Amazon Book Description Soon, the Earth will be no more. Jean is the last of the vampire lords. Born to immortality, his race now faces the waning …
Featuring “The Eternals” by Richard Ankers
A big thank you to editor Barbara Leonhard for the above post.
Richard
The eagle flew beneath me like a vibrant shadow. I almost stumbled, almost fell. Every feather of its most remarkable wingspan stood detailed, as though edged in moonbeam silver. Odd for a sunny day? But wasn’t it all?
The city basked in resplendent sunshine, the sort that misted the park grass and crinkled the discarded food wrappers. I’d always loved the juxtaposition of humanity’s desire to do right and the reality of doing wrong.
Cerulean seemed the order of the day with occasional bursts of cotton white. Gold glinted off every reflected surface, dazzling the drivers and spotlighting more misery than any one place deserved. There were so many pairs of dark glasses that I almost forgot everyone had eyes. They appeared happier for them and not just because they prevented a blinding.
I sauntered along the waterfront for a while, as I often did. There was a time when the schooners had sailed the river like gigantic swans, elegant and free. This was long gone, but its residual memory permeated my conscience, and when I closed my eyes, they were almost there. Almost, but not quite.
The church spires and clock towers stood out this day, as though reminding everyone of religion and time and daring them to make their choice. I chose the latter, but only because I’d sampled the prior and found it wanting. There was a great deal of brick on display and less wood than expected. This was not a passing phase. Where once pretty flowerbeds lined the area, now tarmac car parks proliferated. Where avenues of beech trees and rows of rowans decorated with red berries once danced beside the stagecoaches and cabs, now, double yellow lines and bollards. It just wasn’t the same.
I took two lefts and a right for no other reason than boredom and found myself bottlenecked in an alley not fit for rats. Loose papers blew around like confetti at a beggar’s wedding, and glass bottles clinked. Dustbins rolled like tortoises turned on their backs. A glance at the sky appeared as a tungsten fracture. The blue had gone, as had any remaining joy.
There was life in that place, ugly men that shed their detritus skins like snakes and slithered towards me. They were dirty creatures, desperate and gloom-riddled. When they smiled, their mouths looked rotten. When they sneered, I pitied their pain. Some were there by destiny, others by mishap, but many by choice. I hadn’t the time to discern which was which, so went for something dramatic.
The eagle flexed as a dramatic shadow. Wings so massive as to reach the street encompassed them. All they could do was weep, as had so many before them.
Sometimes, I hated the eagle. Those wings elicited such fear in others when they were only ever meant to fly. A fallen feather dissolved into ash. I stood on it and watched its atoms blow away.
The rest of the day dragged past. The hours stretched like uncut pasta, inedible and useless. There was a momentary respite when the sun made claret of the early evening; it drew a tongue-smacking response, but it was soon over and never felt real.
The eagle beneath grew restless. The creature yearned for the moon, for the calm of a celestial evening. As the streetlights flicked on to tangerine bursts of wretched illumination, even this dream stood in tatters. I needed to get higher.
I climbed a hill that stood as a carbuncle when it should have drawn all to it. A few trees languished there, interspersed with dead grass and a patchwork of scrub, as though reluctantly planted and not cared for one jot. A few scattered rocks added to the general malaise. It was barely any better than the city. Still, it offered a view.
Venus shone like a diamond set in an obsidian necklace as an opal moon rose to meet it somewhere on the chain. An eerie glow emanated from the city, deterring nocturnal visitors. Still, two were better than none. I lay back in the grass to some slight discomfort, watching and waiting as I wept.
Weeping was a trait that never deserted me. My mercury tears flowed unchecked. The eagle just shook them away.
Deep in the depths of the night, as I slept a restless sleep, it appeared. It wasn’t the eagle, not then. It was never the eagle. When the anger rose, and the bile bit like acid. When the sun was forgotten, and the moon revealed the truth. When the eagle’s shadowy wings had shed every midnight feather. This was the moment of revelation: I was never beneath an eagle, only ever above a bat.
The End
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Thank you for reading
Richard
A very big thank you to editor, Mirjana M, for assembling this wonderful magazine of poetry and prose, which includes my own dark piece, Tenebrae.
Please find below the link to the magazine itself:
And below here for its WordPress website.
I hope you enjoy reading Tenebrae and the other fantastic pieces in the collection.
Thanks for reading
Richard
I am absolutely delighted to be included in my favourite magazine once again. I’m a luck boy with how many places I’ve been published, but there’s something about Noctivagant that stirs the soul. Always beautifully presented, and full of top quality work, I cannot recommend reading it enough. Now available to view on Noctivagant Press’ website and soon to be released as a book, I hope you can take some time out of your busy schedules to enjoy some good old fantastical reads.
This season’s topic was dark romance, and my own story, ‘To Indigo Lost‘ is about as dark as they come. Please do enjoy.
