Shattered windows cried like Sunday peacocks warning of the impending doom of glass falling like rain on the slaves of the night. The weary soldiers are trudging through a thick fog of poorly scented gloom, thick like bruised syrup, thick like hot metal mud clogging the valves of another heart gasping for love.

The wind blew through the lonely arcade and dead leaves danced against the dirty brick of store fronts. The faded head of a plastic clown, the old paint of his face peeling away, wobbled without notice. His wide eyes stared off into nothingness and I could hear him laugh at me from the inside as I walked on by. It wasn’t a charming or entertaining laugh,
but a hollow, haunting one and it perpetuated the chill in the air, the loneliness, the frozen desolation.

All the shops were closed for the season, all the game rooms shuttered up tight and a couple ratty kids raced through on their bikes, their shouts and hate-filled laughter echoed through the walkways, bounced off the big panes of fragile glass and pounded against my head.

I listened as the sound of their whirling wheels faded away as if they had suddenly taken flight then crashed into a cloud.

And I stuck my cold hands in my pockets and looked down at the gurgling stream from atop a small, stone bridge. I was searching for a glimpse of reality in the icy water below as it flowed like thick sex and lava. It tumbled over the smooth stones and the sound of silent cold beat against my head and I drew my sword and ran it through my imagination causing me to fall over the edge and to vanish, to drown in the void of an angel’s troubled and guilty soul.

Text © Aaron Echoes August