I am Legend by tmvg He slid the gun back into the holster strapped beneath his long, black trench. The body twitched slightly as the blood streamed from the bullet wound forming a tributary that coursed its way across the spit-stained sidewalk, down the curb, and into the dirty gutter, finally joining with the oily river flowing down into the nether realms of the city's sewer system... In his ears, the echo from the gun shot still rang, as it had reverbed like thunder rolling off the alley-walls of the buildings... He looked about him to be sure no one had seen, he lit a cigarette, the blood stains painted random vein-like streaks across his hands, made visible by the glow of the lighter flame... In the heart of the city, the shot rang out un-noticed... Or at least ignored... By morning, when the sun's rays would once again shed light on the world, the incidences of this previous night, a reality altogether different and more frightening, will vanish like the darkness... He thought to himself how the light of day doesn't chase away the terrors of night, but only obscures them temporarily from view... The terrors always resurface like the creeping shadows of night coming... The body had already begun to dissolve. The stench tweaked his nose and left a sour taste in the back of his throat.You would think after all these years he could stomach it... The flesh decomposed to an oozing paste, then a sebacious liquid that joined seepingly the blood stream as it disappeared down to the sewer... It is curious he thought further, how these events could go on, even in a place as densely populated as a city, for as many centuries as it has, and yet no one knows of it... How the hell does someone get picked for such a shitty job as this anyway... He flicked the butt of the cigarette into the gutter. It made an abrupt 'phht' sound as the liquid extinguished its burning... His shoes squashed through the slime as he stepped over what was left of the deteriorating form now unidentifiable. By day, all that would remain under the gaze of the morning would be a lump of rotted organic matter and a black trail of footprints leading away... Elements that are appropriate to the grit of any alley-way environment... He walked down the deserted street, in the distance, sirens wailed responding to real emergencies; his dark shape vanished in the midnight shadows where the street-lights have long since burned out, burned out and left unrepaired in this purposely forgotten section of the city. Success in this buisness is an impossibility he pondered. At least success in the classic sense. You earn no benefits, no pats on the back; there are no: "way to go boy"'s... There are no promotions, no raises... No corporate ladder to climb... Only saving your ass long enough to put it back out on the line later... Every task accomplished only means that another one will be certainly waiting soon. You are never finished, and the danger multiplies, because when you find out who they are, they have already found out about you. The soul of a dead man From across the street, the boy watched as the old man flew through the air after the impact from the car... The old man then slid across the rain-slicked pavement and tumbled to a mangled stop... The boy ran towards the twisted, unmoving mass. "Holy shit! Mister just hold tight... Help is on the way!..." The old man laid there in the pool of his blood that had already made a large circumference around him... The moon shone its ivory reflection in the black-blood mirror... The old man's eyes stared upwards blankly, his breath a struggling gurgle as mucus-mixed blood bubbled from his turning-blue lips... He coughed and choked... The old man attempted to speak between gasps of air and fluid expulsions... "I slipped..." he said hoarsely... "I let it get too close..." Sirens could be heard above the din of the city. "Listen man, don't try to speak... The paramedics are almost here..." The old man grabbed the boy's shirt, a dying hand clutching with its last bit of life. "No kid, you don't understand... For me its too late... I'm as good as dead no matter what... And you made the mistake of stopping to help me... They saw you... And now it will be you they look for..." "What are you saying?" The boy's blood began to chill "Look, you've lost a lot of blood... You're going into shock..." "Listen to me!" The dying hand clenched tighter... The boy saw the last bit of flame in the old man's eyes, he raised his head up "You must listen! Now it is all on you!..." The old man's head fell back hard onto the pavement... The ambulance screeched to a stop beside the curb... The old man's hand fell from the boy's shirt leaving a bloody wrinkle... The paramedics rushed to the body of the man who just died, the boy was squeezed back from the commotion of assisting medics and responding police... The boy realized then what the old man had said- it was indeed too late... The boy looked about his shoulder uneasily, an unsettling feeling crept over him, a feeling of being watched... The familiarity of the city suddenly escaped him, it was as if he were submerged within an alien land, trapped within an existence that was unknown and foreboding; as he looked about frantically, he felt himself confused, yet instinctively in the gravest of danger... 