Time lost all vestiges of me

as the fog crept into the land,

icicles of my heart formed

as phantom voices crooned,

transparency embraced

the absence of reason,

negligees of evening

uncoiled in lashed warnings,

naked eyes seeing, yet unseen,

masked ghosts along mossy earth,

smoke tendrils disguising the sun,

vines of spiraled thoughts,

broken heart of wanderlust moon,

negative forces swathing my world.

Come to me and touch me I implore

but I can’t see them in smothered soup,

echo chambers silenced by apparitions of

smoke and vapors – shadowed reminders

of muted shores and unknown spirits

Oh swallow me! Oh swallow me!

I can no longer fight that which

            envelops me.

Provisions are low and even worse

The crew is mutinous

We have wandered off our course

And a lone voice calls for reverse

But do we listen? No, not us!

From the hidden rocky cliffs

Comes a muffled moaning sound

Blanketed in fog and mist

Promising us the world exists

Calling us to turn around.

But the motley crew screams

Let’s sail our course even faster!

Is that lone voice even human?

These siren calls are the stuff of ruin

Let’s go onwards to disaster!

Now ghost fingers clasping naked shrouds

With tiller swinging free

Our deathly chorus shouts aloud

“We kept our course and are proud

This shall be our legacy!"

I stand on the deck of my cottage barefoot, feeling the moisture of the wood from the dense fog. I feel the coolness of that fog against my skin, a counter to the sweltering summer eve that I went to bed to. I try to see farther than two feet in front of me, yet I cannot see a thing save a soft glow of light. But, oh, can I hear...

I hear the voices, almost singing, in a language I would say I do not know, yet I understand every, beautiful, haunting word said. The voices woke me from a pleasant dream, yet their timbre is more pleasant. Pleasant in a way I haven't felt in years. Pleasant in a way life was before becoming a hermit in my widower life.

I take a step, into the fog and the moisture from it starts to bead on my exposed skin, rivulets slowly forming. I can see even less, by my ears lead the way.

Wake up...

Don't sleep alone...

Let us remind you...

Of your true destiny...

There is a song in the words. They never say the same thing, yet they pull at me. Pull at my life to remember to live. Pull at my heart to pound like in a long-forgotten way. Pull at my soul out of it's jaded broken shell. Pull at my flesh...

I take another step. I have taken dozens. I feel a soft hand touch me. I hear a giggle that boils my blood. I feel another hand, and another. My soul tries to shake me, but the voices have a firm hold on my desire, on my want. I have been alone too long. I cannot tell how many hands there are, more than two. I feel lips press against my skin. I feel breasts damp, press against my arms, my hands, my back, my chest. I feel one press against my mouth and I suck, such sweet dew from warm flesh. I hear a illicit laugh in response.

I get smothered by the voices in the fog. By the forms my eyes are blind to but my body feels fully.

Take us...

Feed us...

Fill us...

The words are not in English, but I follow each plead, each request, each command. The more my body tires from the pleasures, the more they demand. I take, I give, I feed, I am fed, I fill and I fill and I fill again...

I wake suddenly in my bed, slick in sweat, in a sweltering summer night. My lungs a bellows, my sheets warm from my sweat and my seed. It has been decades since I had a dream that did that.

The days pass, and the dream in the fog mist away.

Until one night, as I sit on my porch, a fog rolls in, and then the voices. The sweet, sexual, foreign voices.

My body reacts, my heart lurches, my blood burns. This time though, I see a form step from the fog onto my deck, then another, then another. They almost look human, each more beautiful than the next. Each holding a baby. Each smiling at me. Except for the last.

You need to come...

Home with us...

Our children...

Need their father...

And Our Queen...

Needs to be given...

Her heir...

I follow their laughter into the fog. I am never seen from again. But, occasionally, the current owners of my nearly-forgotten cottage, can hear my laugh...and my children's too, when the fog rolls in. 

It frightens them so. I don't know why, because it is such a sweet, sweet, foreign sound.

From the fog, there was a strange call, but not from something human

the thickness of the fog began to strangle Paul until he couldn't breath, now it's just me and Truman,

We ran to the store and I almost slipped on the floor, but we managed to hide in a deli

BANG! Went the door and a creature screeched to implore, it had found us: Truman and Kelly

We grabbed our knives and prepared to fight, as I looked at my brother,we prayed for our lives then jumped with might, until I noticed the terrifying creature was my mother.

As the fog rolled in the forest,

I thought I heard fairy speak.

The voices they called,

from that eerie fog.

Sounded like the tinkling of bells,

strangely human like, but not quite.

I'll never forget the tune they sang

''twas a little off but like bells it rang.

"Come little children ill take the away,

into a land of enchantment"

It made me want to follow,

Made me want to sing

Made me want to go into that hollow

And do handsprings!

That fog was so thick if I had tried to run

I would've hit a tree and knocked myself out

THAT AINT NO FUN!

So i did what any smart lass would do,

I stayed put til it lifted

That was the best idea ever said the motly crew who found me!

And there you have it!

