The Visit

Now if one were normally to consider what a visit might consist of, it wouldn’t be thought of as a particularly interesting or abnormal event. Ideas and memories might form in one’s mind of relatives wearing smiles or salesmen cloaked with false enthusiasm, standing upon your doorstep inquiring as to your whereabouts and so on and so forth… However this was no such calm friendly visit, it was one that every man knows shall come, but never knows when to expect it. Some may attempt to postpone its arrival, but its coming is as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun.

In retrospect it was a most peculiar time to receive a visit, but then again such visits as this would naturally be devoid of most logic, exceeding those intentional events. My heart already pounded with an ill anxiety. I merely considered this to be a fear of the coming day at the time. I kicked off my flannel trousers, removed my shirt, placed my watch upon the bedside table and scuffled to the bathroom. Rubbing my eyes, attempting to restrain an overwhelming fatigue resulting from the last few nights’ insomniac nature, I peered into the mirror, straining my eyes in a dire attempt to decipher my features; my blood shot eyes, sore, red and puffy above deep purple bags, a colour comparable to the midnight sky. Looking pitifully upon my reflection, I once again committed myself to the purpose that I would no longer lead this unhealthy hollow life of dark, grubby, sleazy indulgence. Upon concluding this pact yet another time, hoping for some life changing epiphany to arrive, yet only expecting myself to once again lose all enthusiasm and retire back into this easy, empty, morbidly enjoyable life bathed in apathy.

As my sight became shrouded in a red haze I concluded to recede into my bed, a safe haven of satin sheets and home of the comforting feeling of fluffy, feathery pillows beneath one’s head. After a short time of lying with eyes closed, darkness instantly clouded my vision, a midnight haze, absorbing my leaking energy and lulling me into a deep, yet insecure, sleep. It was now that he came. Knocking upon that large oaken door. I took a few seconds to take in my surroundings before answering his call. The walls displayed galaxies and the floor imitated the creation of the universe, un-thought of events that initiated what resulted in the current world we take advantage of. The roof depicting the other end of the string, some untimely end to all life, from what I could see at least, in the short time I found myself capable of viewing it. I tried to examine it, but fear conjoined with some intense, alien pain seemed to inject itself like a malicious entity into my mind, this feeling, like a vice closing, shrinking ever tighter upon my head ultimately forced me to cease trying. After taking a moment to recover from this feeling I strode to the door with an odd ease, I attributed this to some weaker force of gravity taking effect in this odd plane that had manifested itself around me.

The inappropriate tranquillity of the whole situation suddenly became apparent as a switch in my mind clicked, the mystery and unfamiliarity that should have inhabited me arose and a more appropriate sense of caution and fear over took me. With a shivering chill trembling down my spine I approached the door, with each step a sense of dread accumulated within my soul. A burning cold breeze seemed to occasionally sweep across the room, from no particular origin, to no particular end.

At this time, I felt as if it were I whom were the visitor. Unfamiliar with my surroundings, each experience new to my senses, an unwilling invader to an unconventional environment. I swallowed my fear and tried to absorb and restrain my anxiety within a deep chest somewhere in a dark corner in my untidy soul. Whatever patience had been in the possession of the creature behind the door, it seemed now to have evaporated. As I reached my shaking hand towards the door it instantly flung itself open. Dust shaking out from the cracks of the ancient wood and flowing across the room in the opposite direction from the dark portal finally reforming in small piles of dirt upon the floor. And in it came.

Flowing purple and black rags. He wore the colours of midnight, colours well known to me. A hood masking its identity with shadow. It cast a sense of necromantic tranquillity within me, an irresistible, heavenly, morbidity. It looked around, seemingly judging. Examining what I found myself incapable of looking upon, amongst that which I was equally capable of viewing. The breeze previously cascading across the room ceased and all fell still. As an arm was raised by the thing, and the ragged material enshrouding its hand fell back, the dim light of the room displayed clearly to me an emerging skeletal hand, and suddenly my brain shook within my head, and my soul along with it. I realised who had come for me. With this, the whole situation became clear, as if now the entities that guide our lives had decided it was time for me to know. As if I was a child being patronised by cruel parents, who found it convenient to let on information on a need to know basis.

This was me. This room my very soul. Each wall an aspect, in some code indecipherable by me, but clear to the reaper. This was the judgement they speak of. This was my end. His analysis finished he turned to face me, cold and unsympathetic, he raised his finger in my direction, and with an immense reluctance, yet knowing his conclusion true and fair, I accepted, and into the dark abyss I unhesitatingly stepped.