One Lonely Visitor

If one harkens to the undulating moans of restless air, in the quiet of the night, after a long storm, then perhaps it is possible to hear my soul.  Then, perhaps not.  One lonely visitor thrust upon the fiery bosom of hell is I; hither all human presence is lost, and, consequently, my impression upon this earth has disappeared.  All who remember have forgotten, and all who can recall only do so at the faintest tap in the dead of the night, long after every light has gone out.  
So many lifetimes have waxed and waned since lifeblood coursed through mine own withered husk, it is difficult to even evoke the tale, which condemned me to such a fate.  It is as if a sunbeam were dancing on the dark stone walls that stand as tall sentinels to my accursed fate, and I could only bear witness to its passing splendor until it is hidden forever by the passage of time.  Never to partake, only to witness.  If, however, by some miracle it were to be restored to this unworthy spirit, if fate saw fit for my wretched presence to be, as it ever desires, simply remembered,  then I suppose it would begin, as most tales told by firesides throughout time evermore, with a girl.  
Christine Bontecou, the most beautiful, lovely, angelic creature ever to grace this unsuitable world with her presence.  The very depths of mine own spirit call to her with an increasing chorus of fiery intensity even presently, long after her life were extinguished by its flame.  She was my childhood companion, my sunbeam on a cold winters day, the pale dew of hope on a cool spring morning.  The earliest recollections of my presence involve her somehow, usually including her laughter.  The gayest, lightest, most delicate sounds would spill from her lips, as her perfect feet would whisk her across the fields born by the caress of a summers breeze.  Her golden hair would fly like silken beams, a radiant halo for her skin of freshly peeled apples and her glittering sapphire jewels of eyes.  We would join hands then, her skin the softest silk while the rough, dripping crunch of each imperfect blade of grass fell to the pressure of our bodies as we spun round and round until the world existed only in a dizzying array of cerulean sky and emerald green.  Only then did the sight of her gleaming skin and hair of sunshine gold right my world as we fell, immune to the gentle touch of the warm breeze, for nothing could compare to the kiss of her fingertips to my hand as I held it tightly in mine.  
But like the sunbeam upon the wall, such perfection and merry bliss cannot be contained by mortal means.  My spirit longed for her evermore, its siren call gaining in intensity as its turbulent waters crashed upon her delicate shores.  I fear its intensity was too strong, too intimidated by my rapture for her flawlessness, for she slipped away, and my desperate cries were lost as if her beaches had turned to impassable, stoic cliffs of denial which my raptures fell upon in failure.  She no longer beheld my presence with interest, for her gracious affection cast its dancing light upon another: Lucien Samuelle, a youthful jester of a boy, unsuitable for even her gaze to be cast upon.  In his youthful ignorance he could not bear to comprehend the uselessness of his existence.  Such a wasted presence; she should not have been made to suffer such a being.  Only her natural delicacy could have blinded her to his inherent stupidity.  Christine could see no fault in any being, no matter how insignificant.  I, however, was not fashioned to suffer such a disposition.  I saw Monsieur Samuelle exactly for what he was; flippancy incarnate.  
Yet my hands did not twist his fate till Darkness began to whisper her icy web of deceit into my gullible ears.  It was on a chilly winters night, a nightfall without a star, where only a lone streetlamp could separate one’s existence from the bitterness of the mortality and malevolence by cloaking it in the comforts of industry and refinement, that I realized the perish that Lucien should suffer.  The Darkness availed me, caressing her deceitful flesh against my naïve countenance, whispering her treacherous thoughts onto my unsuspecting brow.  Mayhap mine own intelligence should have grasped how her plans would have ended, but so long had my raptures for virtuous Christine crashed against deaf shores that my mind could only hold ponderings for eliminating the horrid man that blinded her to mine own perfections.  And then it was realized, and Darkness and I reached an agreement of sorts, as the innocent barters with a devil.  
Lucien would be my first.  