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of The Eternals Series
and
From the depths of darkness springs a fountain of perfect night
bereft of stars and moon and dust,
where empty dreams pour forth in wayward moments
as shadows and onyx dusks.
This was whence she came from.
This was the once home of Death.
She wore her hair long about slim shoulders,
like raven epaulettes burnished to a glasslike night.
Porcelain skin adorned by the ultramarine
jewels that were her eyes,
she brought with her only the abyss,
her wants and her fears,
as she hauled herself from the Beneath
and tiptoed away into a world of frosting breaths.
She’d never seen anything sparkle.
How Death wept at the beauty of it all.
to be continued. . .
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Also Available:
The Eternals Series: The Eternals / Hunter Hunted / Into Eternity
The sky collapsed in evening shades. Every second spawned a greater darkness. Every hour weighed upon the soul. Leaden and unwilling to relent, the clouds engulfed us. This was how purgatory descended.
The ivy crept across the floor more from necessity than design, looking to strangle the world one lump of grit at a time. We didn’t see it, of course, but we felt every inch of unleashed tendril. This was how purgatory attacked.
We found each other in paired hands, squeezing. There were no sounds. Death came easily to us over and over again. Had ever a reality been conquered so easily? We still believed it a dream, of course. Somewhere deep in limbo’s fog, an entity whistled from boredom. Unless it was me? This was how purgatory won.
Thank you for reading
Richard
I feel very privileged to have had ‘The Silent Raven Calls‘ published by the wonderful Gobblers & Masticadores magazine. This is a dark fantasy story telling how strong the bond between a mother and her daughter is regardless of the circumstances.
If you want a good read offered in many styles (and languages) then you could do far worse than giving Gobblers and Masticadores a try. The good people who operate the magazine have also asked if I would contribute to them monthly, and I’ve agreed, so be prepared.
I hope you have time to read my story, and as always, thank you for reading this.
Richard
“It washes across you like a mother’s first kiss. You don’t remember the sensation, but it’s always been there. That tactile moment of skin on skin, of what was within being without. There’s nothing more magical.”
He waved away the horseman and drew his guest further into the fields. Tall and dark, only his flashing, bright eyes proved him there, unlike his guest, who wore scarlet. He assisted her over a small, uneven fence, the poorest of barriers, and led her on by the arm. He renewed his soliloquy as though never having missed a beat, he the actor and she his audience.
“No words written or spoken may explain nor surpass it. No other feeling comes close. This is the bliss of a perfect night. Alas, you only truly remember the last.” He turned away as though moved by his own words, a shadow within a shadow within a dream.
She spoke for the first time, light and hopeful. “And tonight, my love?” The girl shook out her usually ink-black hair to a deluge of silver, so bright was the moonlight, batted long lashes the same.
“More than any.”
She took him in all his brooding majesty. And despite his obvious melancholy, an almost perpetual predilection, and how the moonlight shied away from his form, she smiled a smile of utter contentment, of getting just what she wanted and when. “I think I’ve waited long enough.”
“Yes, my dear. I believe you have.”
The two nestled down in a quicksilver ocean of rippling grasses, disappearing beneath those unusual waves like breaching whales bound for an ultramarine abyss. Neither the hooting owl nor the gathering wind disturbed them. Not a watching ghost disrupted their repose.
Time passed.
#
It was many hours before they resurfaced, one head at a time, eyes rubbed awake and blinking. She of the waist-length hair came first and him second. The moon had barely moved, giving no evidence of time having altered, as though hung there by some invisible cosmic thread. The stars surrounded it still like a celestial shawl. Those ebony spaces between them engulfed the rest.
And so it was her amber eyes wandered, whilst his remained on her. Up they rose, higher and higher, defiant against both nebulae and shooting stars alike. Her head cocked to one side like an inquisitive robin, a look her outfit enhanced. She grinned as the moon winked daggers.
Secure in his gaze, she reached into her jacket and pulled out a tortoiseshell comb. There, beneath infinity, she brushed out that which marked her beauty, defiant in her belief that to him, at least, she rivalled the eternal night.
“Do you bring many women here?”
“Not here.”
“Then, I am the first?”
“Beneath this moon, at this time, and this place, yes.”
“I’m honoured. You, so privileged and dashing, might have chosen any woman.”
“Just any woman wouldn’t do.”
Her cheeks glowed a crimson to rival her dress. “Do you think we might return here every evening? Beneath this same moon? This same space?”
“We need never leave.”
“Good,” she said. “Though I am a little hungry.”
“As am I.”
He leant in close, closer, closer still.
Her heart beat like a moth’s wings, fast and silent.
The night breathed long and deep.
His lips met her neck and kept on going. Strong hands pinned her arms as his mouth bit deep. It was soon over.
The fields kept rippling as the moon shone brighter, and a man who’d seen more than he ought, wept.
