All Hallows' Eve

An early Hallowe'en post.

All Hallows’ Eve

The mosaic tide of rusty, golden, and burnt leaves gently coasts across cold stone and hardening earth, collecting like lost trinkets in pockets beneath trunks and posts.  Once waxy and green, the vibrant decaying flesh finds magnificent splendor in its final hours, it’s the smell of nature’s peace with the closing of another season that elicits a calendar of memories; hot apple cider simmering on the stove, warm spices for baking, hills of orange pumpkins nestled in their yellowing green vines, ripe for the picking.  The final October sun sets on the witchy eve, as clocks tick and tock and chime the All Hallows’ call, summoning angels, thieves, fairies, ghouls and goblins to undertake their wicked crawl.  Porches house and windows frame the burning Cheshire cat grins and sinister horseman brows, carved on the plump faces of Jacks, as haunting green scepters trail an alien glow along dark pathways and within dimly lit portals.  Distant howling sets rounded ear on point, as an undistracted focus attempts to distinguish between a neighborhood dog’s desire to be stretched out before a warm hearth and the warning howl that bellows from Hell’s Hounds.  Muted feathery gargoyle guardians perched on high branches and within knotty trunks, cautiously watch with wide eyes as the Shadow People creep and skip, dancing a peculiar rhythm that keeps time with the willowy voices and child-like laughter that resonates under the vellum thin veil that for this one night is lifted, allowing the dead to walk amongst the living and the living to masquerade as the dead.

Soul Searcher

This is merely an unedited excerpt of something I've been writing...it delves into the idea that while we sleep our souls travel.  More work to be done in due time.


Soul Searcher

    

It began on a cool September night, around 1:30 in the morning when I was awoken with a startle from a rather odd dream my mind was concocting.  I was back at my childhood residence, a home where my heart certainly still was, and I was horrified that the once cozy quarters had taken on the look of a fun house.  The foyer’s warm brown sugar carpeting was stripped away, replaced by a cold black and white diamond patterned marble floor.  The walls were papered with a stark white that took on a nearly blue hue and was designed with methodically placed black Rorschachesque blemishes.  A crystal chandelier hung from the upstairs hall ceiling on a long clear chain and hovered only six, maybe seven, feet above the marble floor.  The original front door that once offered a welcoming character to the home’s façade was replaced by a thick black door with three slim, rectangular windows running down the center.  All decor on the first floor of the home was black, white, or transparent. 

I stood on the stairs infuriated by the unwelcome makeover to my childhood home, and started to scream a blood curdling wail that caused my body to bend and contort, my fists to clench and my eyes to shut tight, but not a sound echoed from my lungs.  A young blonde girl with her hair in a prim ponytail and her not much older, much blonder brother with coarsely chopped mane appeared from the breakfast room, and were shortly joined by their agitated mother who couldn’t hide the uninvited fear that had settled so unevenly on her face, in that delicate space between flesh and bone.  She pulled her children to her body in a protective embrace; her left hand clasping her daughter’s left shoulder, her right hand digging in the same manner into her son’s right arm.  Summoning anger to project through her insecurity, she yelled, “You don’t live here anymore!  This is our house!  You must leave now!” 

I looked towards the two substantial windows that lined the upstairs landing and there were no panes within them, just empty space that from my angle looked out on the tall trees that towered over two blocks of homes.  A soothing warm, spring-like breeze swirled around me, luring me up the stairs to the windowless wall.  I could still hear the mother demanding my departure, but her voice grew distant as everything outside the window began to drain of color and lose defining lines.  The entire world had gone white, blinding white, like sunlight that kept intensifying until it radiated through my flesh, making my eyes squint and then forcing them shut, but even under the safe cover of my eyelids the light still penetrated my eyes.  I heard the drone of white noise and just as I felt I might succumb to the hypnotic hum, I felt the floor beneath my feet disintegrate, and I dropped, falling at such an alarming rate it no longer felt like I was plummeting, I felt static.  And as I began to feel the rush of familiar songs, voices, scents, and touches coming over me, and I, just a hairsbreadth from placing my finger on the familiar, awoke with the whip of my neck, now facing the terrace off my bedroom, eyes locked on the tall, dense shadow, darkening the balcony.   

      

I felt no alarm bells going off in my woman’s intuition, no fear.  I just kept my eyes on the shadow, trying to let them adjust and focus in the harsh shades of night that seemed too bright compared to the womb-like protection and shade my eyelids provided mere seconds ago.  I finally broke my gaze and rolled my eyes to the ceiling.  I snuck a quick peek and still the shadow was there, angled into the concrete railing and the column that bore a gaping mouthed gargoyle, who’s accusatory eyes questioned every person, dog, and specter that passed below my twenty-three story penthouse.  Eyes to the ceiling, I exhaled a soothing breath and felt goose bumps alight over my flesh as the cool evening breeze blew into my bedroom from the open French doors, billowing the gauzy curtains that framed the threshold.  I pulled my downy, white comforter over my shoulder as I rolled in the opposite direction, away from the senseless distraction that kept me from sleep.  In my head was a running one person conversation about the ludicrous thought that it could be anything more than a play of the moonlight and the dark corners, embellished columns, and ornamental potted plants that adorned my balcony.  Nobody, nothing, could gain access to my apartment without authorization from more than one source.  Without sneaking another peek, I fell into a welcome sleep.

I could feel myself boiling with rage, trying to express myself through a rabid snarl, that it was mine, it was my home.  I was clinging to the ebony railing, my fingernails embedding into the wood, through layers of stain and varnish.  Her words rushed me with a smug certainty that she could banish my fury.  “You don’t live here anymore!  This is our house!  You must leave now!”  I released the banister and as I turned to curse her, I felt a pull that reached into my body and grasped my lungs, dragging me towards the Rorschach blotch that had deceptively looked harmless, but was morphing in a flipbook fashion; bat, butterfly, pelvis, shark jaws, face mask, skull.  The vacant white sockets took on a sinister, angular shape, staring at me as it bowed forward, its mouth gaping wider, wider, wider, until it was inhaling me with a ferocity that sucked me in with the power of a natural disaster, and as I felt myself being decimated into tiny particles, I could here her repeatedly banishing me from her home.

With a dramatic gasp of breath, I sat up and threw the covers off my body, stepping onto the cold bamboo floor.  I walked into my dark bathroom; filling the glass I kept by the sink with water and swishing it around in my mouth, spitting it down the drain.  I took a sip and felt it bring back to life my arid throat.  Taking another sip, I emptied the remaining water into the sink, placed the glass on the blush marble counter with an echoing clink, and walked towards the French doors that encompassed a majority of the far wall in my bathroom.  I looked up at the night sky, catching sight of Orion’s belt, and as my eyes set out on a quest to map other constellations, I saw the dark mass in the same spot it was however long ago.  I tried to determine if there was anything more to the mass than shadow, but I couldn’t really make out any defining lines or sinews that would betray a well designed veil of deceit.  I shook my head at how ridiculous an idea it would be for a person, a man, to make his way onto my terrace undetected and at such a height. 

I returned to my room and sat on the edge of my bed, taking note that the shadow was still there.  As I climbed into bed I glanced at the lilac Moonbeam clock on my bedside table, the long and short arms marking the time as 2:59am.  I lay back on my pillows and turned one last time to glimpse the shadow before surrendering to a vulnerable suspension of consciousness, when I noticed the shadow had taken leave of my balcony.  I looked to the clock and saw that it was 3:00am.  Only a minute, perhaps even less, had passed since I verified its presence, but by some strange circumstance with either city lighting at this height or lunar glow at that angle, it had vanished.  I went right to the doors, stepping out on the terrace, but there wasn’t a shadow, corner, column, or potted plant that compared to or could mimic the mass that stood here no more than two minutes ago.  I scanned both wings of the terrace before returning to my bed, succumbing to a sleep that came too easily after such an unforeseen manifestation and even more abrupt departure.        