     Lucien was a gentleman of sorts; mayhap not in words, but in wines he held his bourgeois position with grace unbecoming for a jester such as himself.  I also fancied my position among the elite at times as a great adversary to my multitude of schemes to place myself in Christine’s presence.  Such a situation would be most obliging for Lucien’s demise.  He could not well refuse another respectable gentleman’s offer to view the most well aged wine in all of Paris, and consequently, he arrived punctually to the destination provided by myself, radiating smiles and ignorance.  Oh, it was all too easy.  
     I lured him down into the resting place for the Parisian dead, where Darkness laid waiting to aide in the best of our plans.  The catacombs screamed silently in shadowed howls and motionless agony as we passed wall upon wall of gaping bones.  Everywhere the foul stench of rotting earth and the wet, dripping stone halls of this shadowed tomb appraised us with a seemingly affronted attitude.  Lucien, disturbed by our progress, entreated upon how much further our destination was.  I called gleefully that our footfalls had almost ceased their necessity.
     Then we reached it – what was to be his final resting place.  A nook had been carved in antiquity, and its moistened walls glistens with the shadows Darkness had provided.  His promised flask of wine lay on a small table in a rotting corner, amidst the judging stares of the dead.  Running forward, his every movement supported by the appraising stone floor, he greedily drank the flask dry, rendering him immune to his surroundings as he collapsed in a drunken stupor to the cold, silent granite.  Exasperating a sigh I slowly laid the mortar upon each brick, working efficiently by the candle fending off the snickering of Darkness whispering around the halls, until the small nook had been completely sealed and there was only the silence and my breath.  Every chilled cloud of mist reminded me of mine own presence, and I began to rejoice in the effectiveness of our plan. I could feel Darkness’s glee as I ran through this dripping city of night, into the light of sunrise.  She cackled in the entrance as I slowly made my way through the city of life.  Only patience could avail me now.  

     She was even more beautiful in her grief.  A dozen fortnights had passed, and yet her sorrow had not diminished in the slightest.  So confusing was it, so foreign that she could suffer intensely for that embodied frivolity of a human, that I took to observing her late at night, during the witching hour, when only her grief cloaked her flawless form in its own special raptures.  It was as if her spirit was beyond repair, yet I knew in the solace of mine own heart that she could be healed by the skill of the identical hands that rendered her lover lifeless.  Nightly she tread her perfect steps into the lair of Darkness, where her lover still lay, except now discovered and laid upon a casket.  Why that evening of all evenings I chose to hide in the shadows of her footfalls, I know not, but her golden hair and milky skin called out to the sea of my longing, and I could bear the world no longer if it held not her presence.  
     She knelt silently and gracefully by the unworthy form of her cold, bloodless lover, the lace of her nightclothes sullied by the damp, judging stone.  Her head bent in prayer mirrored the gentle incline of a swan’s neck, and for just that brief moment there was only her, like when we were small, and the silent shrieks of the passed souls in this kingdom of peril ceased to be.  There was only my beautiful golden angel, and her blessed hand in mine, the warm breath of the summer breeze against our cheeks, and the dewy grass against our bare soles.  
     So lost was I in that long buried memoir that I failed to notice the shadows unfurl my presence from their conspiring confines, and that I was bared to her like the fallen from heaven are offered to the blessed.  Her glittering orbs had cast their gaze upon my unsuspecting countenance, and her rather resounding shriek of alarm broke the bewitching spell of peace.  
     “Michel?” Her entreaty stewed of perplexity and smelled of terror.  
     “Why do you recoil, sweet Christine?”  The adoration dripped upon my every utterance.
     “Michel…Michel…Oh what have you done!”  For all my cunning I had underestimated her intelligence.  I had hoped her natural delicacy would have blinded her to my deed, for I could not justify the importance of Lucien’s demise to such a fragile mind.  
     Then Darkness flew to my ear, and the sudden chill had Christine grasping at her nightclothes as her candle flickered treacherously in the untraceable breeze.  Darkness clutched at my mind with leaden hands, till all that I could see was not Lucien’s demise, but my inherent one, should Christine wish to speak the truth in the cities of life, far removed from our partnered jurisdiction here in the valley of silence.  I was blinded by my raptures for rage and justice, for I realized she could never be mine, and that all of my planning was for naught, for she only saw me as a lecherous snake. I had to make her see the error of her ways.  
     The knife was bleeding red before I knew it, and Christine’s shocked countenance shall ever haunt my existence as her body cracked against the judging brow of the stone floor.  The metallic stench of her lifeblood filled mine own soul as she slipped away to join this city of eternal night with her damned lover.  It was the blood that woke me from my stupor, and I felt Darkness panic at my side.  What had I done?  My lovely Christine lay crumpled upon the rotten granite slabs of indifference, as the dead bared silent witness to my treacherous deed, their hollowed eyes viewing me eternally with feigned sympathy.  Darkness howled and shrieked, for her hold on me had loosened forever, and she fled into the safety of her domain of nothingness.  I saw myself for what I was: the murderer of the one I dearly beheld.  
     Thus it was that I cursed my worthless form to wander under Paris for eternity, bearing silent witness to the passage of time, in memoriam for the one I loved.  As the city above me waxes and wanes in the cycles of life, no one shall remember Michel.
Even after every light has gone out.