Writing Prompts (Week 1) - The Angelic Children

I wanted it to end...
This hell, this nightmare...

I wanted all I saw before me to simply cease to be. I wanted badly to wake from this terrible dream...

But deep down inside I knew...
I knew that it.. he.. had only just begun...

Pixabay
The Angelic Children...

It had started as a relatively simple case of a missing child. Not the first time a hyper active kid would lose his way in the local park was the collective thought we held. Until it was not.

Jack was never found, he never stumbled out of a forgotten structure, nor was he chanced upon by one of the too many volunteers who searched the streets and mini woodlands that surrounded our little town. Then exactly one year later, Charlie also disappeared...

Then Lily, then pretty Helen, and cranky Josh. Tony the hugger, and Peter with the loveable smile... And one more, and one more, and always one more... Every single year...

It became a dark cloud which hung over all of us. Many left, they never returned. For those of us who stayed, we found it hard distinguishing between those missing and those who left...

But Father Augustine was our opium... He was like a breath of fresh air, a timely God sent.

He stepped in with comfort, just when we needed it the most. He calmed our fears, oh how he spoke of the holy ghost..

But what truly brought the light back in our lives, what really made us recall that forgotten warmth of a friendly smile.. It was that monument which he made us build with each confirmed child lost, that symbol of rest and peace in the midst of turbulence.. dedicated to all those who were missing...

We christened it The Pillars of The Angelic Children...

And then for a while all had seemed and felt okay...

For a while...

Until I had fatefully, yet unexpectedly walked into one truly strange dinner...

It was maybe a word of advice I had sought, or perhaps just a soothing little prayer. I truly cannot remember now, it seems so far away..

I only know I walked into the Cathedral, and found it empty. And somehow I had found my way to the Priest's Chambers, no priest in sight, but a slightly opened door beckoned in front of me...

Down the stairs I had gone, down to the Church basement. And here, oh here I had felt my very being paralyse with each piece of dead bone...

Literally...

They were everywhere.. on the floor, on the tables, on the racks... I didn't need a second look, these were human bones, children's bones...

Comprehension fled, my thoughts struggled fruitlessly, and in that few tense yet strangely still moments, the silence was deafening...

Then the door up the stairs creaked, and somehow I had sprung alive...

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Disaster calls...
Like the mild ripples of a tropical river, approaching the turbulence of a water fall...
In slow, peaceful, immense orbits...

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Every breath I took was carefully measured, every blink calculated. I stood still in that old, dusty, closet. I stood there and willed all of me to die. Because somehow, my life had become dependent on it.

But as through a tiny little hole I watched, something in me did truly die...

He was six, he'd only been missing a few months, and we'd just finished his pillar a couple days back.

I watched as he was cut, I froze as he was cooked.. the aroma a mixture of both beef and incense. I watched as Father Augustine, oh but he was no Father at all. I watched as he stirred the contents of that pot and put a little taste to his lips.

Too late, I gasped...

He paused in his cooking, and he stared straight at me. I became inanimate, I didn't even inhale. Yet somehow it seemed he could almost see through the wooden doors of the closet.

Then he started walking towards me, the stirring spoon still in his hand. I knew he wasn't young and strong, but then neither was I. He had a spoon in hand, and I had my heart. He ate humans.. I, only a simple woman...

He took measured steps, and with each I felt the insides of his pot get closer. My heart left my hands to my mouth. He was now only a step away...

With his free hand he reached for the closet handle. My screams struggled to find a way past the heart stuck in my throat...

All I could think of was the words of one of the mothers of the missing...

"Reasons to live; but give me reasons to die..."

I blacked out...

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Find and receive what cheer you may..
The night is long which never finds the day...
--William Shakespeare

THE END

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#SladenSpeaks

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Written for @themarkymark's Writing Prompt Contest

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