Dreamworkart

The relief Thomas felt was a fragile thing, brittle as old glass. As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long, skeletal shadows across his bedroom floor, the memory of the basement began to claw its way back. "You're already mine." The words felt like a physical weight in his chest, a cold iron anchor dragging him back to that dark, damp room. His brother, Sam, sat on the edge of the opposite bed, tossing a baseball into his mitt with a rhythmic thwack, thwack, thwack. Sam was fourteen, six years older and a world away from the terrors Thomas was harboring. To Sam, the church was just a place they went on Sundays; to Thomas, it was now the mouth of something hungry. "You're quiet tonight, kid," Sam said without looking up. "Just thinking about Auntie moving," Thomas lied, his voice small. That night, the nightmare didn't wait for deep sleep. It came in the thin space between waking and dreaming. The closet door didn't just open; it seemed to dissolve into a void. Out of that

The basement of St. Gertrude’s smelled of damp concrete, forgotten hymns, and cold dust. It was a place where light only came from a single, naked bulb dangled by a frayed pull-string at the bottom of the creaking wooden stairs. Lacking a Sunday school, the church deemed this cavernous shadow-land the perfect nursery for the young. For five-year-old Thomas, the basement was now a sanctuary for grief. His grandfather had died only three days ago, leaving behind a silence in the house that terrified him. One Tuesday, while the older children played tag in the far corner, Thomas sat near the base of the stairs, clutching a dirty, wooden train left behind on the linoleum. The light flickered, not from a breeze, but from a sudden drop in temperature that turned his breath into mist. A man stepped from the darkness, though he seemed less to walk and more to assemble from the shadows themselves. He wore a suit that was not black, but rather the color of absolute absence, a shade that made the

I stand upon the lowest, unpassable peak, Where hell’s own fire burns the weary soul, A hardened, callous heart that does not speak, Yet loves the pain that makes the spirit whole. I deny the fleeting shadows of all emotion, Save for the one true flame, a raging ocean. For love is strife, a curse, a bloody prize, That wears a mask of hate before it dies. I walk through hell, I see its burning grace, And glimpse a heaven in the darkest place. I love to hate, and hate to love the breath That leads me closer to the void of death. The ones I keep close—my beautiful bane— I embrace them for the promise of the pain. We lie in comfort, building silent ghosts, I feed the very nightmare that I host. I will drop every petal from my bloom, Until I am a stem of thorns in gloom. A flower of iron, fragile yet so strong, Giving my all, though futility is long. I fight the fight until there is no war, And love the hate until I need no more. I am not a light that guides the blind, But a fire—a