Life of the Melancholy Angel

The Wizard's Incantation

The baby screamed,

her tiny voice echoed through the hollows of the castle halls...

The old wizard held the newborn child over the burning marble alter,

the moonlight slanting in through the tiny slits hewn into the thick stone walls,

eerie shadows casting the dark event onto the uneven and cracked floor...

The wizard's aged face deepened further with every new crease,

his heavy heart burdened with shame and guilt over his unforeseen plight.

In the dim corridors and adjacent chambers, his wizened voice was carried aloft,

and then fell like a death knell on all who could hear...

"I here curse thee, my only child, with torn and shielded emotions;

I hereby shroud thy happiness with the darkened mask of the night;

and I destine thee to the darkest of romances..."

The wizard traced the mystical symbol upon the baby's shining forehead,

the warm, simmering potion spilling down her temples in diabolical streams.

The baby settled into a silent and uneasy wonderment

at the intruding sensations...

"You shall be an actress, my child,

beguiling to all suitors..."

and here the Wizard, under his breath, carefully added,

" save one..."

He then continued loudly again, his vibrant voice booming,

"I imbue you with a smile to conceal the great pains to come

even as you suffer from within...

 

"You shall not escape your agonies and sorrows,

and, as you lift pain and grief from others

you shall ultimately perish

from a cataclysmic emotional suicide..."

The wizard held a deep love for his child, no less than that of the child's mother-

his beautiful wife.

This dreadful deed that he was commanded to perform,

blackmailed by the Steward of the Land,

wore heavily upon his sad, exhausted countenance

and tore mercilessly at his aching heart...

The wizard could bear little more;

he had nearly completed this terrible curse--

the life of his beloved wife and child were the penalties he would pay

if he dared to defy or fail the Steward,

and his dreadful and manipulating first consul, the Viscount...

In the middle of reciting of one of many of the dreadful verses,

the wizard's eyes sparked and twinkled imperceptibly for a brief moment

with a creative thought-

he would lend a glimmer of hope to the life of his only child-

a means of respite from the impending unending agony awaiting her...

He proceeded in the quietest of tones,

so the distracted guards would not overhear him...

"From your torment and misery, my dear daughter,

 you shall have but one relief, and it will be this--

you must dip the quill of your miseries

into the great river of sorrowful words that will engulf you;

you must weave your morbid fairytales

and pen your melancholy lullabies

drawn from the stained parchment of your cursed soul...

 

Only during these moments will you find rest from your torments

and come to taste the hint of the peace and love that life can offer

that have been on this night cruely stolen away from you..."

 

"When you are not recording the stories of your dark soul, my child,

your brightness shall be cast back into the blackest void of shadows,

beyond the frozen gates of hell, and into the realm of deception

where you will know no truth and find no tranquility.

 

In the end, after your final demise, you shall rise as the next Melancholy Angel."

"Hark, there, Wizard! No mumbling, or we'll report you to the Viscount!"

The Viscount! the wizard thought, the true evil Overlord...

The graying wizard continued, the glimmer in his eyes once again gone.

With great effort he raised and steadied his voice, and he continued...

The Quill, the Pen, and the Parchment

A young wizardress sat alone in the corner, studying her books,

gazing out her dark casement from time to time to view the sunny kingdom below.

Her heart, ever endeavoring to break free and fly off into the light,

was bound ever in enshrouding darkness.

At her desk had been placed a pen and quill, together with an odd assortment of old parchments.

The were mysterious objects for years to the young wizardress,

but it was on this night, in the moonlit glow, that she first sensed a trace of hope in them;

her attention, and then her soft hands, were drawn there...

She holds the quill pen lightly, it's ebony luster dancing in the darkness.

Whispers from the scarlet inkwell pull her racing mind near.

A piece of black velvet parchment settles directly in front of her, 

her carved chair at the desk creaking in anticipation;

her hair and gown excitedly rustle in the invisible breeze...

She dips the pen into the inkwell, the strange thrill tingles through her every fiber

and she begins to write- almost subconsciously at first, page after page, each taking form,

in what is to become the first dark chapter of her long and fated life...

"Here I sit in the dark

where I stare out into the deep velvet sky.

I can hear the wolves in the distance

as they howl out my name into the shadows of the night.

 

I sway in the winds

to the macabre dances of death

and listen to the dark melody of the bells born of Hell...

I sing the haunted serenades

that will become my melancholy lullabies.

 

There are demons in my nightmares,

which are ever real,

and who will not leave me alone

until they see my grotesque corpse

carried away in a river of blood.

 

I shall sit in the courtyard of thorns

each night, after the stroke of midnight

where this quill shall bring to you the account of the tales of my twisted nightmares."

The Gothic Cathedral

Over the next several years, the girl grew into a creature of unimaginable beauty.

Upon the princes of the land she brings haunting aphrodisiac nightmares.

They see her crimson blood dripping,

staining the pages of their dreams, and they are helpless to give aid.

This fills them with an unrestrained madness, then a determination, then finally with a great desire...

She entered the gothic cathedral,

the hunched organist expertly playing the melodies of her melancholy lullabies.

Each tranquil note serenades the village,

bringing old women to tears,

tears that reflected back the light of their flickering lives

and settled upon the violet satin folds of the wizardress' winter robes.

