Check Mate

The clouds slowly crept together like a mass following of a homicidal genius. It started with one patch of charcoal grey- a checkerboard of light and dark-, until the whole afternoon sky was stone. Unwelcome was the storm, ceasing movement in every corner of the town. Provoking everyone with a pulse to huddle around a fire and mumble a safe word or two.  

Hard, cold, and grey; the rain pounded like agonizing thoughts of tomorrow. They hit the roof with such a ferocity as to shatter it like glass and hope.

The screen door hit hard against the side paneling. Broken off one of its hinges, it was wild and unpredictable. I tried to pull it in. My bones grew cold as the rain penetrated my core with icy remorse and guilt. The door fought hard, refusing to click into place and allow me solace.  

Wind and rain and leaves poured inside the house; across the surreal black and white tiled floor; chilling the walls until paint seemed to partake in the sky's morbid hue. The white begins to muddy in sin and the black becomes less receptive. 

I was corpse-like as I finally pulled in the screen door, silencing it with a cry of contempt. The house was silent except for the echo of rain that felt like a distant memory.

As I drew the curtains shut, trying to box in my sanity, the phone rang. Trepidly, I crept towards it, hitting answer from a distance. There was silence, and a crackle of desperation, before a horrid, bloodcurdling scream echoed throughout the house infiltrating even my holiest of understanding. It felt far away, but recognizable; like past self being ripped apart and dispirited of every ideal that had nested inside it's heart and soul.

And as the scream christened the living room warmed by hearth and foreboding, the screen door slammed back outside, against the house and in competition with the pounding the rain.

And I could hear it; creeping through the door. Gleaning power from the disquietude; the bête noire. The hesitant, malicious thoughts that creep in the back of our minds. The torturous, hideously destructive, damnable actions that spawn from thoughts of despair that make us scared to wake up and be ourselves in the morning.

Why, mine had finally gotten in, and they had no intention of leaving before the storm was through.

And that wouldn’t be for quite some time- for even the angels had abandoned the grey desolation above. The black pawn has dethroned the king.