BY GELAB PIAK
IT WAS A FRIDAY NIGHT, a dark and silent Friday night. The air outside the house was cold, and the cold, as I felt, was reaching down into my bones. A shower had proven its existence before it peacefully left, leaving the night to an eerie silence.
A slow breeze began to creep in, cheering the three coconut palms at the back of the house to do a late night dance to farewell the shower that had just left. The branches of the guava tree swayed as if they were bound to worship the wind instead, giving no reverence to the shower.
But yet, there was also a telling presence of the shower itself; as that was evident by the coldness in the air, the reflective wetness and the dark, black clouds. The clouds covered the sky and hung like giant predators stalking their prey, waiting for the right moment to strike in an intercepting manner.
At the same time the dark and black clouds promised rain, as they faithfully hung. I, a lone figure in the dim candle light, sat on a stool, leaning over the table listening to the late night beat on the radio.
I felt calm and wanted to relax after writing what I thought was the perfect poem. I had written many beautiful poems before, but this one, however, was not a beautiful one, it was the perfect one. I knew I was sure about it; it had to be, because I did not only believe it was; I had a much stronger feeling about it. ‘Soon everyone would rush my way, begging me to write a portrait about them’, I thought, as I joked as if I was an evil villain. I had written a poem about the one who wins over people’s hearts with lies and deceits. The man is known as an old serpent; a man most certainly hated by all. An old man called the devil.
I sat there thinking in the dark. The candle provided me with all the light it could but still that wasn’t enough, for I couldn’t see my hand thirty centimetres away from my face. Then suddenly I heard a whisper, a loud whisper that came drifting in through the window facing the back of the house. But more strangely, it wasn’t just a whisper. It was my name being whispered. ‘Was there someone, or something, calling me?’ the thought poisoned me with fear and I became afraid. I stood up slowly, walked to the window and peered through the louver window.
I saw nothing except the dancing coconut trees and their whispering leaves, whispering to each other as if they were gossiping. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘it’s just the coconut leaves whispering. For a moment I thought someone had really called my name.’ I looked down and saw the wet blades of grass shining. They were like razor blades, waiting, praying that someone would fall on them and they’d cut him up into slices. Do razor blades really think like that? I thought.
I stood and stared into the darkness till what seemed like a minute had passed. Just as I was about to ignore the scene and turn away, the breeze stopped abruptly in its path. It was like it just disappeared, as if it had suddenly vanished or it didn’t even blow at all. The whispering leaves were silent too, they did not even move an inch. And everything was silent- dead silent. The sudden death or disappearance of the wind didn’t scare me at all. It was the dead silence that scared me. I was so scared; I could hear my bones shaking inside.
It was so silent I felt as if something dead, something lifeless was going to come out of the darkness. But why is it so silent? So silent like this, I thought. And that question, for a moment, rang like an alarm in my mind. I stood there staring out into the darkness, and then I suddenly realized - the radio. The radio was also silent.
The hairs on my back sprang to an erected stiffness and a shiver rolled down my neck. I turned, and as I did, I froze into a mute and deaf statue, whose eyes were wide open and filled with terror. Its mouth half open; trying to speak but the words couldn’t come out because its heart was trapped in its neck.
There was a handsome young man sitting on my stool. He was warming his fingers over the candle’s flame. No, not warming them, he was burning them! He was burning them but his fingers couldn’t burn. I saw a smile tear on his face when he realized he had caught my attention.
I stood there, still frozen, but not sure now weather I should be frightened or not, because I felt not one pinch of fear in me, and for a girl, I must have been very brave. Then I thought, ‘How did he get in here?’ He slowly raised his head as the tune of an AC/DC rock song came up in the background. The radio had mysteriously come alive.
“Hi Emily”, he said in such a calm voice, you could feel the tranquillity of the ocean’s calmness. ‘Such faith of yours isn’t worth testing,’ he continued, “You have such little faith”. “W-ho a-re you?” I managed, my voice now trembling, ‘How could he know my name?’ “Well,” he said, “I am the person you’ve written about, Emily.” He said in a kind manner, a manner not likened to his kind, “Your portrait about me is wrong.” He added and smiled, revealing two rows of shining silver teeth. They even reflected the light from the candle.
“First of all, I’m not just known as ‘the devil’. I have a name and it’s Lucifer,” he said whilst still smiling. My heart rang out with fear when I heard that forbidden name, the name of the devil, and yet I couldn’t believe it. It was more real to be believed.
He was so beautiful; his hair was jet black and his face was that of an angel. He had no horns, and his eyes were incredibly white. They seem to be shining, a whitish dim light, it was not bright, but it was sharp. He had a face like the moon and it even reflected the candle’s light. I almost fell in love with him, but I kept reminding myself that he was the devil. He wore a shiny black suit and long black trousers, matching the suit.
He was a very slim and tall figure. In his right hand was a key with a very funny looking key tag; one that looked like a walking stick and had four letters inscribed on it; a H, E, and two L’s. We talked and talked and as we did, I realized I was coming to know him better, and not as a devil. He put his head down after a long pause. His hand dived into his pocket and he looked at me thoroughly, before taking it out and handing me a small red booklet. There was no title given to it.
“Here, my friend, in it you will find everything true about me,” he said, as he handed me the book, “and I trust you will write a better poem about me.” He sat speechless as he stared deep into the candle’s flames, as it danced before him.
While he was doing so, another figure appeared. This time it surely wasn’t even a man. He had huge horns; two of them that towered above him. His tongue was a mixture of blood and saliva infested strap hanging from his mouth and dragged on the floor. His teeth were barred, as if a gate, keeping his own tongue prisoner.
“Come with us, come with us,” he was begging, as he came closer to me, his arms stretched out to me. Just then his eyes popped out of their sockets, and challenged the veins to hold them back. “No, No, I don’t want to. No I don’t want to” I kept screaming, and I screamed and screamed until I woke up.
The guy in the black suit was gone. The demon too was gone. Everything seemed normal and back to where they all belonged. The light was on so I could see everything clearly. ‘No. Is it supposed to be like this?’ I thought. Then suddenly my bed seemed to be moving, slowly but surely, to the wall.
And the wall began opening its mouth, but it had no jaws and no teeth. No, it was not a mouth. The wall was opening into an endless darkness, an impenetrable darkness. I shut my eyes, but couldn’t shut it out. “It isn’t real. It isn’t real”, I kept saying until I woke up with the little red booklet tightly gripped in my hand, only it was my diary. When I woke, my head ached a little, my cheeks were squashed red and my legs were numb, and my body; ... - my body! Where was my body?
It was gone. I looked up and saw there was no sky above me. I looked down and saw also, no earth below me, or upon which I stood, and then I knew at once, that even though I could maybe just try to deny it, I couldn’t deny the little truth, that my body and soul were gone; gone like the wind, taken by the ‘nightshift’.
And in my vain weak state, I heard my granny’s word coming back to haunt me, faint but clear; “Oh Milly. Don’t think the nightshift is a game, Milly. Don’t think it’s a game”. And I knew then, I shouldn’t have written that poem.
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