Mercy

The City knew it’s invaders had come, out there beyond the wall and nestled amongst dark trees. At dusk and into the night came a red glow, damnation given light as it danced and shivered between sentinel trunks. Sentries looking out into the countryside felt the omnipresent paranoia of being watched by an uncountable number of crimson eyes looking back, and in the day, nothing came from the woods beyond. No birdsong anointing new days, no wild horses nipping at unruly weeds from trees edge— just fog that would not dissipate, just the silence that devoured all sense of safety, familiarly. 

It was another night lit by red, earthbound stars when the noise began. A baby wailing. It cracked all that accumulated silence like broken bones, as if the sky itself had shattered into so many shards on the ground. Sentries and waiting armies camped in the shadow of the almighty wall felt as naked as newborns, weapons dropped so scrambling hands could cover their precious ears. The wailing grew, and grew, and grew— it was merciless, as merciless as a child dying without peace or comfort, their cries shrieking off spires, off trees. For sleepless day after sleepless day came the crying. 

Silence came again. How long had it been? It’s return was a catastrophic emptiness, painful and perfect and people howled, chattered, moaned; anything to claim the silence. Anything to have their heads filled of their own volition. But all the same, beneath windless branches and hanging in the mist, red lights blazed. 

Watching.  

Waiting. 

The sound of fornication, wet and intoxicating and needy. Appetites flared, blazed and drowned within those sounds came hammering, sawing. 

Laughter, laughter from everywhere and nowhere that brought inescapable shame. The people within the walls hid their face behind masks, desperate. 

Sourceless sobbing that drowned one mind after another in an inexorable march of depression. Nooses bearing strange fruit came from so many towers like a terrible spring bloom. 

On and on the sounds came. 

On and on came the clawing madness. 

On and on, on and on, *on and on*— until, in one voice, the City begged for mercy. 

And cloaked in red light, came the Enemy, to grant their wish.