Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 1 - The Call [LIM]

AUTHOR GAMES: EMPTY NIGHT - LIMERICK - TASK ONE - THE CALL

I have always appreciated the words "do not go gentle into that good night." They aren't mine, believe me - my rhythm is off by a syllable always - but there's a reassurance to them, a pat on the back and a whisper in the ear, funneling through, existing. It is urgency and it is a lullaby and very often I find myself reciting it to myself, quietly, through pressed lips in the dim and the dark. Don't let your life pass by without completion, it says; don't let life be ripped from you so suddenly, it says. And back in the forties, when the poet'd first said not to, I'd decided to listen.

Not very well, however.

I go gentle into that good night now, and a good night it seems to be here in the streets of Chicago. It's quiet and desolate and I've seen no one and no headlights, which is strange in this city, but I've lived here long enough to know which streets blaze with popularity deep into the morning hours and which streets sit dry and dead and desolate, like this one now. There's no watch when I glance at my wrist, but I know it's three in the morning and plenty of miserable mothers and fearful fathers are stumbling their way back home in a drunken stupor by now. Some will come down this very street. But that's alright. If they see me, they'll write it off as a drunkard's hallucination; a pretty man on the corner, but nothing more.

I don't shine bright enough anymore to be anything more.

A streetlight passes overhead, and I glance up, hoping it provides some light to the hollows in my face, but I know it's too dim, and it flickers up there anyhow, three lonesome moths tap-tapping against the bulb. They're idiots, I want to say, but they won't understand no matter how loud I say it, and their little chitin-coated heads will continue to ram into the glass until they either burn themselves out like a shrivelled young wraith or knock themselves to death.

Plus, I don't think they can quite help it. I mean, I'm not too fond of sleep myself, and nocturnal habits always come crawling back on stunted legs. When you spend so much time up at night, you get desperate for a little light, and I know this is true because I still haven't moved from my spot under the street light.

A hunger pang surfaces deep in my gut, and I'm forced to duck away; for now, I forgive the little winged beauties for their fallacies and leave them to their devices in favor of walking. I can't remember why I started moving, why I got up from my chair and stepped outside. Maybe to stretch these long legs, or to let the candlesticks harden. That sounds about right. Too hungry to think any more on the matter, to strain for memory. It'll harden later too. It just needs to dry. Like the candles. All will be well. All will be well and I suck in a careful breath and begin to recite "old age should burn and rave at close of day" because that's what I do when I'm nervous and my spine is prickling against the skin and trying to crawl out of its place. The nerves stretch with it and force my fingers to reach as far as they can go. "Rage," I whisper, and it's deep and gravelly and uncomfortable in my throat, "rage against the dying of the light."

Then the world screams.

It's a brief and punctuated noise, but it's loud, and it echoes off of every single wall in the neighborhood. This noise forks lightning and raves against the sky and when it touches my gentle, sensitive ears, it feels like exactly eight wasps are rattling around against my eardrums and it hurts, I'm telling you, it hurts something bad, but I don't move and I don't flinch because although I come from a place of gods and angels I am here now and process things like any other mortal.

Conclusion: That was a gunshot. Followed by a scream, a wail, an agonized call of shock.

It would be smart to turn the other direction, it really would. I've seen humans do it a thousand times when someone's in need. But there's a pull deep in my chest and gut. Sweat sprouts and pours even though there's a chill in the air, and a hot flash crosses through, and my legs begin to shake and it's the sort of shake that you know can only be solved with food.