16. A Haunted Escapade
(Sonnets)

Now, whenever I pass by our 2nd floor corridor in the house, I imagine seeing a pale girl in a Victorian style dress holding up an axe, by the top of the stairs.

—Eleonne Moona (from Wattpad)

1. The Scroll

I am alone, cut off from all the things
   That used to bring me joy; I am a shell
Of what I was, a husk of bitter stings
   That shock each beating pulse! This hell
Of my own mind, of my own making, still
   Provides the burning ember of creation
Inside this haunted mind. I take this quill
   And dip it in the blood of my damnation
And write the sentence of my penance here
   Upon this very scroll you're reading now;
I know you're reading this, but do not fear,
   For I'll be with you to the end somehow,
      Even as day shall bleed to endless night
      That snuffs the flame of courage into fright . . .

2. The Bedroom

A thousand worries kept me from the fold
   Of gentle sleep, because it was the time
   When everything that crept commits a crime
Against the vulnerable, the young and bold,
Whose plastic minds have conjured up a field
   Of sleepless dreams that swam before their eyes—
   Of monsters harking to their startled cries
When heedless parents failed to come and shield
Their sons and daughters from the looming threat;
   But even when they came to comfort them,
Their presence driving ghouls back in retreat,
   Ghouls came back once they're gone to make us scream.
      I screamed, but still my parents heard me not:
      This room has teeth, and in its jaws I'm caught.

3. The Screams

The screams of Hell awoke me from my slumber,
   As something sharp had spiked me through the heart;
   Flinging the sheets, I sat up with a start,
My mind submerged in worries without number
Over the lunacies that still encumber
   My waking life with thoughts of cruel despair,
   Because my childhood died upon the air
On this ungodly night! I still remember
(By God, I still remember) how their screams
   Have scraped the silence bare, have left the strings
   Of love to rot, have poisoned words, have springs
Of blood and tears bleed out, have filled my dreams
   With visionary traumas traced with hate:
   Such was my lot, and such is now my fate.

4. The Monsters

How can I sleep? A pandemonium
   Of bitter screams and yet more arguments
   Corrupt the sleepless night with monuments
Of hate and inner pain that leave me numb,
As if my world has fallen from a crumb
   Of discontent, my prayers mere ornaments!
   What origins, what foul determinants,
Fester my life with such a horrid outcome?
I left the bed and crept out past the door,
   Then through the hallway, down the stairs, then halted
Before the ruckus of my parents' war
   Inside the family room: they both assaulted
      Each other with their words like saber-cuts,
      The floor beneath them splayed with blood and guts.

5. The Entrapment

I gasped and faltered in my step, then froze,
   Feeling the goosebumps resurrect my skin
   With horrid premonitions from within,
As though my body knew these awful throes
Of sudden revelation might disclose
   My presence to the monsters in their fight:
   The screams have stopped, and so I take my flight
Through staircase, hallway, bedroom door in shadows,
Whereat I slammed the door and propped a chair
Against the knob, then waited in despair:
   I backed myself against the corner, crying.
Their prowling footsteps creaked upon the stair,
Reverberating through the midnight air:
   Now trapped inside my room, I felt like dying.

6. Their Voices

Their footsteps creaked upon the staircase, through
   The hallway, getting louder than before,
   And halted on the threshold of my door,
Where something dark formed underneath and grew
Across the carpet of my room towards me;
   And so I turned the lamp, and back it shrank,
   Leaving the carpet wet whereon it stank
Of blood, the stench of which assaults and swords me.
I vomited the contents of my stomach,
   Whereat my parents said, "Are you all right?"
   And all my nerves then shook in utter fright:
Besides the sight of blood, besides its haemic *
   Stench, their voices scraped the air in monstrous notes,
   As if the speakers in them were but Goats.

7. No Escape **

Their voices scraped the air, and gentle rapping
   Upon the door now turned to hammer blows;
They said, "Come out, come out, our little sapling!
   Come out, or else we'll cut off all your toes!"
I scrambled to my feet, then grabbed a bat
   And broke my window pane, while hammer fists
Broke through the panels, claws ripped through with splat
   After splat of something bleeding from cut wrists.
I scrambled through the broken window pane,
   But clawed hands grabbed my ankles, and I screamed:
Their claws cut through the skin, and all the pain
   I felt filled up the night with cries undreamed
Of in my nightmares, held in place, then lifted
   Aloft in two firm grasps outside my window;
So looking up through tears, I saw the shifted
   Faces of my two parents, grinning with no
      Soul in their eyes: they dropped me, and I fell
      Down to my death below me, down to Hell!

