An anthology of tales which are expansions and adaptations of dreams the author has lived day and night over the course of many years.

Many people had been taken in the past year, and were forever lost.  Friends and family disappeared mysteriously— poof!— just like that.  No signs of struggle. No signs of death, although that was the assumption.  All that was found for each case was a poem.  A lost face, and a poem.  The poems were never the same but always similar, with a message of rebirth touched with a hint of dictatorial ideology.  Hence, the criminal— as anonymous as its victims— was named Poet. 

No one knew who this “Poet” might be.  They could be the person sitting next to you on the subway.  Maybe Poet was one of your neighbors.  A teacher.  A politician.  A cleric.  Worse yet, they could have been one of your friends, or a family member.  Nothing could prove that there was just one culprit, so it could very well be a collaborative effort.  Whoever or whatever Poet was, a ripple of fear echoed a note of distrust in once unified communities. 

I, however, was not shackled by this pandemic of fear.  For I had seen Poet, and had talked face to degenerate face with him.  It was I who finished the mastermind— not to boast in the slightest.  Until I had destroyed Poet with my own hands, I was truly terrified of him.  Of it.

I recall the meeting well.  It was a warm summer night.  The air was still warm from the last rays of the evening sun and small-town gossip.  While people fed the fire of fear with whispered rumors behind the fragile security of living room walls, I stood upon a grassy hilltop, searching the stars with my imagination.  Back then I would lay in the sea of Johnson grass and let the hush of wind lead me beyond the cares of my self-labeled drab and ordinary life.  I no longer find summer nights enchanting, and the sound of grass in wind makes my hair stand on end.  That portentous night, my train of thoughts slowed to a whistling stop when I caught a glimpse of a shadow dash down the left side of the field.  It was a lanky, skittering void in the silvery, moonless night. 

I was not afraid then, not at first.  Shadows are a child's fear, banished in the light.  Call me foolish if you will, but I followed the shadow across the hill and into the veil of concealing trees.  My imagination was racing to the beat of my heart, and I envisioned all of the monsters experience had taught me to fear.  I had to know what or who the shadow was.  The twisted gray trunks reached high above me to shield the sky with their leafy fingers.  I ran swiftly despite the darkness, trying to keep up with this strange, bounding mystery.  So preoccupied was I with chasing the apparition that I barely noticed the thinning of the woods until I had burst through the foliage into the entrance of a looming structure.  It looked to me like an abandoned prison.  The walls were gray and smooth, and reached high into the night sky.  I felt like I should have noticed this before, being so monstrous a building and in such close proximity to my own home.

Before I followed the shade into the yawning black of the doorway, I paused to take in the silence and emptiness that the building offered.  A soft breeze tugged at my shirtsleeve, like a whimpering child.  It begged me to enter.  The darkness did not scare me, nor did the ominous structure, nor the humanized gust.  Fear did not cross my mind as I stepped out of the starlight and into the stillness of the gutted building.  

There was a rusty staircase— I climbed it up, up, up.  As I ascended I realized there were bodies, rows and rows of corpses stripped down to muscle, stored in great vats of luminescent liquids.  It was like something from a horror movie.  As I took in the raw faces, I felt the first wave of fear. The feeling was cold and consuming.  The slimy eyelids were shut, and the muscled faces impassive, as if they had all lain down for a light afternoon nap.  It was about this time that I felt another presence and whirled at the touch of a hand on my shoulder. 

His face was just like the others— raw, oozing, twisted muscle and sinewy lines.  His murky gray eyes seemed to stare beyond my clear dark ones.  Images of Poet’s past reflected in those opaque eyes.  All there was left of this once beautiful angel was a shell, eaten away by the power that he gave himself.  His only power lay in his ideas, and ideas, a powerful force on their own, are deadly when used for selfish purposes.  I saw what his choices had done to him and rejected his presence, rank with stale authority. 

However, Poet would not be so easily avoided.  If ideas were his power, then the control he held over people came by stealing their own opinions and beliefs.  Those who had fallen, those likenesses of this monstrosity, had succumbed to his brainwashing.  I, too, could feel my mind draining of all the knowledge I had gathered over my course of living.  But I knew something that Poet did not, and I drew out this hidden weapon with all the force my numbing mind could muster.  It’s effects worked instantly to my great fortune, and I was soon released from Poet’s influence.  He withered under my simple yet fierce faculty— the power of imagination, to stretch the limits of reality and break the bonds of absolute control.  

