XVIII

We found the town that fateful day,
that hateful, fatal place
replete with greetings' violent smile;
a gun trained on my face.

The eyes behind were wild with hyp
that bred with unhinged zeal,
their gaze a hungry, feral greed,
our sanity their meal.

The town was decked in Devil's garb
and beauty come to harm.
Black bells rang out at every hour;
a call to prayer and arms.

The air was choked with grease and fear
while malice walked the streets.
All peace had left this loveless place
to fester in deceit.



XIX

They herded us by gun and boot
into a rotting shed,
ostensibly for quarantine
against infection's spread.

We knew we had to find a way
to help the light return,
and from this fetid, dirty place
the madness must all burn.

Eventually they kicked us, bound
and gagged, to face a judge.
They sat us by the village well
to sate a spiteful grudge.

Our freedom was a symbol of
the life they had denied,
and justice had no guiding hand
in what they might decide.


XX

An oil pump hammered up and down
to give this town its life,
and from its shadow crawled the judge
to underline our strife.

Decayed, decrepit, rotting eyes
with madness housed within
alighted on our hog-trussed forms
with vile and proud chagrin.

"You are accursed, you evil fiends!"
the judge yelled to the sky.
"Only the Lord can save your souls,
you cannot him deny."

With that he ordered guns to bear
upon our helpless forms.
I leaned against my bride of night
and waited for the storm.


XXI

No saviour, I, to help this place,
messiah to the world.
Instead my quest was just my pride
around my dead heart curled.

The love I found was all for naught,
I saw as powder bloomed.
The future world would bow to this;
the evil that men do.

And then Dark Eve became a cloak
thrown bloody over me,
her body flung to save my life
and possibilities.

To yells of hate and anguished tears,
I hurled myself away
into the wishing well of Fate,
and as I fell, I prayed.