8. My Depression ***

A hell far worse than Hell itself, a hell
   I've carried deep inside my weary brain,
   Now bleeds out through my ears and eyes like rain:
A thousand hateful words have rung the knell
Of deep regrets that hang on lips of death;
   A thousand spiteful looks have etched disdain
   On fading looks of cheer that still remain,
Etched slowly with the passage of each breath.
If words of love have lifted me to Heaven,
   And words of hate have dragged me down to Hell,
      Such words have carved out suicidal thoughts
      Inside this mind that slowly—slowly—rots:
   So if you think that I was just unwell,
You saw not, heard not, knew not, never even
         Attempted to believe in
The demons that have spawned inside my head,
Because you thought that everything I said
         Was just a made-up thread
Of lies! Your words of doubt have carved a tomb
Inside my mind, wherein my thoughts of doom
         Have buried me in gloom.

9. The Neighborhood

Before me was the moonlit street at night,
   Stretching to greater distances of shades
   And shadows like the yawning realm of Hades;
With street lamps flick'ring in and out of sight,
I gazed once more upon that house of spite,
   Then turned my steps beyond this neighborhood
   That used to be the center of my childhood,
Where neighbors waved, and I laughed in delight.
Dear Rudy used to walk his nightly rounds
   Upon these sidewalks ere his life had fled;
So when I heard his footfalls on the grounds,
   I turned and saw him walking up ahead:
      And so I flew and held his ghostly hand,
      Then walked with him into the Borderland.

10. The Borderland

The way was dark on which we walked,
   As though the starlit canopy of night
   Has faded past the edge of living sight,
Enclosing us inside a realm where stalked
The countless footless footfalls of the dead
   And creatures yet unheard and yet unseen
   To ears and eyes unused to such a scene,
Unknown to all the knowledge in my head,
And stabbing at my heart with beats of dread.
   Then to my eyes a gleam of ghostly green
Lit up the starless canopy o'erhead,
   Revealing a projector-lighted screen,
      And there my parents lying on the floor;
      So Rudy spoke his wisdom like a mentor:

11. His Wisdom ****

"By making fate our choice, the blocks of our existence
   Well-spent or wasted, we create our road through this,
A long and winding road of endless cares, a sentence
   Of woe that pledges all and gives to none its bliss.
When we set down these stones of mortal destiny
   Upon the naked bedrock of our mortal lives,
Consider ere you act on that uncertainty
   Of endless possibilities that life contrives.
Because no matter what your good or bad intentions,
   They matter not to Him that holds the deadly blade;
The question's not how we escape His grim attentions,
   For He'll succeed upon our lives, our dues repaid:
      It's how we take our steps to meet Him on the chase,
      Opposing fate itself when Death breathes in your face."

12. The Runaway

So said the ghost of Rudy as he faded
   Away amidst that spectral green of death,
   For ages passed since he had lost his breath
And walked his living rounds alone, unaided
By other men of courage. Here I took
   Those words of wisdom in my hand and chucked
   Them to the skies, then breathed in deep and sucked
The air into my lungs and, with one look
Around me, breathed out all the pent-up anguish
   Over my parents' fall from grace to Hades;
   Now shapes around me followed in the shades
Of lamplit sidewalks where I used to languish
   With all my friends. And so I picked my feet up
   And ran and ran and ran, trying to speed up!

13. The Chase

Running along the lamplit streets devoid
   Of any living footfalls save my own,
Running past every house towards a void
   I could not see (nor moonlight could have shown),
I felt the chill of something running with me
   As if the strides of Death himself were there,
And felt the smooch of Death's queer lips to kiss me
   As I began to huff and puff the air.
Yet as I slowed, a-panting clouds of breath,
   I looked behind and saw nobody nigh:
Only the silence of the dead—of death—
   Was there to greet the ear, and not the eye.
      Behind me were the ghosts of many woes;
      Beyond me lay the promise of more sorrows.

14. The Alleyway *****

A movement from the corner of my eye
   Catches me off my guard, and when I peer
   Into an alleyway, the atmosphere
Around me chills my forearms with a sigh
Of night wind flowing through my flannel clothes;
   I turn around and spy the empty streets
   Where not a living footfall ever greets
Me with the taps of someone there. The shadows
That loom about me creep along the wall,
   Whereon I trace the almost unseen motion
   Of something in the distance, whose emotion
Resembles that of someone's beck and call;
And so I tread my steps with open eyes,
   Alert and wary, on the cusp of fear
   For anything amiss o'er there or here,
Expecting something underneath these skies.

