The Dark Verse

Be released.

Excerpt:

On the dull road called Mayberry Lane, I stood at the turn of the evening. I had just flicked a cigarette at a passing vehicle, watching as its cinder flashed into the night. In front of me stood the Cursory—a name given to a house because no one ever gave the place a second glance. It was tucked a short ways off the road, but far enough away so that even the bluntest detail of its presence went unobserved; it was the home of my love.

As I began my walk to the house’s secluded porch, a succession of pricks began jabbing the back-ends of my eyes. In patterns of circles, the pricks drilled, pushing forth into my retinas. The burrowing continued once inside my eyes; when in the middle, the digging descended and came out through the bottom. There, the apparitions poured invisibly out into the open; it felt as if they were flowing forth like worms through a meat grinder, but there was nothing to see—no evidence of any such happening. The sensation then ceased.

I had just turned twenty years old.

 44: Names: Apherdane [19:50m]: Download

How it all begins.

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Excerpt:

An army of ghastly forms waited listlessly at the gates of life. Each entity was unrestrained and raw—knowledge had yet to enter, conform, and orchestrate a platform of thought and personality for its cloudy mind. Step by step, they were pushed forward towards the slim opening in the gates. One by one they popped through the cavity, falling into the oblivion of consciousness that awaited them.

My father told me I had to be exceptionally fast and focused to catch an Alpha Spirit.

“You only have one try,” he told me. “If you don’t make it, then to hell you go to stay forever.”

I was confident I would succeed.

Hiding under the debris of multi-spectral galaxies, I waited at the crossroads of the physical and spiritual domains. I looked on as the Alpha Spirits showered down upon the Earth to seed the bodies of the living. I was seeking the perfect host—a spirit of exceptional promise. Once I had it in my sights, I would look nowhere else—not until the spirit had embraced me as its master and dragged me with it into life.

Shortly enough later, I scouted it, careening differently towards the Earth than the others amongst it; it stood out. I liked that. Without hesitation, I propelled my writhing haze towards it.

 43: The Hunt [8:32m]: Download

Eenie, meenie…

Excerpt:

I was handed a small, round cage; I curled two of my fingers around the s-hook fastened to its apex. The cage had a minute door fixed with a comparably insignificant latch. It did not—by sound and feel—seem to have anything within its grasp, although nothing could be seen within the tightly placed metal panels that formed the entrapment. These surfaces caught and reflected the inconsistent light of the corridor I stood in—which consisted of flickering bulbs overhead, pleading idly for the repair of the troubled circuits supplying them. At the end of the corridor before me, a mirror stood as the wall, reflecting back the entirety of the scene.

A woman stood behind me. Her hair was auburn and her skin was upon an age of older days. A strong musk emanated from her presence, encapsulating all of my senses. Even my eyes teared as the scent entered my nostrils. A green shawl draped across her shoulders over a pale blue dress.

In front of me stood a middle-aged man in tight jeans and a leather jacket. His nerves had the better of him; he twitched his arms and legs in anticipatory dread while his head swung from left to right, the long black hair on his head following in delayed pursuit. Slight mumblings left his lips periodically; whether prayers or words brought about by an encroaching insanity, there was no distinguishing.

Both the woman, the Elder, and the man, the Manic, had also been given cages identical to my own. At our sides, the cages were motionless, but in our reflections, the cages jolted back and forth.

Along the sides of our triptych ensemble, ten doors pressed. Each door was labeled with a Roman numeral; the first was given an “I” and the last an “X.” These labels were coated in thick, greasy oil. Their slick surfaces were magnets for the light and so were illumined vividly for all to see.

 42: Thirteen Door Roulette [22:49m]: Download