Her emotions are masked in the depths of the darkness,

and, as usual, the organist does not sense her presence.

She draws her newest melodies from the ether of her soul

and fills the gilded chalices of the organist's genius and inspiration;

he will then painstakingly transcribe each note to music,

then play their haunting refrains for the next fortnight,

as they float upon the winds of the frosty nights.

The emotions of her brief life,

already tainted by dark romantic encounters,

twist in the nightsas invisible tears

wind there way down her face

in paths predetermined just after birth,

tears that fill the cups of a misery-thirsty underworld.

Upon her breast hangs an obsidian butterfly

that she has worn from birth;

a pendant which she will not learn the story of

for several years to come...

She returns, tired, to her chamber,

her pain ever hidden behind a pleasant, sometimes even mirthful, countenance.

Entering the garden of thorns just after midnight,

she once again dips her quill in misery's ink,

and continues writing the story of her morbid fairytales.

In the distance, the melodies of her latest lullaby

are carried past, and serenade the new moon

rising in a far off, misty haze...

Quixotic Dreams

She stood in the rain,

staring into the face of the dying child,

and wonders why it will soon be left lifeless.

She hears the screams of the kingdom upon every drop of rain;

she can also sense the corruption within the Palace Court

of the Steward of the Land.

Today, she has finally grasped how unholy their souls are,

which are filled with a greed spawned from the fires of hell.

She has also had a vision of how their minds will be forever haunted by their sins...

That night in her nightmarish dreams,

she had her first encounter with the Stranger.

He embodies a pureness that she believed could never have existed

in such a dark and hopeless world.

Upon further encounters, she often found herself speaking these words to him:

"Your epics will pass from my fragile lips

as I sing your name with love,

as paint your noble portrait upon my empty heart.

Your crown shall embodies the light of my hopes

and your words will restored my wings from the ashes and dust.

 

My flames of hatred born of this miserable existence you will smother,

the burning glass shards within my used heart you will gently remove,

and my heart will mend;

the demons who are tearing at my mind,

clawing at the wounds of my unhappy life,

you will slay nightly, my brave knight,

though they will ever return, so great are they in numbers.

 

You have bound my emotions in your armor,

and in every thought of you

you will hear me call you back to my side,

to carry me away from the darkest depths of my obsidian dreams..."

She would awaken, and take the winding staircase down to the courtyard of thorns,

where she would collect her mystical dreams night after night.

Picking up the pieces of her discarded heart there,

she would scatter them about the gate of deception,

where the bloody chains of her dark romances hung.

There, the crumpled angels lay, wings crushed,

pools of sorrow glistening over the courtyard stones,

their innocence strewn about their broken bodies and shattered souls,

used and cast aside by the lustful demons of hell...

An Eternal Rest

Often, when shedding tears at night,

and strolling along the crimson paths in the garden of thorns,

she wished for eternal rest.

Nightly she strolled there, her heart ever pricked by the poisonous thorns,

that brings back the memories of her aphrodisiac nightmares

and bittersweet romances,

that have stained her innocent soul and plunged her into shadows of darkness.

She often wondered when her journey in life would end,

and what her unfortunate fate would be

on her day of the final closure

to the morbid fairytale of her cursed life.

To sleep in peace forever,

from the dawn of creation to the end of the heavens,

place among a gleaming constellation

with immortal love, that would be true freedom from this dreadful place.

Another day and the sun has risen,

another day that will not grant her peace

or the eternal rest she yearns for.

Her life continues, and the tale goes on,

her morbid fairytale continuing page after page,

her soothing serenades penetrating the morning mists

with her melancholy lullabies

that carry on into the moonlit nights,

and one night which may hold the key

that will unlock the iron chains of deception

and release her wrath upon her uncaring tormentors...

The night brings back the overwhelming feelings

that bring her closer to the emotional suicide of a shattered soul.

She pieces together the broken imagery of her past,

encrypted in the faded words cast off of her quill,

and drawn from behind the masks of her normalcy.

One day, she suspects, it will leave her alone and empty, forever...

Each nightmare brings another betrayal,

returns to her the torn emotions she hides during the day,

and feeds the thoughts of bittersweet vengeance.

She sews her torn heart with threads of hatred,

determining to one day venture forth to massacre the hordes of souls

that will burn in all eternity for their all their deceit.

She finds a key in the moonlit night upon the Stranger's path

that releases her from the chains of deception...

and her vengeance flys.

The wind hushes the screams of their souls

as she approaches within a veil of shadows,

the pain of their poisoned romances

returned to them upon the tip of her thorny spear...

all the while she sees, beyond their just demise,

her eternal rest...

She awakes.

The midnight moon is shining on her face.

She has never known such a feeling before,

her dying smile returning, yet lost in tears,

her painful solitude in this world finding solace with the Stranger

who now holds the macabre memories of her mind.

The darkness overlaps her true beauty, the moon slips behind a cloud,

and her skin turned cold and gray.

The night sings her melancholy lullaby-

she has shattered their souls

and gathered their stains

in the scarlet writings now reflecting the moonlight

from the wet ink glistening upon the parchment of her darkened soul.

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