15. The Knight

The world was full of ghosts that night, replete
   With unseen footfalls striding 'round about me,
For everywhere I looked upon the street
   Was nothing there (oh, reader, do not doubt me!);
But on those flagstones up ahead, I halted
   To find my bearings on this lonesome night,
And found a shadowed figure 'neath the vaulted
   Passage that blocked my way: it was a Knight
In bloody armor, sword tip perched upon
   The grouting, pommel cupped in armored gloves,
      And through its visor burning eyes within
      That seemed to gaze out from deep pools of sin;
   So here I stood, when flocks of scattered doves
Flew overhead, until I saw them gone.

16. The Follower

I took a backward step and then another,
   But on my third, that stationary Knight
Took three steps forward, matching mine together
   With heavy footfalls thumping through the night;
Then all was silent after that, a mere
   Reverberation through the nighttime static,
But when I turned and ran away from here,
   I chanced a glance behind me in the frantic
Moments when all my courage seemed to fade
   Upon the sight of that surreal pursuer
      Gaining upon my heels! Then up ahead:
      Another shambling Knight without a head!
   Was this a figment of an addled viewer?
Was it my fate to die this way? Afraid?

17. The Sleep of Fear

Closing my eyes, I waited for the blows
   To cut me up asunder like a ham,
   Waiting and waiting for th' expected wham
Of searing edges through my sweat-soaked clothes;
I waited for a second more and froze,
   Expecting something horrible to slam me,
   Then opened up my eyes—dear Christ, God damn me,
I'm still alive, though shaking from my toes
Unto the hairs arising from my neck!
   All strength within my legs and knees go slack,
      And down upon the cobblestones I go
   And drift away to sleep upon my back,
A shell-shocked heap of flesh, a shattered wreck
      Of who I was and what I used to know.

18. The Yellow-Brick Road

I've swooned, and in this swoon, perchance I've dreamed
   A nightmare reaching out with withered hands,
   Grasping and pulling at its rusty bands
Of iron chains restraining it, it seemed;
But when I woke and oped my eyes, I screamed ******
   And sprinted down a road of yellow brick,
   For there behind me rode a phantom quick
As death in jangling carriage riding teamed
Horses that winnowed screams and snorted fire
   And stomped a tune of thunder at my heels!
I ran and huffed and ran and huffed in dire
      Straits of sheer desperation, till my knees
   Gave out. I slowed, collapsed, until the wheels
      Of that grim carriage slowly 'gan to ease.

19. The Grim Reaper ****

Turning around, I spied the coachmen seated there,
   Wrapped in a shawl and wearing on its face a grinning
   Mask; I just stood there staring as I was beginning
To fathom its intentions waiting for me here,
Here in this limbo floating in suspension, where
   A thousand unseen horrors lay in wait, a-pinning
   Me here upon this sordid road and slowly winning
Over my steps toward its brougham door for fear
Of what was out there, lurking. Here I stepped inside
   And found a shawl draped over my own shoulders with
A mask appearing on my face; I wrapped the wide
Girth of the shawl around me, sat upon the side
   Seat of a bench that faced the back bench, and forthwith
   Found a hooded Reaper sitting there without a scythe!

20. The Scary Faces

Ah, one by one, four other seated fiends
   (Two sitting right beside me, and two more
Beside the Reaper) then appeared like friends
   All headed for a party on the dance floor:
A withered Shade and Hag sat to my right,
   The Shade with see-through body, head, and face,
The Hag with glaring eyes and grinning bite
   That chattered with her dentures still in place;
A smelly Ghoul and grinning Cheshire Cat
   Were sitting by the hooded Reaper's side,
Both leering at me where I gulped and sat
   And trembled at their glances on this ride!
      Ah, how I trembled at these glaring monsters,
      While masquerading me played the imposter!

21. The Mansion ****

I saw the melancholy house slip into view
   While I accompanied the monsters going there,
   And all around me ghastly passersby did stare
And laugh at me, a hapless visitor who drew
His steps along their grim procession! Ah, but how
   Was I to know their teeming thoughts in this parade?
   For here I walked with monsters, walking in charade
With that Grim Reaper by my side through shade and shadow!
Now following along towards the looming house
   Atop the hill and through its creaking double doors
   And down the entrance hall and winding corridors,
I passed beneath the shades and lamplights like a mouse
   About to be ensnared and trapped! Dear God, what horrors
   Lie there beyond those waiting double doors of terror?