'How many of me are there?' He wondered as he watched the blades of the ceiling fan making their slow redundant rotation in the desolate shade of his room in the early morning light... 'How many are there of them?' Sleep was not a thing that came easy anymore... Often, like today, he just laid there in bed, his heart slamming in his chest, his temples throbbing, his head feeling like it would split open at any moment... This was his night, what others call day, but his nights like his days were spent very much awake and very much sleeplessly awaiting the sinking of the sun... No matter where you are, they sense you... It is as if they smell you out... They distinguish you from all the other smells this world creates... All the other people that populate... You are marked, and they've got your number... It is you that they hunger for... There is no locked door to keep them out... No law of man by which they abide... Where you go, they are sure to follow... They are hunters and when the night comes down, you are then hunted... He looked into the mirror at his unshaven face, his unkept hair...The black bags under his eyes... Nerves made him feel twenty years older. His cheeks drew into undernourished caves, giving him the appearence of a human apparition... He thought as he splashed cold water on his face: 'All people struggle to find a purpose... A reason for existing that gives them a meaning to remain living...' -the stimulus of the frigid water was about as much as he could feel for the world- 'Some search their whole lives and even then what they find fails to satisfy... Most attribute this purpose to supernatural forces or divine powers...They call it: Destiny. But even still, much of what they feel is doubt even though they say that they know what it is about... It is as if that doubt creates a space, a space large enough for them to find a joy in life and all the uncertainties that it passes their way, even if that uncertainty is painful... But how terrible would they find life to be if all the doubt were taken away, and they really did know what their purpose was? What if that space of uncertainty were filled with absolutivity... What if they knew as he did just how dangerous the truth really was. What if the majority of people saw the chances they took rather than stumbling blindly from one day to the next... What if people realized just how close they were to death at any moment...' If you define 'death' as no longer living, then by all means, he is already a dead man... He is perennially on the outside of reality... Nothing of the world can be a pleasure for him... It's all so temporary... So superficial. So fleeting when compared to the grand scheme of things... Part of his survival requires him to keep moving... Too many incidences that cannot be explained can be associated with him... If they ever put all the loose pieces together, they would put him away for the hell of it... At times, he walked during the day as a way to merely pass the time... Laying in bed thinking of the coming night seemed to cause the inevitable to creep even slower... It was maddening... He stopped outside of a street church to hear a preacher preach to the enthralled crowd that had gathered. The words fell deafly on his ears, though he watched how drawn were the people to the preachers words of hope and salvation... He mused slightly to himself and with bated sarcasm at how if these people were ever to find the truth they believe they follow, they would find that it is not what they are walking towards, but what they are running from...It is not what leads them, but what they are being chased by... Every day would be seen as it truely is, an all-out dash to simply get from one side of the day to the other... As he walked on, the preacher's words floated over the sounds of the city, fading beneath the chaotic rhythms of emergency sirens and automobile horns ... In every respect, both to those blinded by the truth and any as unfortunate as he to see it, this was just an average day... He considered how those blind, those that live perpetually in darkness, those blissfully ignorant, are so much better off not knowing the truth, for once you know the truth, it also knows you... And then it is not you who seeks it, but it who seeks you... And worse yet, it is only a matter of time before it finds you... Once again in his room... Just a few hours till sundown... He recalls the first night after helping the dying man in the street... The screams and commotion began down the hall... It sounded like the building was on the verge of collapse... Like an earthquake. Doors were smashed in, dense slapping thuds against the walls, and the inhuman sounds of screeching terror, and something else... The sounds moved from apartment to apartment, progressing closer to his door... In panic he froze... What was going on!? He dared not open his door. Whatever it was could be right outside... -SLAM- Still the fan on the ceiling turned, slightly imbalanced... Humans have such a silly notion of good and evil... If they can control it, then they consider it good, if they can't, they call it evil... And if they cannot comprehend it at all, they consider it phenomenon unexplained... He