It is said that Extremis is the point where one as at the threshold of Death as the grim angel visits a man terrified to face his own mortality.

EXTREMIS

By. Alexander Rivera

I lay, silent, in the soft embrace of the sheets. Warmth was but a ferryman of calmness that sailed over me. The plastered walls stand veiled by shadows, cut slightly by the tiny hairs of light that seep in through the window. My eyelids hang heavy over my weathered eyes as I fall into sleep.

I cannot sleep, no matter how much I want to.

My ears fill with the bittersweet chora of silence; my mind begins to play its fiendish tricks, keeping me awake. Specters shift and dance devilishly in the corners of my eyes, disappearing if I were to look. They taunt me from all angles, manipulating the silence to their vile whims.

I cannot ignore them, but I cannot ignore my thoughts of her.

A foul taste responds in my mouth and dryness touches my tongue with a cindered finger. What am I to do? A frozen stream flows through my bones, rendering the joints as frozen water. I peer my eyes around, my desire to sleep overtaken by my fear of what might happen if such a thing were to happen. All I can think of is her, and if I were to disappear tonight, what would she think? What would she do?

The ebony tainted phantoms whisper my name over and over in my ear, teasing me with their nightmare talons.

Pikes and pillars of black blood and stained flesh arose around the room, pinpointing to stars masked by dark veils. I command my hands to slowly pull up the crisp warm sheets, fearing a clasped hand would pull them away, revealing me to what atrocities lurked in the darkest corners of my room.

If I were to step off, something would no doubt grasp tightly to my leg, pull me under, and massacre my body to an indistinguishable, misshapen heap. I lay my head back and forced my eyes shut, the whispers whirling like a cruel maelstrom around my head. What terror had sent such abominations unto me? What had I done to govern such a ghastly choir of the damned? Perplexity fluttered in my head, mixed with panic and thoughts of her. I didn’t want to leave, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t let them take me away.

Away to the dismal abyss from whence they came.

Atop a stone-cold corpse stood a fiend, terrifying, with its gaping maw dripping. Our eyes caught, mine frigid with fright, his hollow with maliciousness. I made not a sound as the floor teethed with fright below its icy feet. A humanoid, yes, but far from human.

Step, another step, yet anther step. Another, another, step, step, step. It kept coming, coming for me. The fog of black shifted around and the sir grew as empty as the creature’s inhuman feet.

Time was but a crow, flying at me and then gone into a horizon. I had not noticed it going but then, the grim figure was at the edge of my bed. Once again, I said nothing. The foul taste coursed through my mouth, between my teeth, under my tongue. Body as ice, eyes as cold steel, I lay waiting what I hoped with every muscle and thought would not come.

My face was grasped by such a might that I could not image a force of nature to equal it. Midnight chimed, twelve in me mind, the end to my soul. It was not what horrifying agony that would be inflicted on my body that cast the first blood of pain in my mind, it was the thought of never seeing her ever again.

As the fog flooded in over my frozen body, the reaper of my death standing above, thoughts of her resounded in my head.

Goodbye.