22. The Mask

The doors then swung into a nightmare filled
   With masquerading monsters! Some were dancers:
   Ghosts, Goblins, Witches, Vamps, and Necromancers;
And some were drunks: Hags, Ghouls, and Shades have spilled
The punch they gorged, while drunken Devils swilled
   The absinthe. All were dressed, yet none wore masks:
   Only the Dullahans with helmet-casques
And hooded Reapers hid their face. All stilled
Upon the sight of me within their midst,
   Accompanied by my companion Reaper
      Standing beside me, while the others stared;
The Reaper then took off her hood amidst
      The gasps of shock and awe, while I was scared
   To look when she said, "Ope your eyes, oh Sleeper . . ." ******

23. The Axe-Girls

I've swooned, and in that swoon, I might have screamed it
   A thousand times on waking up to stairs
   That stretched towards me, making all the hairs
Upon my neck stand up; I might have dreamed it
In half-forgotten thoughts, but I esteemed it
   With wide-eyed paranoia at its presence
   Just sitting in that momentary silence;
I might have, in a lighter humor, deemed it
A harmless staircase with the lights turned on,
   Yet through its bright enclosure on the landing
      That rose before me as I turned my gaze,
   I saw a pair of little girls there standing
With axes in their hands and their heads gone:
      I bolted down the hallway in a craze!

24. Hide and Seek *****

With beating heart, I scurry like a mouse
   From room to room to hide myself inside
   A dingy closet, while the girls outside
Were stalking through the hallways of the house;
With bated breath, I listen to their tread
   Creaking along the floor like that of felines
   Stalking their prey, while I slink through the confines
Of hanging clothes towards the wall in dread!
What's this I feel, as I now wrap my grasp
   Around a hard metallic sphere? A knob?
   And when I grasp and turn it 'round, a throb
Of recognition thunders out a gasp
Of hope, just as their steps approach my room!
   I push the door and pass the threshold floor
   Before they pull aside the closet door . . .
And find myself outside an open tomb.

25. The Rat Man ***

I turned around: the door into the tomb
   Was shut! So when I cast my wayward gaze
   Over the headstones through the graveyard haze,
I thought I saw a shape move through the gloom
Between the gravestones; down between these tombs
   Of ancient yore I tread my weary route
   In search of that elusive shape without
A clue wherein this gloom of glooms
It went. I threw my gaze from side to side,
   Looking for that fell shape, when something close
Said in a whisper's breath, "The mirror lied!"
   I turned around just as the sharpest dose
Of searing fire erupted through my throat:
And in my sights there flashed the bloody cutthroat,
         The Rat Man's awful gloat
Laughing into my ears. I then beheld
The crimson glint of his knife's edge and smelled
         My blood, as it expelled
The screaming ghost of my blaspheming soul
Out of my bloody throat onto the scroll
         Of Hell without parole!

26. The Clowns

I then awake unto the sound of bells
   Now clanging out the tune of many dirges,
   Rousing my heartbeats through my veins in surges
Of dread and pain; yet as my blood dispels
Such poisons from my veins, I quell the yells
   And screams still raging through my ringing ears,
   Till (drip by drip) I cry cathartic tears
Of sweet relief through fits of laughing spells. . . .
That is, until more laughter from the dark
   Approaches me: I scramble to my feet
   As something over there begins to greet
Me with another bout of laughter. Hark!
   Another fit of laughter stirs behind me,
   At which I find two laughers have confined me!

27. The Harlequin

I dashed away from those two sordid clowns
   And footed it beyond their sordid laughter,
Footing it through the woods until their sounds
   Have faded from the night. With threats of slaughter
Now far behind me, I then trekked my way
   Into the creeping woods and saw a man
In checkered costume look my way and say,
   "Who are you, stranger? What's your sordid plan?"
I said, "I have no sordid plans or fell designs,
   For I have lost my way amid these woods
And need a place to stay." I've said my lines;
   He said, "I know a place of many goods
      For you to eat and drink." He bade me follow;
      And so I tailed him through the wooded hollow.