E.A. O'Connell

Nature's Seamstress

Passion Flower.  Lizzie O.  August 2008

Nature's Seamstress

Under Luna's soft glow as the gardener slept

The screech owl’s alarm roused Nature’s seamstress

From the shadow of eaves she silently crept

A most beguiling sight in her white and black dress

She caught a light breeze and with a purpose directed

To the fringy bed of moss that from beneath protected

The summer green vines, the coiled copper tendrils

An occasional bowed head, pollen gilded stamen and pistils

With needle fine legs she spun a gossamer veil

That shone with the light of a shooting star’s trail

She delicately pinned it to silken lilac petals

Where eager Jack Frost fastened radiant dew crystals

A ribbon of first light cast a subtle pink glow

Illuminating a path the eight legged maiden took home

From magnificent heights she spied the lush garden below

Witnessing marriage of Passion flower to harsh wall of stone

E.A. O'Connell

Dark Hope

When I was thirteen I took a gamble and read Bram Stoker's Dracula.  What came from that chance encounter with my first gothic work, was unexpected and mesmerizing.  The spine that seemed to innocently stare back at me from the shelf at the bookstore, would wear down, wrinkled and creased as I read and reread the hypnotizing pages, which awoke an excitement in me that only literature could.  It was the gateway novel, a gateway that I willingly passed through, that led me to Anne Rice's vampire tales.  From there, my mind was constantly searching for gothic works that took childhood fairy tales to a whole new level.  I am so grateful that the British Literature course I took junior year of high school enlightened me further.  My literary soul had found its true loves; British & Gothic Literature, and how fitting that the two romance each other so exquisitely throughout numerous ages.  Long before the 21st century boom of vampire lust, I took my first foray into writing a very short excerpt (if you will) into the genre I am so fond of.  It is a paranormal tale written by a young teenage me, so there is a subtlety to the piece and I opted not to alter it, as I rather like revisiting my younger mind.

Dark Hope

She’s tired of lingering, of the incessant afterlife that stretches days and years into one long hour, one continuous looping moment.  Bored by an existence that thrusts her into the invisible realm, where she must make nice with trespassers and squatters who play house in her home, she finds it hard to remain comfortable with each new guest.

She’s grown frustrated by the distant memory of the mortal touch; her mother’s gentle stroking of her thick amber hair, her father’s lengthy stretch that would sweep her into a caring embrace, the simple stroke from the back of her husband’s finger as it would run down her cheek, hesitating below her chin, lightly imprinting a promise onto her lips.

She is bound by a dark hope, so her sentence must progress.

She now lives in fear that her newest fleshy companion will rear his head in a double-take, his steel gray eyes suspicious, as she navigates new designs, unexpectedly rustling the curtains, absentmindedly knocking over magazines.  He has yet to wake in time to see the impression she leaves on the mattress he unknowingly shares, she laying beside him, casting a chilly spell that spurs his need to draw the sheets up closer, tighter.

He hasn’t yet voiced his acknowledgement that something’s amiss when the sweet, subtle perfume of lilacs in June, delicately laces deep winter hours.  Nor does he frown at the goose bumps that trail from his neck to his stomach with the countless words whispered in his ears, relaying tales of gothic love and excruciating loss, worthy of being bound and catalogued.  She still worries though, that he’ll figure her out and demand she face the light that halo’s the path from which she must take her departure.  

In the solitary, blue hours of night her lament hums above the refrigerator and radiators as they kick on and off, her weeping echoes in the rattle and whine of the aging plumbing pipes that rush fluids to an unseen wasteland, and her relentless trails of prayers on bended knee that knock and rock on the floors as she pleads for time, more time, sacrificing numerous chances for eternal enlightenment and peace in the hopes of laying eyes on her ill-fated companion soul.  All the time spent waiting, watching, longing, is collected chaos that wells up in her eyes and bursts forth as ridiculous laughter that rings, like a moist finger rounding the circular lips of a crystal goblet. 

She will wait, and wait, and wait, never knowing the exact length of her sentence, nor if it truly has an end, putting her needs out of mind, forgoing safe passage to the Holy Father, all for one final taste of the finest sin she ever faced, in the commanding words that her lover issued forth on that last night, their final encounter,

“Our ill timed love has found a nemesis, he who will be your husband in mere hours.  The sun will awaken, summoning my exit, whilst simultaneously bidding the crow from the rooster sealing our fate, as your mortal body will be sealed to his.  Keep my invitation open, just as you will your heart, and my shadow will darken your door once more.”

“Find me a place beside you” she begged.  “Make room for me in your mysterious world, in your life.”

