Trembling With Fear 6-29-25

None the Wiser, by Maddox Emery Arnold

You must have known I was coming. Or did you forget? We’ve met before, you see. Long before the colors drained from your vision, when you could still wash the blood out of the wrinkles in your palms.

Don’t you remember all the good times we’ve shared? Diving for pearls in the back of slit throats, digging for gold between broken ribs. Ah, worry not, my love. I will tell you again. I vow to never grow tired of telling this story.

We can begin where we always do, by looking in the mirror. Such a simple act, and yet… What do you see? It is you, but not quite. Look at the arch of the brow, the curl of the lip. These things do not belong to you. Look at the eyes, just there. Ah, you see. A little deeper. A little older. Not quite yours. 

Close your eyes, now, and think back. That’s it, back to the night I first arrived. You and your little friends, prancing among the gravestones, broken glass pattering against frosted clover and narrowly avoiding flesh. Did you mean to awaken me? No, I think not. It was the bottle that told him to seek the oldest gravestone, the one with no name. If he had been in his right mind, perhaps he would have realized it was unmarked for a reason.

You remember him, don’t you? Your lover, your gemstone, your sun. I see flashes of his hands, his hair. The two of you in a polaroid, fading into view: him tall and you short, him sharp and you soft, a dazzling pair, you and he.

How did it feel to bathe in his blood? The warm viscosity, slick skin. The fear in his eyes, the confusion, utter betrayal… A tragedy, really. But I made sure you reveled in it.

I’ve told you before how I came to be. The when of it does not matter, the how is unimportant. But the fact of my being has become your compass, your rule of law. So you should know, my dear, that it was Death that bore me and Death that killed me and Death that brought me back. A terrible cost, but oh, so simple. So sweet. 

You loitered there, the four of you, you and him and the others I never cared to know. You laughed and cheered, exulting in the closeness of Death, the discovery of some ancient relic at the back of a cemetery you never thought you’d be buried in. This was all it took.

I had been gathering, condensing, waiting, for many years longer than you had been visiting that cemetery. A hole, a tiny pinprick indistinguishable from the darkness around me had opened. I reached out, sent forth a mere thread of myself, pushing through the soil and clay and grass. The chill night air was glorious, the first I had tasted in so long.

And then I found you. You were the closest, the easiest. I sent myself forward to reach you, your mouth open in a wide grin, and it was almost too easy to slip between your teeth. To expand and congeal against the roof of your mouth. To sink into the membranes. To change your smile from one of mirth to one of menace.

It took precious moments to acclimate to your form. I had to force your lungs to expand, contract, expand again, then to expel air with the proper vibrations, the correct shape of the lips and tongue.

I regret to say that I do not remember what I said. But once I spoke, he looked at me strangely. Your love. He knew I was there, somehow. I struck him down first, but killed him last.

I will spare you the details; we haven’t the time to delve. Three lives, three Deaths, a grounding. One the shovel, one the key, one the first meal. Glorious warmth against the cold, a newfound strength to chase back the weakness and malnutrition of my imprisonment.

And all that remained was you. You were the last, my dear, and I left you at dawn with a still-beating heart, dripping out of your mouth and melting away into the bitter wind that snapped you back to your senses. The worst of it is that you thought you escaped. I apologize for that deception. For it wasn’t until sunset that the truth and I found our way back to you.

You see, I am ancient, I am formidable, and yet I was never gifted with the same… stability that you and your kind possess. There is too much of me, too much within me, to contain in one vessel for too long. A body is all that I lack. And a body is what I need to continue my work.

Look closely, now. At the moonlight in your eyes. The shadow pooling beneath your jaw. It is as I said: you, but not quite. It is we, it is us. A prisoner for so long, subject to the worms and beetles and far-reaching roots, now becomes the jailer. By day I offer you the freedom of sunlight and ignorance. And each night I return to press my skin over yours, my will over yours, to pursue the blood and bone that will feed my strength. Together we become Death, to give and take, to rip and peel, to bear the weight of screams and don a veil of crimson silk.

And that is what you do for me, my love, what you sacrifice for me. Hush, now, drift within your mind, for you will not wish to see the deeds we commit on this night. Rest, my sweet, as a dagger may rest within a gilded sheath. Come morning, I promise you will have forgotten. But once the sun sets, you will be mine again, and I will tell you a story to help you fall asleep.