28. The Bunny Man

We reached his cabin in the woods, where he
   Invited me into his house and offered
Some victuals and ready drinks for me;
   I then forgot the horrors that I've suffered
And stepped inside and made myself at home.
   I ate and drank unto my heart's content,
While he informed me of the weird and gruesome
   Crimes of a wanted felon: "The extent,"
He said, "of this man's crimes are legendary.
   And so, we've dubbed this man the Bunny Man,
For he commits his crimes inside the very
   Costume that gives his epithet, this beast-man:
      And yet, so long as you stay here with me,
      You'll be as safe as anyone can be!"

29. The Pick-Axe **

I thanked him for his hospitality
   And told him of the horrors I have seen
During the nightmares of my wayward journey,
   Till I grew tired with talking. Then the scene
Began to change before my weary eyes,
   For ere I was about to fall asleep,
My host began to don a queer disguise,
   A bunny suit, a wolf among the sheep!
I sprang unto my feet, but when I did,
   I felt my legs give out from under me;
By God, he's spiked the drink! And so amid
   My struggles to get up, I start to pee
Myself when I saw him take up a pick
   From off his wall and head for me; he kicked
Me over on my back and 'gan to stick
   It through my chest and abdomen, then picked
      My head into a pulp of skull and flesh,
      While through the awful pain, I screamed afresh!

30. The Axe-Man

I then awoke, a-screaming out my voice
   Into the godless night, until the hills
   Echoed before me with the phantom trills
Of fright; yet for a time, the awful noise
Carried and changed its tune to that of boys'
   Laughter throughout the night; and for a time,
   I then descended down the grassy climb,
Till something at my back left me to poise
Myself. I turned around with just one glance
   Up at the moonlit hill and saw a man
   With an axe in his hand! And so I ran
And screamed, a-cursing out my grave mischance
   To cross another killer's wayward path
   And dreading yet another painful bloodbath.

31. The Stalker-Man

And so I ran, till all my breath was gone,
   And all my strength to keep on running fled,
   And there was something aching in my head;
I then turned back and spied the field whereon
Th' ungodly axe-man's stalking apparition
   Pursued my running steps, and there he paced
   With Axe in hand: I backed away in haste
And flew the other way, till my condition
Began to burn with all the burning in
   My legs, because the threat of that foul ghost
Kept tailing me, a-stalking me within
   The drumbeats of my heart, until I lost
      My way, my mind collapsed in thoughts of murder
      A-slicing up my astral corpse asunder.

32. The Carnival

And so I ran and reached a wayward route
   That led into a town of gloomy folks
   Amidst a carnival of masks and cloaks,
Wherein I slowed my steps and looked about;
They all wore masks and cloaks, yet all throughout
   The bustling thoroughfares, they skipped and pranced
   And played their games and yelled and laughed and danced
As little children often do, no doubt.
Yet when I stepped into their bustling midst,
   I found myself th' observed of the observers,
      A child within the company of strangers;
Then out of nowhere manifested mist,
      And then arose the hint of subtle dangers
   Within the child-like drivel of their murmurs.

33. Santa Claws

And then they said, "He knows you're not asleep;
   He knows your stomach lurches into knots;
   He knows when you're awake with sinful thoughts;
He knows when you're alone, you'd often weep
Yourself to slumber with the ghosts that lurk and creep
   Within your bedroom just beyond the darkness;
   He knows why you are crying in the stillness
Beneath your bedsheets as you're counting sheep . . ."
Yet as their words continued through the pause
   Of utter stillness in my mind, I closed
My eyes and opened them: and there he was,
   The fat man dressed in red with sack exposed
   And showing all the bodies he's disposed
Of naughty children sliced up with his claws!

34. The Missing Children *******

I closed my eyes and screamed, till I grew hoarse
   And wheezed and choked and coughed up wads of phlegm,
Then looked around me and— . . . My God, what force
   Of devilry had started all this mayhem?
The corpses of the children, all of them,
   Lay strewn throughout this clearing in the trees,
And when I looked, I saw each twig and stem
   And branch had been disturbed! But when the breeze
Picked up, I felt a stab of sharp unease
   As something overtook my sense of dread
And flooded me with fear. By slow degrees
   Of disbelief, I saw these children dead
      Arise upon their feet! And yet thereafter,
      I joined my long lost peers in sullen laughter!

35. The Night Parade

I laughed a ghoulish laugh with them, until
   I had my fill of laughter. Then I greeted
   These undead boys and girls whose lives have treated
Them with the foul mistrust of those who kill
Their sense of self and strength. Adults instill
   The fear of God in everything, repeated
   A million times, until we lie defeated
Upon a stage adults have built to grill
Our minds and hearts with all the fears they have,
   Dragging us down with lies of love and care;
But in this group of children lost, we save
   Ourselves with friendship through the cross we bear:
      Indeed, we might be lost, we may have strayed,
      But with each other, we're the Night Parade.

