It's dark in here. Not the heavy blackness of midnight, but the thick shadows of the predawn hour. The short sword across my bare knees doesn't glint, but to my eyes it gleams dully. My hands, gnarled and calloused, rub the scrap of battered cotton over the blade methodically, moving with unconcious patterns. The sword, veteran of a hundred skirmishes, battles and encounters, lies patiently across my knees like a faithful mastiff. The edge is razor sharp, I am always careful to keep it as such. These moments of silence in the predawn, where it is too cold for life to be stirring, are always the most haunting to my mind. The lack of birdsong or chirping insects gives my mind leave to bring up all the past images and sounds that the day's activity keeps buried. My hands grow agitated on the blade's shining surface, but I do not notice, tired eyes gazing dead ahead at the rough wooden wall before me. It is so familiar, gazed at in such similar moments for over twelve years, and yet it still draws my eyes when I sit here, like this with my blade on my knees.

For a moment, a fleeting moment in time, it is summer again, and I am young. The warm breeze blows in my face, and my hands hold the stems of hastily picked wildflowers, their juices sticky on my fingers. The sunlight is warm on my hair, and it shines like golden fire off of the blonde locks of my wife. She stands with her back to me, skirt waving gently in the breeze, her hair dancing about her body. She laughs, a sweet sound, when I put my arms around her and brush the flowers under her nose. Golden pollen on the tip of her nose, her dark brown eyes laughing as she turns to me, smiling in thanks for the flowers she now clutches. She is warm in my arms, sunlight embodied, and I can smell the sweet scent of the honeysuckle growing on our home's walls from here. I bend to kiss her and.....the blood....blood everywhere. Staining her dress red, matting her golden hair, sticky and warm on my hands....and in my mouth. The taste is coppery, metallic on my tongue, and warm. I swallow convulsively, and then howl in agony as I look at her, so limp now in my arms. Her blood covers my clothing, staining the grass beneath my feet a deep rust color. I can no longer stand, and I collapse, her body heavy in my arms, dragging me down. The wounds in her throat and chest accuse me, gaping like silent mouths.

As always, the memory spurs my blood, heating it in my veins. I snort, rising to my feet. I feel it then, the power flooding me as the remembered taste of blood haunts my tongue. My sword falls, unheeded, to the ground, and I pace in my rough cell, howling for the blood to fuel my passions. I hear the voices through a dim haze, as they scramble to pull the chains. The rough wooden and iron door is dragged aside, and I stumble out onto the hot sand of the arena. Cheers swell in the throats of hundreds, and I howl with them, calling for blood, for flesh and bone to rend and break beneath my hands. The clang of an opening door is music to my ears, and I turn, frothing in anticipation, knowing that the blood will come to me, willing or no.

-- Angel (keita@my.sanguinus.com), October 20, 2002