Time stalled.
#
When his anguish seemed inconsolable, he stopped, as though God had suddenly dammed his eyes. He licked stained lips.
“I shall bury you, my love, as I have them all.”
He used his hands to scoop the soft earth from the ground, powerful arms to drive them. He excavated more soil in a minute than a dozen gravediggers might shift in a week.
Once finished, he stepped back. Looked down. Sighed. The hole stood not empty, but full. It brimmed with sloshing moonlight.
The man removed his jacket, ancient in its styling, bursting with brocade and lace. Next came his shirt revealing a milk-white torso, then his shoes and britches. He lowered himself into the hole-made-grave and, a second later, was gone.
One might have feared for the fellow then, but he had other ideas. Rising from those false, silver waters, he lifted the one whose life he’d taken and lowered her gently into the pit. He spoke as though in a trance.
“I shall make right what fate corrupted by sacrificial blood and flesh. For this, I thank you. Truly, yours was a gift. Thanks to you, I endure, not in hate or violence, but nocturnal bliss. Thanks to you, my dear. Yes, thanks to you. And I say this with a sincerity others would claim absent, I loved you. For a time, I have loved you all. But nothing, nothing, my love, rivals the serenity of the moon.”
Time pooled.
The End.
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
The ghosts ate the sky first.
As albino Swallows, they nibbled and swooped, munched and slurped. They spared nothing. Like strands of candy floss pulled from the whole, the ghosts sucked them away. For a time, the sky couldn’t have been clearer.
We watched mouths agape, eyes rubbed raw, minds flittering in disbelief. The cleansed sky grew brighter with each passing, shining in sapphire, glittering in gold. I liked how it sparkled just before they ate the sun. I’d seen rainbows give their all and then disappear, fill the atmosphere with hope and beauty and dreams before shattering them, but I’d never seen it with the sun. No one had.
They took the moon before it breached the mountains, sucking it up like spilt milk. The stars never stood a chance.
We prayed in small, circular groups. The eldest told us to shut our eyes, but I suspected them scared. It was an excuse, a white lie told for their benefit, not ours. So, I set my vision on one of them, less a bird now and more a blanket, and that’s where it remained.
It was odd following the ghost’s haphazard movements. One might have thought it blown, or tugged like a kite, but neither explained its ability to travel wherever it wished. I envied it if truth be told. I wanted to roam the air. And then suddenly, I did not.
They dove as a luminesce squadron. Perhaps it was their insatiable hunger, perhaps not, but the ghosts required new sustenance, and we were it.
They took the men first and the odd large woman. Their mouths yawned wide like aerial whales, and we were their oversized plankton. People fought back, but to no avail. They swiped and bashed and kicked and screamed, but all ended up in the same place: Within.
The children held their parents until the last seconds of their adult lives. Some lost their hands they gripped so tightly. The rest of us ran.
Some ascended, others descended, whilst I hid in plain sight. Actually, that’s not entirely true.
I ran inside, petrified. Up the stairs I hurtled, and through my bedroom door. My mind relaxed for an instant. I stumbled, fell, got entwined in my sheets. There I lay, gasping.
Coincidence ushered them in at that moment, sweeping through the windows, pouring through the doors. I quaked. My teeth chattered. The ghosts saw and heard nothing.
They left when they realised the house empty, and I breathed again.
It took several hours to muster the courage to step outside, and even then, only long after the screaming stopped. I wished I’d stayed inside.
There was nothing: no mountains, woods, or cities; no rocks, trees, or grass. The lake was as empty as my stomach, and the distant ocean roared no more. I was alone. Well, almost alone.
They hovered and stood and lounged and lay, everywhere and nowhere, up, down and all around. Their job was done. But what was mine?
In a moment of divine inspiration, I approached them.
Hello, I said, though not a sound came out.
The ghost nodded, or dipped, or wavered.
Why?
If it was its head, the ghost cocked it, or slumped like a half-empty bag of coal.
Why not me? I said. It was the bravest thing I’d said since, Stop!
A void opened where a mouth ought to have been. The ghost attempted to form words. It failed.
And I thought I might never know why I alone survived humanity’s cleansing.
I slipped out of the sheet and cast it aside. Not one ghost gave me a second look.
Kill me. I don’t want to be the last.
My desperate eyes slipped to the ground like April rain, and there written in the dust were the words:You’re already dead.
I knew they were right, had for a long time. But when you play and sleep and act human, as I did the night he hit her and I stepped in-between, then you almost convince yourself you are. Almost.
It was then that she came for me. I’d have known her anywhere.
It was all for me, but was it in my head, delusions of a spectral brain? Who knew? Who cared! She was there and that’s all that mattered.
I realised the ghosts had never taken us within, but me that had stepped outside.
The End.
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Richard M. Ankers - Storybook 
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