People had feared Poet’s ability to take people without notice— to slip through personal defenses and obliterate all trace of those most loved persons in community circles.  But they had fallen to their own mental weaknesses.  They lacked the freedom of thought, that foundation of all freedoms.  But let them struggle.  Let them find their own answers.  Perhaps they will overcome this parasitic body of thought, and realize that the only thing they have to fear is the corruption of their own minds.

It was a hot night.  Too hot to be sitting in flannel lounge pants, eating fresh pizza, but here she was.  Her phone pinged beside her.  She brushed off her hands before picking up the device, though there was only one person who would be texting at this hour.  Her bestie wanted to come over.  Sleep was alluding the both of them, and she agreed to leave the door unlocked for her to come over.

“Good,” her friend texted instantaneously. “Because I’m already here!”

She tossed the pizza box aside and ran to the door, where sure enough her friend was waiting.  The two embraced joyfully before she welcomed her surprise visitor in.

“The TV remote is somewhere over on the sofa.  Maybe under the pizza.”

“Oh no, let’s not watch anything,” her friend frowned.  She threw herself on the sofa and helped herself to the last slice of pizza.  “I can’t stand to see another political broadcast or ‘Breaking-News’ update.”

“You saw the latest story, right?“How could I not?” was the scoffing reply.  “I’m beginning to think that we’re the only sane generation alive, trapped in a narrow corridor between raving lunatics who can’t shut their mouths.”

She took a big bite of pizza before realizing her thought wasn’t finished.

“I mean,” she said between bites, “I don’t deny that people older than use have more experience and have some good wisdom to pass down, but there is a point where it just becomes outdated intel, you know?  And then you have these kids coming up who think they have some great socio-economically-cultural relevancies to enlighten everyone with, and yet while they spew ideologies that claim everything in life exists in shades of gray they live and act like everything is either black or white.  (No pun intended).”

“I had a dream about it,” she said when her friend took a breath.  Those were magic words, and she was asked excitedly to explain.

“It came to me as though it were a fairy tale, set in a land far away and a time long past.”

A farm-boy ran down a muddy path, arms over his head to fruitlessly shield himself from the rain.  His feet were wrapped in leather that had become soaked and caked with the near-black mire that had formed in the downpour.  He passed through a small wood and on the other side spied a hill with a steep face and near the top, a cave.  The heavy sheets of rain tore spring-green leaves and tender buds from the trees, and the boy knew there was no end in sight. 

He scaled the narrow rock path to the hopeful shelter and seemed surprised to find the shallow grotto and its damp darkness already occupied by a man dressed in old knight’s attire, his hand ready on the hilt of gilt sword.  Though the knight regarded the boy with caution he determined him to be harmless, and both of them relaxed.  The boy sat on the cave floor opposite him and for a time they both watched in silence as the rain veiled the entrance to their hiding place.

“This storm came on fast,” the boy finally said.

“And without any warning,” the knight politely agreed.

Before silence could settle between them again, the farm-boy asked for a story.

“You’re a knight, aren’t you?” he goaded playfully.  “I’m sure you have great adventures to tell.  If you don’t, you’re probably not very good at your job!”

The knight seemed hesitant to admit his past, but as he became lost in memory he found that he could not deny the boy of the battles he and his men undertook.  He obliged the farm-boy’s request with stories of war against their greatest enemy, the Gray Dragon.  The knight shared that many of his men had lost wives and children to the beast, and though it seemed their curse to remain alive, he had always thanked God that they had lived to fight with him despite all odds. 

“One night my men celebrated while I chose to retire early,” the knight said.  “They were in high spirits, even when a sudden storm rained on our camp and quieted the fires.  An elderly traveler entered our circle begging for shelter from the rain, and my men welcomed him with open arms and gave him shares of their food and ale without question.

“But,” the knight finished grimly, “It was no weary traveler they allowed in their midst.  It was the Gray, and it slaughtered all of them and left me to bare the terrible burden of guilt.  My men deserved a more honorable end.”

By now his head hung low.  He gave it a somber shake.  “Their only crime was their unassuming generosity.  It blinded them.  If I had been with them I might have seen what they could not.”

The boy, who had been listening intently, smiled.

“In the end, aren’t you just like them?” he asked, tone sweet but voice very much changed.

The knight’s eyes widened, but he saw too late.