Aphelion Issue 300, Volume 28
November 2024--
 
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The Devil's Last Gesture

by Alexis Child


The future is red fluids
seething with rage
The night is dead and long
She wonders why she is
the only one breathing

On this dark-eyed Halloween
she can't hear their voices
dismantling her
one bone at a time

Her breath is tangled in a whirling dervish of words
Making her pale skin in a black dress
look like a painting
They sway together in the wind
Branches tangled and twisted together
Until they could not ignore the nothingness

She wrote a poem. The very last one
and then put down her pen
and wrote the last sentence
"I saw death and it was beautiful"
How odd to ignore the memory

And then that very night
she fell into a dark trance
like the subtle scent of frankincense
In remembrance of princes and pain
she shuts her wild eyes
Where the moon never beams again


© 2020 Alexis Child. All rites reserved until the worms crawl in…

Alexis Child hails from Toronto, where horror in its purest form is a calculated crime against both the aspirations of the soul and affections of the heart. She worked at a Call Crisis Centre, befriending demons of the mind that roam freely amongst her writings, once lived with a Calico-cat child sleuthing all that went bump in the night, and is haunted by the memory of her cat.

Her fiction has been featured in Schlock Magazine, The Official Fields of the Nephilim Site, SinisterCity, and U.K.’s Dark of Night Magazine.

Her poetry has been featured in numerous online and print publications, including Aphelion, Black Petals, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, The Horror Zine and elsewhere. 

Her first collection of poetry, Devil in the Clock, a dark and sinister slice of macabre horror, gothic, surreal & supernatural poetry is now available on Amazon.

Visit her website: http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/alexischild/

Find more by Alexis Child in the Author Index.

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