Phobia's face, playing there: the near lunatic poet's lute. Her smile was the moon's statuesque adornment, and I could feel every touch of its warmth throughout my being.

    Upon the podium, the earth beneath felt as if it were an ocean, constantly oscillating our raft asunder. Consequently, I could not dare to turn my vision away for a single fleeting moment because I was in fear of missing even the slightest expression. The preponderance of what the priestess had said I never heard, chiefly because I was too busy gazing with the adoration that was never measured within me to the magnum opus in front of me: the great masterpiece. One of the only things that I remember her saying was the proclamation of the vows, but even then, it was only Phobia's voice that drew me. It was like the temperate song of the mockingbird.

    “...better in death,” She slipped delicately a golden band onto the phalanges that it belonged to, smiling, and rivers of happiness flowing from hazel oceans.

    It was my turn, and for a moment, I faltered for my words.

    “I will love thee, with all the breath,” I paused, lifting my eyes to melt with hers. “Smiles,” another pause, and I began to slip the golden jewel of our eternal devotion upon her. “And tears of all my life,”The ring was there, and I covered her hands with my own with a gentle squeeze, bringing them to my lips and whispering my last part of the vow. “And, I shall but love the better in death

    (“I shall Love thee BETTER in death, NEVER shall we be parted”)

    I heard the Priestess speak again and seal the marriage- the pact that is loyally bound and shall never be split within my soul. All around me I could hear a gaiety, and little bells ringing from the many appendages of our guests. I lay my lips upon hers, the endearment of a million-score suns burning brightly with euphoria not only on mine. However, one bell drew me away from her- a bell to low and to short. A bell that tore me from my love. That one reverberating sonata exuded a scream that was too fearfully sanctimonious to be one of the jovial bells. The shriek was echoed in the audience to create a stampede of chaotic clamor; I looked down to my wife. I looked down upon Phobia Caligula Augustus.

    “Phobia!” I rasped, though I partially wonder if I was actually speaking. “PHOBIA!”

    What lie in my hands was not my wife, but the dying corpse of my wife. No, she hadn't died just yet, that damn bell did not give her the liberty of a painless cessation. She was writhing in pain, her hazel eyes bleeding tributaries that were not just for her disposition but for mine as well. There was a hole in the midst of her chest cavity, or what was supposed to be something of recognition. Was it even something real? Down the front of white rapids, a scarlet paint was dying them a bright crimson that was only enhanced with the blinding luminosity of the sun. With an anguished visage, an image in her eyes told me that I needed to remember, and she- with only last mandatory skill- forced out the last bit of breath that she could without a pair of lungs to whisper.

    “I shall but love thee better in death...”

    With the screaming echo of those words living in my lunacy, I held her abridged body close to my own, hoping that this was all some sort of dream- some misconstrued reality that I would eventually arise from. When I felt her limbs slip away from mine to a perpetual debilitated state, I replied in a voice that I did not understand could be beheld by my person...

    “I shall Love thee BETTER in death, NEVER shall we be parted...NEVER SHALL WE BE PARTED!”

    The last part was by no account received by her instruments of hearing again, and I detained the quickly cooling flesh in both arms, constraining them as taut as my strength would oblige. I let my endemic tears fall tempestuously, roaring to the world that it was going to pay dearly for its aphoristic mistake.

    (“I SHALL LOVE THEE BETTER IN DEATH!”)

    I now live with the inertia of pain, suffering, and constant emotion piling up the furthest recesses that a normal human mind could not always take to: a type of flood that fills up a hollow and leaves absolutely no room to breathe anymore. There is Loss, Anger and disillusionment that does not any longer understand the high appreciation of Hope and Fear that had only just begun to understand the gentle tinge of Acceptance.

    “Mine? Forever? Only forever? Forever...and Ever...and Ever...and ever...and ever...only mine...my Phobia....MY PHOBIA” I repeated out loud what my pen of blood scratched upon the wall; chanting like the ghost who refused to acknowledge his own death. Death was never death if you refused it, and I refused to believe that my Phobia had been stolen from me. She is still here...I can hear her...telling me... that she still loves me...I can hear her...she still loves me...


    (“Phobia. Phobia... My lovely wife Phobia...Her beautiful hazel and green eyes...my beautiful Phobia...Never shall we be parted...”)

    Erick had quit his job at Century. I know that because he had arrived at my office at precisely 6: 32 P.M. with thirty-three seconds past the minute. In his incessant, melodramatic fashion, he confided in me that he felt his presence was in peril because of the death of his daughter last month at my very home. I guess you could say that in a way it was, for I had been an even closer observer of him than I had been previously. It was his voice. The way he spoke about Phobia …his voice …it had no inkling of sorrow, not even for myself; like he was chortling at me from the innermost confines of his thoughts.

