autumn twilight

He sat on the bench looking out over Lake Michigan. The humid air was no weight to him, clad in his pajamas (or what would have been pajamas if he didn’t sleep nude). Layers of clouds moved at various speeds across the sky above him, heading out over the lake. The water, indigo, shone with the streaks of light cast by planes moving towards O’Hare airport. It was an unlikely night to find him out of doors, when he’d normally prefer to be at home, reading, or working on the computer. But the moon was full, and for once, he found himself utterly unable to reject her call.

He clenches his black journal in his lap, holding it tight. The flexible cover was soft beneath his fingers, comforting. The moon peeks out from the clouds time and again, sending pale-white rays of light into his dark hair, piercing the veil of his eyes and pricking something within them.

There are shadows in those eyes, shadows that mirror the shapes of silence that skitter around his ankles, and in the trees behind him. Shadows that look out at him from the eyes of the late-night strolls, that stare at him from the eddies of the lake. Or maybe it is the shadows in his eyes that mirror the demons which lurk about him. He closes his eyes, as if that would seal away the demons, but they are waiting in his mind, their taunts filled with vicious glee.

He opens the journal, and uncaps the pen — a Pilot Varsity, his preferred pen when he can’t use a speedball. Pulling the black ribbon out of the way he lays the flanged tip of the pen to the paper in the upper right corner of a new page and dates it.

His script flows across the page. Not particularly pretty, nor even. There is nothing special about the writing, except perhaps that it is varied in style and weight. He draws his lower-case f’s with a flourish, a long curve and a tiny cross bar. It is one of the few letters he adores the shape of after he has written it. There is an elegance to the style of it. A part of him wishes his hand was fine enough to see that simple elegance in all of his characters, but there is no shame or regret. A steady and elegant hand is not his gift.

He strikes the naming of his demons upon the page, a driven mind using all it’s faculties and force to subdue the myraid beings which seek to conquer him, to return him to the chains of fear. It is a battle. Perhaps the people who walk by sense that something is going on, and they walk a larger arc around the strange man sitting on the bench, muttering to themselves in scorn or fear, but he knows only the battle. At length he recognizes that he is no longer afraid of the beings that circle him. They are no more then a distraction, an avoidance. And seeing their purpose he puts them aside, leaving his signature — a compressed scrawl of looping sigils — at the bottom of the page.

With a feeling of confidence he turns the ribbon down upon the page and closes the journal. He caps the pen, and places them on the bench next to him. He feels worn, drained. He is not certain that he has won anything in these past days, weeks, or years. The strength of him feels diminished, as though he has been lessened by battles that should have made his stride more sure. He lifts his eyes to the sky, and the full moon bursts through the cloud cover, her light pouring down upon the world as though it were meant only for him. He sits transfixed by the sight, and murmurs, not knowing what the words mean, only that they are true. “I am a servant of the moon.”

There is a resonance of sound around him, and the world stands still. The words hang, suspended in the air before him. They turn and circle him, growing in volume as they spin about, dancing in the moonlight and flooding him with their purity and truth. The stillness passes and he is left gasping for breath, and he feels a weight in the core of him, a dirty blackness, and for an instant he considers taking the Gerber pocket-knife out and cutting away the vile sensation.

He knows this feeling though, and he rebels against it. This is not the time, not the place! his mind cries out. He looks around, and there are plenty of people about who might interrupt him, who might disturb him as he tries to expel this horror within him. He stops the panic that rises within him. He can feel the gagging nausea in the back of his throat, trying to expel the darkness already. He takes a deep breath and lifts his eyes to the sky. “I am a servant of the moon.” He tries the words on, letting them slither around his body, raising hairs and shivers, raising a quiet peace about him.

Turning the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth he bends over towards the pavement before the bench, leaning his elbows upon his knees. He spits once, expelling the excess saliva that has built up. I can do this gently, he thinks. He breaths in through his nose, letting his tongue find the center of his soft palette. He instantly feels a surge of life, a silver current of vital energy that fills his lungs and body. He exhales through his mouth, slowly, and a dirty gray taints the air, pooling on the cement in front of him. Again, measuring his breath slowly, carefully, using all the skill which he possesses to squeeze the lesser bile out of himself.

Here again, the passers by may look upon him strangely. But they see only a man who appears nauseous. The air on the pavement appears normal to them, though to his eyes it grows darker and darker. His exhalations grow slowly more difficult, as though he were squeezing his esophagus with his diaphragm. The breath which leaves him grows more vile each time, although there is nothing of darkness in that silver light that fills his eyes, pouring now from his very pores. This too goes unseen by those around him, although how they could miss the glow of his already pale skin, he will wonder later.

Finally, he tries to exhale and there is no breath to pass. He inhales more deeply, and again he can not expunge his lungs. It comes, though he had worked to avoid the need, and he begins to choke on the dark matter that rises up his throat, pushed ever so slowly by the air that is trying to escape. He forces his body to calmness and lets the convulsion wrack his torso. He gags and chokes, and his body heaves as though his stomach were turning itself inside out, and finally a tarry mass of air flies from his mouth to puddle with the darkness at his feet. He spits into the morass. Again. His eyes are filled with tears. He inhales slowly, gently, deeply through his nostrils.

The convulsions take him again, worse this time, and still more of the dirty air pours from him, as though he were a fountain. Minutes pass, and still the violence of his exhalation worsens. Until finally he spits and his mouth is dry. He inhales cleanly, and the silver light that permeates him washes through his exhalation, clean moonlight that arcs from his eyes and lips to dispel the accumulated wreck of so many battles. His cheeks are moist with tears, and they wet his lips as he rubs his fingers through them. He breathes deeply and gazes up at the moon, which glows only for him at this moment, a mother, her belly full with a new child, gazing proudly as her son becomes a man.

He smiles and lets his tears trickle down his throat. He frees his hair from it’s band and it falls down around his face, absorbing the moisture there, and then lifting as a cooler gust of air comes out of the city. He places his hand on the journal and pen and picks them up rising. He salutes the moon with a single hand, and with the shimmer of his soul.

There are more battles to be fought, far more he must do in this world. There is more tar that lies hidden within him, and there are new demons which will come to haunt him. He knows that it may never end, but there is no sadness in it now, for he is a servant of the moon.