She runs so scared, from the onrushing darkness as her day fast falls. The four horsemen have gathered, and they mean to have her, though she is not ready.
She ducks beneath the second, the first already left flailing in the night, while the third begins to close on her. But though she is determined to escape, fate does not wait upon our acceptance, and she has forgotten to watch for the Fourth, as he stands afar and watches her valiant, futile struggle.
It is too soon, for her, but he knows it as the proper time and reaches out for her from the greatest distance, from suddenly so very close beside her, and she is unwillingly in his arms.
Her panic is sharp and swift, and then fleeting, and then gone, as the calm of fate assured comforts and clothes her in warmth and slumber.
She falls
and is lifted
and is soothed
in the night
in the dark.
And in the morning, she is alone. And it did not matter
That she was not ready to go.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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If I didn't know better--and that's pretty much up for grabs--I'd say the 4th horseman represents some kind of nihilistic inevitability, though he is not all death & disease at the end. This story seems to be as much about her as it is about him.
It's a great intertwining love story, however fleeting its reality. -
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Yes, the 4th is an inevitability, though he changed forms on me right at the end of the piece.
I originally ended it with " ... in the dark. And it did not matter that she was not ready to go." And it was supposed to be about her dying before her time, but that death was not an enemy, but rather a lover who carried us safely to our next stage of romance (i.e. death.)
But then it was like she represented so many people who were so afraid of losing their innocence, or whatever. And I put in that line about how she was alone in the morning, and it changed it for me to being about rape. Maybe not the kind of rape that you get arrested for, but just the loss of that innocence or naivete (sp?) that everyone treasures so much more than a well-rounded outlook on the world.
The horseman/rapist could have been a boyfriend who finally wore down her defenses, or he could have been a professor who assigned a book that opened her eyes, or he could have been the accidental death of someone she loved that intruded on her "safe" existence.
I'll tell you something though, dude. Once I added in that part about her waking up, turning it into something other than her physical death, I couldn't change it back. See, I immediately missed it being about death (I was longing for it that night), so I took the line out. But when I read back over it, I saw the missing line in my head. I couldn't get rid of it, and it colored the way I read the rest of the story. So I just put it back in.
But I was so bitter about it, man. So frustrated. I still am, a little bit. I almost considered changing the background color to some kind of dark red afterwards, but I left it black to remind myself what I originally wanted from this piece.
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