“There is no life for you to breathe in, merely a death you must sacrifice all warm beauty to.”

“Then sacrifice I will.”

Caressing her throat with his long, strong hand he firmly gripped her in his clasp and whispered to her neck that was so elegantly mapped by routes of veins he could easily navigate, “Your eagerness is your undoing, as is your inexperience.  For some reason unbeknownst to me, I am compelled to let you flourish and ripen in the sun’s rays, even if it must be done beside another.”

She fell silent and let herself be lost in his touch, in those fleeting moonlit hours, uncertain.

When all she has is time on her hands, she finds it hard not to think back on how foolish she was to allow him to lull her into submission.  How foolish they both were, for had he claimed her that night she would have fallen from Earth’s pedestal into the arms of one whom she loved and who loved her back, carrying on their love affair for as long as is inhumanly possible, rather than succumbing to a hideous, sickly death that struck her with a forceful blow to the cold, lonely, unforgiving ground no more than two years from their last encounter.  But time also feeds her ghostly mind with the dreadful thought that her undead beloved, who lacks the compass of his mortal soul, will be incapable of seeking out and finding hers; her restless, abandoned soul that knows too well the pain and punishment of holding onto a dark hope.   

E.A. O’Connell

 

The Witches Pyre

The Witches Pyre

The baseless sentencing

Lit her from beneath

She felt it rise up

Singeing through the scales and scars

Every extremity numb

All the words

The violence they throw

Bitter speak from the mere tip of their tongues

Is the toxic brew she swallows

And the combustible cocktail that ignites

Any remnant not alight with fire    

Vile fiend with a lost conscious

And a determined spark

Why utter that one word?

That dangerous indefinable concept

Results of too many complicated fears

He’s the bastard son

The unnamed, bodiless, homeless shadow

Who makes his rounds in twenty-four hours

He’s no stranger to her corners

Forget her name

Cease tracing her shape

That paints the world in long, dark silhouettes

Torture, no more that child of May

The singular hellcat spawned from spontaneous passion

Flames rise and fall

Burning new wrinkles

Strange hues in her flesh

Scarring her bruised insides

Beautifully illustrating her anemic outside

Magnificently damaged

She reduces her boil to a simmer

As the chilly breeze off her heart

Cools her to the core

But their haunting words

And that foolish concept creeps

Rearing its ugly face once again

Chanting to the wind

Witch

A cyclic ignorance that blinds all reason

Succumbing to the fiery pit

She conjures new life

Amongst shards and embers of past flare ups

Casting her spell

Under the owl’s watchful eye

E.A. O’Connell

Blue Moon

Blue Moon

Eerie

misty morning blue

warped pane divides the moon

stolen in the night by the Sandman’s greed

halfway to Heaven

riding rays of pink and amber suede

burned out stars leave black holes in the sky

dew drops fall

crystallizing the cold countryside

cracked pane multiplies the shattered moon

velvet, midnight eyes

watch for the Wandering Jew

lifeless silhouettes frozen in time

daydreams and nightscapes

absent from the mind

infinite footprints stain the house, the earth

eternal soulprints illuminate the heart, the hearth

curious November chill grows loud, grows selfish

dying orange embers pop, crackle, hiss

missing pane, splintered glass

tear stained, punctured flesh

nightingale sings a solemn tune

warped pane, broken moon

E.A. O’Connell

Simple Seed

Simple Seed

Simple seed bears a purposeful life

Complex root systems

Delicate in size and matter

Know the will of His hands

Willing growth, willing life

The fruits of many labors

Shine glorious and sticky sweet

Green warms to pink burns to red

And the temptation that looms

For every man, woman, beast

For a bite of the flesh and suckle of the pulp

Known most intimate by the bee

Dusted with pollen from the blossoms in her hair

A regenerating, germinating season

Comes to a halt in the stealing of flesh from the splintered bone

And the plummet to earth that bruises the divine

Becoming cold gray matter for worms

Burrowing holes of thought and tunnels of trespass

As the Blood and the Harvest Moons glow cider rich

And silver frosted, early snow blankets the ruins

From which procreating heat never halts its crackle

And flames with each freeze, thrash, and melt

In an ageless season’s turn

E.A. O’Connell