The Signature of Dread

21 August 2021 Saturday Poetry Prompt: painting the fear

The change is so subtle that it is unnoticeable at first.

The beach balls are still bobbing, the sandcastles still upright. The beer still being steadily chugged.

But something is different now.

The sun steadily purples its way down, the orange horizon finally cresting over yonder side.

The night is beginning to come to life.

One of the children notices it first.

As the stone gargoyles inhale their first breaths, their eyes glitter like diamonds. The child cries out in fear, sobbing insistently at the sight, her nightmares freshly ignited all over again.

The mother hushes her, telling her they are just stars. Not wanting to see beyond the veil of perception.

But she feels anxious, the unease spreading through her in laps, cold and steady.

She wants to get home before dark.

Meanwhile, the benign rocks begin to unfurl. Dark arms and legs sprout out of the curved edges, emerging out of their daytime cloaks.

Advancing. Slowly and stealthily.

A scaly something withdraws hurriedly into the bushes.

What was it?

A talon. A tail. Or a mottled arm, bruised and skinned raw?

There are eyes everywhere. Unfriendly eyes, hostility writ large in escalated heartbeat. Contemptuous nostrils breathing heavy, fogging the air, playing tricks with the mind.

Day is over, and the night is up for reclamation.

In this domain of the dark, what the eye can see is now just a shrunk circle, a lit island, barely a few feet wide.

The rest of the vast unseen expanse is consumed by moving, morphing, unfurling imagination. And the blackness that houses it.

Blacker than black, it grows darker the more she tries to peer into it. And the blackness settles down on her chest, heavy and unyielding.

This is the signature of dread, as it elbows up through her gut, constricting first her heart, and then winding up around her mouth and nose, her eyes frozen in disbelief.

And frozen they remain, glazed over now, a lump being dragged over into the bushes.

Yes, the change is subtle. The same beach balls, the same sandcastles, the same beer.

And a missing person. A void where her shadow used to be, blacker than black. As she melts away into the dark.

Paroma Sen 2021

In response to J.D. Harms’ prompt: