Venom
Time Wraith 1. Purgatory Pain
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Dark, violet clouds storm overhead. Rolling hills, dry and cracked land gulps down the mist. Silence is a prison. Lightning flickers. It might be night, or day, there is no way of knowing.
Violet twilight.
I hear my name, not in the silent world or within my head. I listen to a memory.
Kandy.
Out of the purple mist, an ethereal fog condenses into ghostly forms. Skyscrapers surround me. Gazing through the pale forms, I see the endless wasteland beyond. A phantom city, apparitions on the sidewalk stroll in slow motion. Colorless, silent cars move on the roadway. Familiar. I think I’ve been here outside a music store. A ghost walks through me—chilling, and she fades away along with the city.
Ice filling my veins, my head throbs.
Another cloud erupts coalescing into shape of a horse, and I remember my first ride outside my old farmhouse back before carriages left their steeds behind.
Pain beats into my head. Is that you calling me?
Kandy.
Other ethereal memories—my home in Roseland, my car, the dance club—come and go in no discernible order. All around, my past haunts me.
Touching my cool face, I find my nose, mouth, teeth. My icy fangs bite into my lip, and drip blood onto my chin. Hand grasping my neck, I recall another memory, a blade slicing my throat. Nearby, a shovel stands pierced into the ground beside a shallow hole, a former grave. No going home again.
I scream silence hearing the pounding in my head.
I will never die.
Ghosts from my past float by like the march of the fallen. Within the procession, a shadow rises from the mist, a wraith dripping a smoking trail of lost souls. From darkness, a skull rises revealing fierce teeth. Swiping long talons slice through ghosts, fading. The wraith breathes vapors into its jaws consuming memories.
The skull seems to smile as its nebulous eyes ooze a violet mist over jagged cheekbones.
Fleeing the wraith, I reach out grasping at a ghost-memory of my car parked outside my favorite nightclub, darkness cuts through turning my car into pale smoke. Running. Talons claw inside chilling me. Spotting another ghostly world forming in the mist, I scramble, and as I reach out to my ethereal home, the vampire-wraith bites into the ghost stealing the memory.
Whirling around, I charge another phantom, my car parked along a curb. I recall the smell of cut grass and deep-fried potatoes. The car, my good companion, fades away into the purple haze of this timeless world burning a hole inside me. Tears of pain boil my soul, and I search the endless wasteland for another shade of my lovely automobile.
Pain is venom in my veins. The vampire-wraith chases me in my purgatory riding the edge of Hell.
Turning, I charge at the vampire-wraith and bite into its shoulder drinking in chilling nectar of pain until the vampire-wraith dissolves into rising vapor. Spotting my ethereal car, I run into a ghostly world letting it spill inside me. Cool breeze pushes my hair back, and I breathe in cinnamon and lavender bliss inviting me home. I climb into my car, turn the ignition, and I feel the thundering pistons crawling up my body.
Driving away from my purgatory pain, I cry my vow to the night.