    After he had left- cleared his office, and signed his resignation receipt, I detected an air of relief in his demeanor. Automatically anger built up her temple in my region and reigned over the top of everything else. Sorrow and anger, a wish for repentance that was never granted, and thus driving an innocent soul into madness, I was being driven into lunacy by Erick...

    During the evenings, I watched as he threw money away at the casinos... How every night he had a new concubine on his arm, and every time the sun arose he would be waking up with her, most likely without the garb coverage of a pair of pant bottoms. Those sequences of actions made me very perturbed because his only heir to his fortune was killed and he didn't seem to take notice... When he acquired himself a set of armed gorillas, also known as bodyguards. I soon came to a realization that he had something to conceal from the public knowledge- something that he did not want to be discovered. Naturally, I looked into it even more and found what he was hiding. My only problem was getting Paine to realize it, for this information will finally bring us together in our wish for vengeance.

    “God, you b*****d, you ******** b*****d!”

    I screamed at the top of my lungs, driving out as much of the elegy from my existence as I could. Alas, the atmosphere of my home that I am now to dwell in with only loneliness himself, refuses to acknowledge my pleading. I am to live with the memory of my beloved wife's heart in my hands- her eyes telling me to never to lose the memory of her. I had not any inclination to do so, her influence shall be with me...and so will the atrocity exhibition.

    The atrocity exhibition. The remembrance of a past soul that was tortured, and where great sorrow lived and pricking at every one of the senses. What will be, what will never be, all just questions that have been brought before me, brought before the instances of time and mind, selling to my soul quite vague answers at the price of happiness. Memories, memoirs, things that brought out the animal that was meant to be locked away…Answers that always somehow made me think about Erick.

    My agony, my hatred and tragedy of all life    . Of life that was never going to end, and of life that was going to end, but in happiness that you will be reborn to see your loved ones again. I am not going to see that for a very extended amount of time. Since Phobia's death, I have not woken up with a deceased feline companion, but rather I rise to see messages written in blood on my walls. My own blood. I see many things such like: Hopeless tears, unrequited will only fall. The handwriting was not my own, and I grow fearing my sleep ever greater as each message is placed, with every message on my phone that gathers only hate in making me remember. Even in my somnolence, I dream of hazel eyes and chocolate hair only to wake up with tears drying upon my face.

    (“ Quit hiding from me, it'll never work ...Think about Phobia...Phobia...PHOBIA!”)

    The long reaches of my imagination and the no-holds-barred force of my sleep have never been so richly demonstrative than in the visions of my night rest. There dwells a macabre border between good and vile and story after story I am taken to places that I have been before, though- unlike before- it would seem that they are imbued with gore. During these torrents of the moonlight I gaze upon a red velvet book with the secrets of murder in them- written in my own life-fluids like the messages that await me on the walls. The strange fact is that in every vision, I am fully capable of attributing Erick to Phobia's death with many plausible details. Plausibility so strong that I grow to despise his very existence with every fiber of my being.

    I don't remember when Erick had chosen to resign from Century, but I do acknowledge that I had let out an internal showcasing of amusement. A facet of myself had begun to shatter my thoughts and forcing me to hear voices- grimly evil- and I know to whose name that they belong. Erick.

    (“The gunshots, screaming a phantom siren's shriek against the the luminosity of the Sunday afternoon...”)

    I hold remembrance of every soul at two of the most important instances in my life....and Erick was not one of them that had attended. When questioned in the latter hours proceeding after solemnity, he only told police that he was at home- sick with the flu during our wedding. During the funeral, the excuse was that he was never given any knowledge of the date. It occurred to me, that these answers were only a partial truth. The one that occurred most and stood out was that he just did not want to attend to his own daughter on either occasion. I now know that Erick was the cause of her murder: whether it be the simple insistence of my imagination or not Erick will pay, won't he Caligula?Yes...He f finally left me his name, name...our name...

    (… clothed in a gown that was dipped in blood...”)

    Twelve-o-clock, ticking....ticking...ticking away each minute as I write upon the walls again...Everything was a twisting Eulogy inside my head as visages, and memories made themselves into a nightmare that could only originate from hell. Thoughts began brewing, contemplating my methods of destruction. An acceptance that one soul does not linger here by itself and in my head dwells inside of consciousness...whispering...reminding...whispering; I can hear the soft whispers of shades and shapes as they form into memories. Morphing into madness and shadows that I was hoping would dissipate from the perpetuity of irony. Alas, as a new dawn slowly fades into the retribution, I paint myself up for the funeral I plan on participating in. Tonight I plan to end this nightmare. For good.

    (“Tell him that I'm coming God...Tell him that the devil is coming for him...Tonight an angel comes in serendipitous retribution.”)