No one now knows what started
or what ended so abrupt
most are the dead that haunt us
and on our flesh they supped
They do not fear the darkness
to them it is their home
they reach out in the blackness
they wail when alone
and though we keep the light on
by burning bodies of our friends
they sneak out from the shadows
and whisper “This is how the world ends.”

You were there, I remember, sitting alone near old McKinney, the gray bartender who was always polishing his glasses and running thoughtful fingers through his peppery beard. He had poured you some deep red drink in a small sifter and you were playing with it, watching the liquors legs as if watching an exotic dancer. You weren’t drunk, you probably weren’t even buzzed, but you definitely weren’t all there. I could tell by the way you stared, because even though you were watching the glass, you weren’t seeing the glass. You had to have been a few hundred miles north of your brain, the way you were staring…

I remember seeing your gun, that 9mm you kept tucked in your belt, and wondering why you weren’t wearing your old leather jacket that usually hid the belly gun. I figured you’d finally shot somebody, and now it was wearing on your soul. I was happy for you, even though I knew you were anything but, I thought “It’s about time you killed them.”

Remember, you turned around and looked straight at me? You had that look in your face that you have whenever you eat your mothers Chinese. That “is this roof-rabbit or roaches…” kind of look of disgust. I smiled, you didn’t, you just reached back and pulled the gun from your belt. I remember McKinney turning to look at you as you leveled the barrel at my face. I was staring down the business-end of your firearm, still grinning, when McKinney gave you the go-ahead nod.

Six shots, I remember, you only fired six times. The sound they carried with them reverbrated for minutes after you had stopped firing. When you saw that not a single one had hit me, when you saw that I was standing in the exact same spot, staring at the smoking gun, your expression didn’t change at all. You just set the gun on the bar and turned back to your drink.

I sat down beside you, remember my sigh? You were always the agitator. McKinney got me a sifter and poured me a blood and tonic, and I didn’t swish it around like you, I drank it all in one gulp, and the legs left in the glass were just the remnants of coagulating blood. I remember that McKinney’s blood and tonic was particularly luke warm that night.

I remember thinking seconds after I’d downed the drink that you’re not supposed to drink from the dead, or that was the rumor. I remember thinking how low you were, what a low down trick that would’ve been.

I remember thinking that I would’ve deserved it.

She hurried down the last ten steps in a graceful, cat-like run, fearing that if she didn’t hurry, she’d lose heart to do what she had to do.
There was a door at the bottom step that she pushed open slowly, as though afraid of disturbing some sleeping dragon. Instead, warm air and red light flooded her, causing her to shudder again as she stepped onto polished spanish tile in a room of old adobe and red brick. The room was large and round with andalucian and tuscan archways over heavy iron doors set every thirty feet. Bar tables and chairs littered the floor like flotsam after a storm, none of them over turned, but all of them seeming out of place. There was a stage in the center of the room, a simple platform of black-painted pine. Against the opposite side of the room, Sibylla saw the bar and the shining glasses hanging above the polished granite surface, an ancient barman wiping oil over the wooden face of his liquor cabinet to make it shine.
“Sibylla McCoy, correct?” Sibylla jumped at the sound of the voice, surprised that in ehr observations of the room she had failed to notice a man sitting at one of the tables.
He was thin, far too much so for his hollowed face and sunken eyes that flashed like amber lightning as though lit by hellfire. He wore a long black jacket in oriental style that clung to him for fear that if he got much thinner, he’d disappear all together.
The Thin Man stood from where he was lounging and walked towards her, eyeballing the slender figure, the steeled-calves, the curve of her hips, the line of her jaw. He smiled at her, and the sight of it caused her to look away.
“Madame Rosierra has been expecting you, I believe you have a wish on hold with her until you could find adequate payment?” She glanced at the Thin Man, keeping her eyes on his feet instead of his face for fear of that terrifying grin.
“Yes,” she replied softly, “I’ve acquired what she asked of me.”
“Ah,” said the Thin Man, turning and sweeping through the tables and chairs like a shadow cast by fire. He opened one of the doors in the wall. He bowed to her form across the room and motioned with his hand through the open door.
Sibylla tried not to hurry, she was afraid if she moved too quickly, her heels would betray her toes and she’d fall. That would not be good to do in front of this creature, she thought.
Through the opened door the decor changed drastically from the tuscan bar to a turkish parlor. Lavish rugs, tables, and finery dazzled her eyes and light poured in from the walls, but from no windows.
“Madame Rosierra will find you here, if you wait. A pleasure, mademoiselle.” The Thin Man closed the door behind her, leaving her alone in the golden room.
“Do not look so panicked, child,” said a voice and Sibylla looked towards one of the curtains, hanging over the soft white light, as it moved aside. A woman walked forward from the glow dressed in the fashion of a grecian princess. The woman was not old, but she was not young like Sibylla. Her eyes held her age in them, though her body did not.
“Madame Rosierra?” Sibylla asked and the woman bowed her head slightly in acknowledgement.
“You have a wish, I believe,” said Rosierra, “a wish which requires payment.”
“Yes,” said Sibylla, emboldened as she looked at this woman. Rosierra held out her hand to her.
“Come with me, into my realm, and we will discuss your wish, its reprecussions, and whether or not you have enough to pay for it. Come, Sibylla McCoy, let us walk together.”

“The time has come,” the walrus says
he smiles as he speaks
and as his utternace rhymes its way
my mind begins to rock and sway
like the sea that’s boiling hot
like the ship that leaks…

He speaks in riddles, tongues and taunts
he’s baffling, a modern daunt
but despite his words, despite my ears
ignoring those inclined to tears
disregard the madness in the brain
it’s plain, its simple, and inane
the Walrus knows the secrets of
the Looking Glass, the World and Love
for what enemy could ever hold one close
than one who knows the deadly dose
of violent poison, of concoction crazed
but a lunatic who spends his days
wandering the seashore around midnight
half in dark, half daylight
shouting to the pigs with wings
“the time has come! to talk of other things.”