The Cursed City

That's the thing about this city. This damned, cursed city. When the sun sinks below the towering buildings, like honey falling to the bottom of a mug of tea, and the shadows stretch long over the streets, it transforms. A city that was chock full of people, merley hours before, emptied of shoppers, taxi's, hawkers and performers- colorful ribbons, spray paint cans and wares of all sorts stuffed precariously into bags, cars and boxes as the first hint of the impending evening. The music that fills the streets, spilling from restaurants and live instruments, slows to a trickle, and then a halt- doors closing and lights flicking off, blinds drawn roughly and doors locked, the sound of thousands of clicks echoing through the streets as the streetlights buzz to life, doing little to hinder the steady advance of the night- crawling closer on dark padded paws or hoves or talon, soft as a breath whispering between the alleyways and drains.

Like any other city, this one has it vagrants and homelessness, and the unfortunate souls who have no home to go to, hide themselves in trash cans, up trees or wherever they deem safest, their faces blank or twisted in terror and sorrow, holding themselves with the the eerie stillness of someone who is painfully aware of their mortality- so aware that some of them do not try to escape it by cowering in shrubbery or behind dumpsters or parked cars. Some of them sit under the streetlight, as if beneath a beacon, planted on a curb or a park bench, staring emptily as the last rays of light disappear as if they never existed at all. As if this world had never been touched by the sun.

As if the darkness that stalked the streets had lived there-been born there- the world made for its consummation, made for it’s birth- created for the soul purpose of providing it with endless shade and dusk. The night was here, the sliver of moon high above like the curve of a claw, the stars sprinkled across the city as if some God had tossed a handful of salt carelessly across a midnight tablecloth. But the night was not what the city goers feared. The night brought the Night, the Shadow, the Reaper, the Night Walker, the Curse- as some called her. The Somnum Exterreri; the Nightmare. The Nightmare whisked through the streets, rattling the windows in their frames, and mother hushed their babies, drawing them closer to her breast, as a cold wind kissed the air that followed the creature.

The creature curled around the lampposts, searching- searching for her prey- obscuring the dim light that flickered from the weakened bulb, and moved on to the park benches, where a glassy eyed woman hunched over, holding her knees, her forearms peppered with tiny holes, a syringe discarded at her foot. She lifted her head as the beast approached, staring blankly at what was surely the most lovely and terrible thing she would ever see again. She didn't utter a word as the beast lept, and she disappeared, not a trace of blood or a strand of hair left to show that she was there only moments before, only a wisp of shadow and the flash of fanged teeth over the words inscribed on the bench: Pulvis et umbra sumus; We are dust and shadows. The motto of the city, of the people who feverishly rushed inside at the first hint of sunset. And indeed we are- dust and shadows- that is. To the beast who hunted through the streets, we are nothing more than fodder, and yet the motto had been inscribed on signs, buildings, statues and monuments as a comfort. To the denizens, it was meant as a reminder that life, all life, was just a short flicker in the grand scheme of the universe, and that the Nightmare was only there to return us to where we came.

The Somnum Exterreri continued through the city, the locked doors and amulets of protection hanging from or stamped onto thresholds no hindrance to her, despite the superstition of the city goers. She breezed into a house and approached a withered man in his armchair. The man turned to look at the creature as she swept into the room, shadows thrashing in her wake. The man sighed, pushing himself up on arms wrinkled with age, his blue veins visible through his paper thin skin. He tucked a folded photograph of his daughter into his pocket, and patted a mutt curled on a rug, looking up at his owner sadly. Then he walked toward the cursed beast with open arms, as if approaching a lover, and disappeared in a breath of cold air.

Throughout late hours, the Nightmare hunted, taking only her prey, searching with willful determination through the streets, prowling past anything that stood in her way, as insubstantial as light. She flew, galloped and prowled over the city- she had no form really. She could appear as an oil black mare with a glistening coat, an obsidian tigress with silver claws and teeth, a lovely, dark woman, an elegant black swan or any other nightmare or dream. She took men, women and children alike, no pity in her glowing gaze as she swept over the sick, the old, and the injured- only dark grace and cold silence. Some did not go easily, they thrashed and stormed and screamed their defiance in her mighty claws, and if they struggled hard enough, she let them live- like a cat letting a mouse escape- only to return the next night to test their willpower once again. Some came quietly- the old, the sickly who were too exhausted to fight, and she waited patiently as they prepared themselves to dissipate with the morning dew.

When the first touch of morning lit the skys, and the city seemed to finally exhale, the beast vanished in a flush of night kissed wind, fading into the light, just as the stars did. The city began to bustle to life once more, safe for a while from the predator that their cursed city housed. The creature that stormed through their streets beneath the moon and stars, and took their loved ones without a trace. The Somnum Exterreri’s coming was inevitable for every citizen of the city. The curse that lay upon the cobblestones, the walkways, the very foundation of the buildings and unholy soil of the parks and gardens ensured the appearance of the beast at every sundown, born from shadow and night to reap the city, and all feared her, only some knew her true name - Death.