I awoke on a cold floor, my body shaking and jittering from the freezing air. It took me a moment to realize that I was chained to the floor, being only able to move my hands a few inches in any give direction and the same with my feet. The room I was in was dark, barely light, and, of course, cold. I tried to look around but due to my arms and legs being chained down my view was limited but what I did see wasn't good.

On the walls were bodies hanging on meat hooks, each of them in different stages of decomposition. All of them had frozen expressions of absolute terror and complete horror on their dead faces; their dead, unseeing eyes stared across the room to the blank wall across from them.

Suddenly there was a metallic clank sound coming from somewhere outside the room, where exactly I couldn't say because the sound echoed around the metal walls that surrounded me. I looked around frantically as much as I could but I couldn't did the source. There was a squeak of a door opening on rusty, metal hinges that echoed through the room, following the metallic clank sound. And once again I could find the source. Suddenly there was a flash of movement of something towards me. With my chained hands I tried to intercept it, but of course the chains were there so I couldn't intercept it and I didn't. Something stabbed into my neck; I could feel cold metal inside my neck, and the swishing of warm liquid rushing from where the cold metal object stabbed me. There was the feeling of it withdraw from my neck and I saw that it was indeed a knife. It was also covered with crimson horror. My vision became blurry as the knife came down again, again, and again. And then with growing terror my world sank into black.

- Michael Hall

I am the passing balmy breeze, in mid-summer against your skin, like the kiss that you’re true love stole unbeknownst to you, like a whisper of love in the evening last rays of dusk

I am the starlit night of light years away, the same heavenly firmament that makes you understand how small your wordy worries truly are, apart from the truth overhead

I am the first ray of dawn dispelling your night visions, to awake to the warm fast love of your future, like the father of your sons and daughters in the mornings yet to come

I am your hope for my rebirth to my understanding love eternal, my salvation of man, and my humanity undying

I am your promise of futures to come, because I am now become hope itself. Hope in the redemption of sin, the apocalyptic salvation of men, hope that lives on in loins of men, and the fertile soil of mothers of all men

I am the face of your creator, the next morning, the next thought, like a heart beat, the next breath of air. I have now left you; I will love and remember you always

And when you tread on me like the grass underfoot in fresh morning dew, in the meadow by the smiling old pond, remember me as though I never grew old

You will know me as the sunsets that unite all men, by the sunrises of a new day dawning, and glad I am for the life I lived here

Do not grieve for me at the end of my worldly work, but know instead that I am always with you, now and forever connected to you, throughout the passing of this world itself

© Keith Stewart