Oxy Moron, Contributor

In the light of the moon, the obeahman stoops. He looks towards the heavens. His creased parchment-like skin betrays years of evil and guile. The cataract in his left eye masks the beauty of the moon. Sunken eye sockets, caverns of decadence and doom are filled with malice and bitterness. Within the cavity of his chest a heart beats desperately, and death creeps upon the grey matter in his brain.

Rise up, old man, and survey the night sky. Eternal stars are twinkling. But, your days are dwindling, and you spend them wondering whom you have been wronging, wondering when death's harbingers will come to carry you away to that place, your grave.

Nocturnal insects feed on his flesh, not yet deceased, and he feels the pain his mother felt when he killed her at childbirth. He hears her wails echoing in his skull, and her tear-stained face appears in the moon and fades. Her tears fall from the sky; tomorrow's dew on the grass.

Wickedness

Your own children have forsaken you, because you had left them in hunger and in need. Their mother's cries are the murmurs of the pine trees, swaying to the dance of death. Tomorrow morning, Venus shall flirt with the fading moon, and you will behold the grandeur, the beauty, the sex. The sun shall cover their nakedness and expose your wickedness.

He yawns wearily, for he's impatient with life, but afraid to die. His frailty of body struggles with the strength of the guango tree under which he stands. He has one last act to commit. So, he feels into a sack and removes a robust rooster. He remembers his early conquests, his beguiling ways, the treacheries and the rapes.

Did you hear their pleas? Their screams shattered the dreams of their youth, and your lust destroyed their innocence.

The machete's blade glistens in the moonlight. He holds the rooster by its body and swipes away at its neck. Its head falls at his feet. The rooster shall crow no more. He tosses its head into bushes below, rips the rooster's body apart, removes the organs and discards the carcass. Streams of gall run from his mouth as he chews the entrails with toothless gums. He wipes his bloody hand on his matted hair.

Gangrenous tongue

Do you remember the day when you rubbed pepper all over your aunt's dear old pussycat, after you skinned it alive? You smiled in triumph, delighted in its pain, and then you plucked its eyes out before you set it loose. You were only five.

An owl hoots from across the river as he smacks his lips with a gangrenous tongue. He looks to the east. Dark clouds cover the red moon. From the pocket of his cloak he takes a vial, caressing it with his bony fingers. He carefully removes the cork. Turning his back to the east, he looks to the west and slowly puts the vial to his lips. The moon reappears as the quicksilver jumps down his throat.

Oh, you merchant of death! So afraid of death. Your rituals are but in vain, for death shall come, slowly, but it shall. You have dipped your hands into the oceans of iniquity and now you are delaying your own death. You are afraid to leave this bitter Earth, made more bitter by your own acts of bloodletting and your thirst for gall. Oh, you sorcerer of sorcerers. It will come, slowly, but it shall come.

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