By Nectar Neglected
David Antrobus Posted on Friday, February 20, 2015 at 7:01PM 
See him. He is the walker.
The kinked arrow of his wending takes him past the fitful sleep of murky settlements, past the stitched brows of crepuscular forests, his gaunt and stringlike frame a hauntscape for the murmurs of night guilt and uncompromising schemes.
No one has ever seen him in the glare of sunlight, and even during the darkest hours most sense him only as an inkling, like they might a brief visit by a lone black hummingbird in some forgotten back field, by nectar neglected, by nature abandoned.
His kindred, his compañeros, whose fugitive trails he here and there crosses and even more rarely shares, are lonesome castoffs too, exiled coyotes bereft of their pack, silent, unmoored, whether from fear or shame no one knows. Or likely cares.
"I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday"
says the poet.
"That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night"
says another.
Yet there is more. Under clear Iowan skies he's a mere whisper, a momentary flash when a sunflower blinks. Beside dire mangrove swamps his brows tangle amid roots. Along lovers' lanes he watches expressionless from shadows, awaiting the secret puzzle word. In lost caverns where the world's heartbeat can be heard (after which you will hear no other sound), he licks the slime from shuddering walls. He climbs towers of ancient skinbound books in forgotten libraries and recites random fragments, calling Twain a charlatan and Steinbeck a liar. He interprets the raw dreams of bats so marauders might understand.
He enters your quiet towns and your silent villages, his jointed shadow angling over facades, his cantilevered insectivore jaw pensile, and wherever cracks and crevices present themselves, he slips inside, breathless as ice in your hallways and corridors, caressing the handles of silent bedrooms…
…where upon entering he places the spatulate tips of his long arthritic fingers on the velvety lips of sleeping children to hush their unspeakable dreams, though he be their source.
Reader Comments (6)
I can't get enough of your imagery, even when the content is so bleak. :)
I think that's the most gratifying thing you could say to me, Yvonne—that readers who wouldn't ordinarily read such dark content might make an exception due to the language.
You had me at bereft but I amongst all the beautifully dark, rich language, the simple description of him being "a mere whisper" is exquisite.
I don't know how you pack so much colour into such short fiction but I love it that you do.
And I love it that you pay such close attention to the language, Jo! I do the same when I read, and it's often so rewarding.
The first time I read this, my stomach lurched at the last paragraph. I've read it three times since, and still I feel sick. I mean that, of course, in the greatest of ways! "murmurs of night guilt". Awesome.
I feel sick too. It's horrible. Appalling. But it seems to be a story I need to tell and keep telling. I sincerely love that you read and commented, Lesley.