In the darkness we lie, and if  you wish to see us, you must die, but calling in the fog, you will come to us...

Soon...

The cool night air washed over me, bringing with it a thick, sleepy fog, but I could still see the moon, hanging full and cold up above. A time for the creatures of other worlds to cross over, and feast on the unwary and weak, my mum had always said. But she was dead, and with her her warnings had been forgotten, long ago.

It was probably stupid of me, but I walked down the creaky old steps of my porch, through the backyard, past the swing set my dad made years ago, past my silent old dog, and down to the lake. And there I sat, listening to the lull of the waves. I started to drift off, and in my dreams I was sitting in a rotting old boat, next to a ferryman hooded in wisps and black.

The ferryman rowed slowly down a river lit with murk and bioluminescence, occasionally under a dripping cave roof, and sometimes under a ceiling of stars. Far in the distance, a mist was encroaching, and the wails of voices unlike any of this earth could be heard. Faintly, at first, but louder and louder, yet the mist never seemed to get any closer. Strangely, I wanted to get closer, though in my bones I felt an ancient sense of foreboding, begging me to turn back.

The voices sang to me, of a lonely, quiet night, as the stars called down to me, and promised that I would have my lost childhood again. As the ferryman rowed down the river, we reached a wide lake surrounded by weeping willows and tiny tassels of love-lies-bleeding. Here we stopped, and the ferryman turned to me, his face nothing more than a grinning skull.

"My job isss done... From here you musssst move forwardsss alone... Bessst of luck..." he hissed out, and suddenly I was left standing in the lake as he rowed back where we had come.

Slowly but surely, step by step, I walked closer and closer to the mysterious mist from which the unearthly voices emanated. It lay low and heavy over the lake, and concealed all that might await. And suddenly the song they sang changed, to one which I recognized as one my mother had sang to me, once upon a time.  

When I had walked for seemingly an eternity, I began to walk into the mist. Although I sensed that I might never return, I was no longer afraid. The voices were with me, mysterious yet comforting, singing that same haunting melody. The mist began to swirl around me, enfolding me in its cold clutches, and I could feel myself becoming less and less substantial, until I vanished...

The next morning, she is reported to have vanished. Her neighbors did not notice a disturbance, and a police search reveals no sign of a struggle. No one knows what happened that foggy night, under the light of a full moon...

"Did you hear that?"Janet sobbed,

looking past where Derek's head bobbed

in the water of the koi pond.

"I think it came from just beyond

aisle ten, electrical..."

said Jason, hysterical.

Home Depot's apron on the man

gave credit to his quick scan

down the aisles of DIY

plumbing, painting, and roof supply.

"It's coming from within the fog!"

"That smell!  A toilet clog..."

the first was Janet's  broken cry

the second, Tony's insane reply.

"If only, man, that you were right,

from in the fog a toilets plight.

But from the smog I hear a calling

not quite human, strange, enthralling.

Whispers, words unclear,

suggesting that I draw near."

Fran stepped from out aisle eight

clearly ready to embrace fate.

Jason grabbed hold of Fran,

Slap! "Pull yourself together man!

In that fog are death and sorrow.

Enter in and no tomorrow."

But Fran heard other voices then

whispering from aisle ten.

And turning away his reddened face

he ran into the fogs embrace.

Voices in the fog, calling from afar.

Voices in the fog, I don’t know where they are.

But as I hear the voices, I feel a tugging at my heart.

A force in two directions that stands to tear my soul apart.

A soul that lies downtrodden, not by simple time,

But by the age that comes from hearing voices chime,

From the fog,

From the darkness,

From the edge of melancholy where that final sad voice harkens.

I heard them calling my name,

Calling me from the shadows,

Lurking in the outskirts of my mind,

Where I have yet to wander.

They whispered through the fog,

One in particular drew me in,

Entwining me in it's fingers,

Molding me like clay.

Hello, it said

My name is regret,

Do you wish to remember,

Or do you wish to forget?

I tried to shut them out,

But the voices wouldn't cease,

They whispered awful, wonderful things,

Taunting me, drawing me near

When the fog cleared and I saw them standing there,

In shapes no human could ever take,

Regret, Fear, Hate, and Pain,

They consumed me even further.

From the fog,

The voices called.

All strangely compelling,

none quite human,

They creep and crawl about,

Wraiths pulled from the past,

Swirling deep behind the could bank,

Their voices call to me,

They know the trap is sprung,

My wandering heart,

Won.

Their cold, damp, arms reach out to me,

Dripping with gauzy fog,

Their eyeless  piercing gaze,

Their all perceiving gaze.

Reaches down, deep, dark,

Inside.

Their magnetic force draws me,

But as all things that attract so strongly,

might soon repel me.

I reach as a child to the pale reflection

Of the moon,

The purest painting.

But, as the breath of some living thing

Brushes against the water,

The moon shivers,

The voices quiver,

The spell is broken,

I sit back on my heals,

Strangely attracted but definitely repelled.

I know why, 

My wandering heart was searching for heaven,

Not hell.