Reaper

Reaper

Those were the ways of the man sat like a hermit in bedraggled chair.
Who knew what went through that cavernous mind in the days gone by
The relentless ticking of grandfather clock pushing away times strands.
All that was left were the memories that haunt and hunt through his waking dreams.

Each pendulum swing generates a new image for him as he stares into empty space
All the things that have passed away, the missed opportunities, and the ones he claimed.
Scraps of dry skin drift like snow onto his shoulders as he absently scratches at his balding head.
It is as though it was those very images, being made real, and morphed into that dead skin.

Now and then, if you looked carefully enough, a wry smile danced crossed his expression.
The good times played across his mind like some sick remembered fantasy.
To the onlooker this scene had the appearance of a lonely hermit, sad and depressed.
But the vile innards, the dysfunctional internal clock works, were hidden well by the grim exterior.

His trousers and vest were mottled and stained by weeks’ worth of food and drink drippings
And the acrid smell permeating the fetid air told the same filthy, corrupt truth.
This was a monster content to relive every precious moment, every invasive touch,
Each horrid and intrusive incursion through innocent, and fragile hearts and minds.

It may seem to the outsider that this is the persona of a repentant and sorry state of a being,
But the opposite applies. He is content to wallow knee deep in his own filth, it’s just the way he likes things.
Disintegration and chaos are his friends, terror his accomplice and stealthy weapon.
People walk past the window by the chair and they have no idea, no iota of comprehension.

But I watch knowing that there is indeed a deeper and greater hell awaiting this soul
He can’t begin to comprehend the magnitude of that which awaits, but I stand ready.
I torture him with occasional snapshots like blip adverts, and I see the fear glint madly in his eyes.
I scoff, because his long earthen life is just a millisecond in eternity and in a short time his soul is mine

R Paris