never dared to come forward with the things he had seen, because he knew they would call him crazy for pointing out that some things exist that humans will never learn to comprehend let alone control... They suffer from the romantic idea of an eternal struggle between the two... Good always overcomes evil and if it is on your side, no harm can come to you... He considered himself a good man, but he learned quickly enough after that first night that right does not make one impervious... In fact, it makes one more obvious... He pulled out the gun he had stashed between the mattresses of his dingy bed. Always one in the chamber just in case... Outside his window, down on the streets below, neighboehood kids played stickball, men drank their 40's of beer... Wives hollered nagging insults down from the windows above... People lived their lives as usual, and yet had no idea of the movements of things churnning beneath their feet, and to every side... He put the barrel to his head and cocked the trigger- 'What I struggle with most now is not even the nightly flight of evading those that prey on me, by now I have learned that much of the game... What troubles me most is the comprehension of why I allow this macabre dance to continue... If it is only just a matter of time, then why prolong the agony? What have I to prove? What have I got to lose... I am just so tired...' He closed his eyes, drifted to sleep and then began to dream... He remembered the door bursting open in a shatter of splinters... He remembered the hulking outline of a human shape though titanically sized squeezing through the doorway... He remembered scurrying towards the window out of half reflex/half disorientation... The form, which seemed bathed in perpetual shadow, moved closer... Its face could not be seen, nor could he discerne any specific features... It was as if the form were a miasma of sight... A blackness that ingested the light... An illusion of optics where one knows one is seeing something, yet one cannot make it out clearly... Much like one sees faces in a dream, unclear and disrupted... Was this just a dream? One thing that was certain as the thing neared so close that the sulphurous stench of its breath nearly asphyxiated him... One thing unmistakable were its eyes, aglow like a crimson flame... Two burning rubies refracting their jeweled light out from within... He clamored out the window, his sudden movement must have caught the thing off guard... Down the fire escape, to the streets below. He looked back to see the thing trying to force its way through the window, growling agitatedly... He ran all night, the sound of its breathing echoing in his ears... The smell of its pungence still lingering in his nostrils... He saw the eyes burning from every shadow, or leering out from every dark corner... When he finally awoke, night had fallen... 'Oh my God!' he thought- 'How long did they let me sleep?' he wondered- 'Why have they not found me yet?' On the ceiling, he saw the blades of the fan pass through a sliver of light shining in from the window. But he heard no sound. Only an un-natural silence, a heaviness like something large and unseen inhibited the normal noise of the night from penetrating his blackened room... He feared moving, breathing, thinking... He dared not to even look... The time he sat there still in the dark seemed like ages... Then a sound at the foot of his bed brought reality snapping back in a sudden rush... It was a simple sound, innocuous enough, a sound not un-common in any normal circumstances... Yet, within the dead air of his hushed room, a creak from the wooden floor split the stillness like a bomb blast... He peered down slowly afraid of what he would see, in the murkyness beyond his feet, those embering eyes emerging towards him from the depths... Behind the eyes, a face surfaced... Fright gripped him tight as the surreal mask moved in closer... The mouth was stretched excruciatingly wide in a horrible grimace, pushing the cheeks up so high that the countenance was that of a painful grin; exposing gleaming teeth that had the appearence of slimey petrified rock; the skin like charred glossy black leather ... And those mad, burning eyes... As if it harbored within, a trapped soul that suffered an eternal torment for an erotically sadistic abuse of its body... "Look upon the face of fear..." it said with a straining whisper as if the words were razor blades forced up through its throat only to be chewed and spat out... He clenched his eyes shut and sobbed... He felt its presence tower over him as if it intended to devour him with one quick bite. "You are so ready to die..." it wheezed- "You pathetic vermin... You do not deserve a single breath of the life you waste... It is so easily thrown away by you in a single moment of terror... Try living a million..." He opened his eyes slightly to see the thing backing away into the shadow of the room... Its whereabouts always obvious by its glaring crimson eyes... "In your hand you believe you hold the key to your escape from this nightmare... Go ahead, pull that trigger... You have no idea what horrors await you behind that door; where you will be sent or what you will become when you get there..." The face of the thing shot forth suddenly