The Nitheful

Actus auteum malus

The way the lightning passed through the slit in the curtains and sent spindly fingers of light down against the wall – just add it to your busy mind and all the reasons you cant sleep at all.

(…thought again about death and loneliness and the worm and the void and the unspeakable loneliness…(1) )

Then there are all the little voices constantly repeating into your conscious thoughts about all those things you have done and can never leave behind.

(that blood on your hands and those bruises all around.)

Most of them were asleep, dead tired, simply not able to keep their eyes open, he was a bit off on his own and in obvious distress his prayer weas fervent and desperate.

(hardly any of them heard the conversation he was engaged in and no one else would have wanted to be in his place.)

“Do you really believe that you, a mere man, can bear the impossible burden of sin for all men?”

His prayer is repeated and the desperation is increasing, along with the shadows and he begins to bleed, a fraction of what is to come, no way out and those voices come and go.

Then they noticed someone they knew and a large group of unfamiliar men who approached and then took him away.

(He was wounded for our transgressions, he bore our iniquities, treated him as a beggar, a petty thief and then they left him dead, a crown of thorns upon his battered head.)

Today the only things that move at Babi Yar are the blades of grass that slightly sway in the wind.

The cries and fear are no longer heard or felt and the ground non longer moves with the swelling of the bodies put there – shot and left for dead.

All that bloody mess has long ago seeped into the ground and only the wind moves the grass instaed of the bodies murdered decades ago.

(grass fed by the blood of the innocents)

No one saw him well enough to say exactly what he looked like, he blended in so well, so ordinary, surely a misfit.

(perpetual smile on his pudgy face)

Sneaking arond the city and tehn blowing their brains out the side of their heads, blood, glass, lost vision and then dead soon after.

(later, after it was over he told Stacey’s mother that her daughter was a whore)

He even left a note for the police – greeting htem from the gutter- where he was from and where he surely will return again.

When they finally found him no one could believe it was the right person, pudgy and clueless, a perpetual grin on his face, crazy but not insane and clearly excited by all the attention.

Again, in New York, on a December night, he would remember, that there were gragoyles, coming off the side of the building and the weigth of the gun in his pocket, he was sure no one else could see it – he had waited so long and now was his chance.

When the star walked by he even looked at the loser and then he shot him, dead, over and done with, now the loser remains and is still descending into his own madness.

Over a silent canyon ion California, where no one could hear the screamsof those who were dying, here there would be no sympathy, all they had was what they broughtand whats we will take from you.

By the time they were done Sharon and the others were ugly and tarnished, destroyed by violence, drugs, acid trips and psuedo religion – later they found him hiding under a sink, a little man with those crazy eyes.

Those girls were lonely and broken – who could be happy and satisfied selling themselves for twenty dollars at a time?

(I knew some of them and when they smiled you could see that once they may have been staisfied but not now, now they are gone, cut to pieces, and thrown away.)

As the cold wind sweeps the streets of that washed up town, that unreal city, their blood has seeped into the gutters of the streets they walked when they sold sex and skin, no credit, only cash – unless you had some extra heoin to give?

“Well its obvious you dont know where she is” – Karras shrugged – “so obviously you aren’t the devil.” (3)

There is no need to look long and hard for evil – it is right out in the open, coming under the guise of a gentlemanor a beautiful woman hands out and almost never clenched into a fist.

That otherworldly beauty, the one who answers all your prayers and gives and gives and gives till your cup is empty and there is nothing left to fill.

Those trees, the way they come up close and then the limbs come into focus – they could definitely hold my weight, the rope would burn my neck but who would care after it was all said and done?

I would pick a quiet night well lit by the moon and with no wind, I wouldn’t want to sway, just to dangle and thereby give testimony to how small and insignificant I am.

maybe someone would find me quick and then the questions would start.

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The Nitheful II

“He was capable of being so kind to the children, to have them become fond of him, to bring htem sugar and to thinlk of small details in their daily lives and do things we genuinely admire… And then next to that, in the crematoria smoke, and these children, tomorrow or in a half hour, he is going to send them there, well, that is where the anomaly lay… (Aushwtiz Survivor)

He was handsome and pleasant, always well dressed, whistling Wagnerain melodies, starched shirt and shiny boots.

“Der Zwilling?” he always looked for twins.

Always, never fae away were the chimneys and their constant streams of smoke.

The melodies he whistled were carried away on the smoky air, along with the souls he sent there.

(he himself died years later a haunted, hunted man…)

Behind his back they called him The Pope, living in his huge house, so far from the streets he ruled.

They all said that he was not really one of them, arranging to send people to their death with his words but never getting his hands bloody.

He never so much as blinked an eye, a simple wave of his hand in a particular direction…

Pointing right or left, a nod of his head or a word spoken softly.

He would die, alone, in the streets he lived so far from, a bullet in his head.

He hunted for years, all his victims were young and beautful, years later he said that he was looking for people who should have known better.

He left them mostly in the woods where the animals took what he left behind and he visited periodically until there was nothing left to play with.

(he too was charming and even attractive to some, in the end he could not even control his own tears.)

He was excecuted but, an act of justice, but he was really dead for years already.

No one ever thought it would turn out to be who it was, after his hideden deeds were discovred and brought to light.

He was big for his age but surely no a murderer?

He called it thieving and the night was perfect for it, the night was windy enough to carry the noise away and very dark, no one would even see him.

He broke inot the house and before he left he stabbed multiple people dozens of times before he made his way back home.

(he broke the knife off in her chest.)

He brought what was left of the knife home to remember what he did, up in his attic, he would conjure up memories of how thrilling it was to act like God.

He readily admitted to what he did and when he started confessing it seemed he would never stop and his words sent his father to the restroom to vomit.

The Nitheful hide out in the open and often it is our unwllingness to notice and not just windy nights or smoky air that camoflauges their presence.