the greys
Wednesday, January 14 2003
It was not so bad at first when it was like the crunching of dry autumn leaves underfoot. But still, a small chill ran up my spine and down the backs of my legs like a breeze from the long shadows of approaching winter. A warning of the cold.
The sound grew then, as I listened. What is that? I thought. Is that leaves? No, not leaves. It was too persistent, too relentless. It was something in the walls, something wanting to come out. It was more of a¼scuttling. Like a swarm of a thousand insects, coming out of the walls, perhaps, coming from nowhere and everywhere. Images flitted through my mind—the dust bowl, the trembling farmer, Egypt, locusts with mandibles clicking in voracious appetite.
The hairs all down the back of my neck stood on end. I felt a nameless dread. Then I saw them—the source of my growing fear. Grey figures— looming, needy, hungry, always wanting. They were huddling together, bound to each other by their dark energies, by the heaviness of their woe. They clothed themselves in it, this woe, gathering it around themselves for whatever ragged warmth it might provide. But of course there was no warmth. There was only poverty, cold, rejection and aching, desperate hunger.
As one they surged towards me, wanting. Wanting what? Nothing, everything. Just wanting, empty, filled with lack. Huge with lack.
All of a sudden, I felt tiny—a small light in the oppressive despair that moved toward me. If that darkness reached me, I would be lost. I would be consumed, left nothing but a stalk stripped of its grain.
My mind hurried to build the box of mirrors that would protect me. Above, below, forward and back, the reflective surfaces began to take shape, but it was too late. Already I could feel the dark energy starting to suck me under.
“Ooooh, #%&*!!!” I thought, “get me outta here!” And with that I was gone.
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