The sky is almost as dark as the man feels.
Ping, ping, ping!
The rain bounces off the roof.
CRACK!
Thunder howls in the air.
Purple and blue threads string through the sky
In unison.
They disappear just as fast
As the man’s hope had.

The man is much worse than alone.
A presence as heavy as the rain clouds looms.
It reaches out with nightmare-ish hands,
Wraps them around the man’s neck,
Breathes nothingness into the man’s lungs.

It climbs its way into the man’s brain,
Twists his gears,
Rearranges his thoughts,
Seeps its way through each cavity
Like a plague,
Corrupting.

It holds the man like a marionette,
Strings cutting off circulation;
The man’s arms and legs remain numb;
The man remains unmoving.

The darkness presses replay on
The man’s memories hung on the walls,
as if in a movie,
Reminiscing.
In its shadow is a figure,
One the man knew very well.

The figure, young as spring, laughs;
Hunched over it wilts like a dying flower,
Then drops like a petal on water.
Swallowed up by the ground, it is never to be seen again.

The darkness rests its arms on the man;
Nothing more than extra weight on
His hunched shoulders.

And even though accompanied,
The man has never felt more alone. •