stopping inches from his face and snarled: "Do you believe yourself prepared to face that?! The consequences are grave indeed..." As the face once again began to receed "It is your desire to be free that puts you in danger... And your will to induce your desires that imprisions you... You and your kind have been the creators of your own worst fears... The darkness, the unknown... You have made it possible for us to exist... It is you who have given us reason to live, to survive... To exist and to thrive..." The thing seemed to pace the floor as he followed the glow of the eyes back and forth in the dark... "You have made it too easy... Like you, we have grown tired... There is no sport in it as there once was... You creatures flee your own shadow, you never turn to face what scares you..." The thing moved close... "And so your fears eat you alive..." It lifted a black, boney finger, the nail shimmered in the rays of the moon... He sat as still as possible, fighting back the urge to shake from fright... Horror filled his eyes as he followed the finger close to his cheek "But you are measely portions for appetites such as ours..." The thing then ran the fingernail sharp as glass slowly across his cheek... He cringed; a stinging tinge followed the cut as a slight trickle of blood began to surface- "You never satisfy, and our hunger only intensifies..." The mocking grin emerged slightly from the shadow. In the light of the moon, for a moment it seemed, the burning of the eyes had dimmed, and the guise of the thing's face shown more of sorrow than apathy... And for a moment, as he looked at the thing, his fear was replaced by pity... "This has gone on since time began-" the thing continued... Now looking towards the moon... "Evil must feed... And it is upon the good that we must prey. There is an order to the system, a balance... A logic that must be maintained... Like you, we are prisoners... We seek our own escape... But in order to break free, there are rules that must be acknowledged... Unlike you, freedom for us is about breaking them... And even then, freedom is only a matter of time... "You have been dragged into a game of sorts... A war, that as long as you walk the earth in human flesh, you shall never quit fighting... For to do so, to give up means that you forfeit your chance to win... You come right back, but then you fight for the opposing side... "Let me describe what you are up against: We crave to devour you with a lust, a jealousy that is a hellish desire! You have something we can never have, yet we desire to have it still; we desire it with every fibre of our being... You possess a chance at true liberation, and we desire to take that away from you... For if we cannot have it, then no one can! "In this game, thus far, you have struggled to stay alive... All this time, you have run from that which is chasing you... But you have only been running from your self... The longer you survive, the longer your fear stays free... At this pace, you would tire quickly, as you have already begun to do... You would eventually find the competition meaningless, even self-defeating, and in typical human fashion, you would curl up into your fetal position and in one way or another, be wholly consumed... We would then win, but when we win, we really lose..." As the thing spoke, he readied the gun inconspicuously taking an estimate for aim... Then he asked as he began to slowly squeeze the trigger- "And just what happens to you when I win?" The eyes shot towards him, the thing responded viciously- No matter what, when the game is over, we catch hell!..." The hammer fell with a bang... For a flash of a moment, the entire room was made visible and he saw a pitiful little creature wearing the mask of misery, he watched that misery slump to the floor... "No sense in prolonging the agony..." he said aloud as he lit a cigarette, wiping the blood from his cheek- "when you've got a date with destiny, you should never keep her waiting..." He exhaled the smoke as he stood on the pier watching the sunrise over the ocean... 'Years ago, this moment would have been a matter of circumstance rather than leisure...' Birds flew by the horizon in their v-formation... Seagulls were chased by the morning waves breaking on the shore... 'Years ago, this moment would have had no meaning whatsoever; yet today, this moment is what all meaning is about...' The first hint of the solar disk peered over the edge of the world. 'We all must struggle to survive, and more often than not, our struggles bring us no rewards, at least none that we can hold forever... We strive to do what we feel is right and what we feel we are appointed to do... If there is a heaven, I will be just one of a multitude, a faithful throng who served our purposes in life... Fuifilled our destinies... Therefore, when I die, I will be as a ray of light but a ray no different than any other... In heaven we will all be one, but in heaven, we will also all be forgotten, for in heaven we lose ourselves... None of this bothers me much though... ' As he watched the burning crucible of the sun bringing its light to the eastern seaboard he concluded: 'In heaven I may end up being a nobody, but in hell, I know I am already a legend!...' copyright © 1999 tmvg