36. The Lost Children ********

Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!

—Bram Stoker,
Dracula, Chapter II: Johnathan Harker's Journal—continued

I. The Woods at Night

We trekked on through the woods beneath the moonlit
   Darkness of night, pretending we were soldiers
Marching along in pairs; we stopped to sit
   And rest ourselves on fallen logs and boulders,
While two of us kept watch just yards ahead;
   And while I rested thus, I rubbed my shoulders
And abdomen and chest and neck and head,
   Whereon I had sustained the lethal blows
Of pick-axes and knives: the pain and bloodshed
   Still set my nerves a-tingling 'neath my clothes,
      Still caused my heart to thump and hands to shake
   Upon the very thought! But then arose
      The howl of wolves that made my heart to quake:
      And all at once, my nerves began to break!

II. The Mad Dash

Out of the darkness rose a thousand howls
   Echoing through the woods and sending us
Running amidst the fray of hooting owls
   And panic-stricken yells! So tenuous
Was our escape through all these wooded shades
   And shadows in our path, we 'gan to cuss
And swear our stumbling way into the glades
   Without our knowing, till we stopped, dead tired
Enough to drop into the realm of Hades.
   Yet just before we, one by one, expired
      Upon our feet, we looked and saw a bridge
   Of astral sighs appear, its shape transpired
      Across a yawning gulf along the drawbridge
      Spanning a ghastly length from ridge to ridge.

III. The Bridge of Sighs

The hoots and howls had stopped, and all was still
   And silent in the air, as if the world
Around us stood at full attention, till
   We moved our steps across the Underworld;
And on the sighing breeze, we heard the voices
   Of our own yelling parents that have hurled
A thousand accusations that our choices
   Were never ours to make: we're just too young
To understand that all our dreams of choice is
   A false impression, just the lying tongue
      Of countless promises to keep our eyes
   From getting wet when life is full of dung!
      So here we tread through broken dreams and lies,
      Contracted to the sounds of our own sighs.

IV. The Confrontation

Then up ahead, we found these evil tyrants
   Approaching us with claws and teeth, full-bared
Against our passage through, because our parents
   Just want to keep us on probation, scared
Of what they'd do; they've laid out punishments
   To keep us in control, and if we've dared
To make a stand and raise our voice, th' events
   That would transpire would make us lose our nerve
And drown us in the lake of discontents.
   Yet through it all, we've kept up our reserve
      Of courage for the prospect of our plight,
   Ready to take the scoldings we deserve,
      Ready to stand our ground with all our might,
      And ready to endure the dragon fight!

V. The Revelation

Yet in a war of words, we're far outmatched
   In skill to keep our heads above the water,
Because they're wiser. We're just newly hatched
   And soft against the flood of verbal slaughter
Attacking us in waves of reprimands,
   For what we say about ourselves won't matter;
We're kids, and we must follow their demands,
   No matter how demeaning they may be,
For we're just kids, and we're on shifting sands;
   They think that we can't understand or see
      The points they make, yet we cannot avoid
   The truth we see inside their eyes, for we
      Perceive that they were children once, destroyed
      And sunk into the silence of the Void.

37. The Void *********

There's something you should know about adults:
   They are but children lost within the void
      Of circumstances far from their control;
They're doomed to live a life of harsh results
   That beat them down with things they can't avoid;
         They're doomed to struggle to maintain their worth
      When COVID-19's cut them from the payroll
And added to the stress of daily insults,
   When deaths of loved ones make them paranoid
      Over their health of body, mind, and soul;
         They're doomed to lose their reasons for their mirth
            When they have witnessed their most cherished dreams
         Broken upon the grounds of widespread dearth
            Amidst the wailing silence of their screams.

38. The Awakening

I screamed myself awake upon my bed,
   And there I lay a-breathing fast and heavy,
   My wayward thoughts now scattered in a bevy
Of honking geese now flying south ahead
Of morning's glorious light. The blood I've shed
   So many times throughout this escapade
   Has left me cold and clammy in the shade
Of autumn's sunrise. All the pangs of dread
I've faced has left me with the subtle trace
   Of apprehension on my nerves, my heart
Still beating out the drum-like thumps that race
   With all the fury of a sudden start,
      But even this subsided once I looked
      Around me with no thoughts of getting spooked.

39. The End

Then through the door into my bedroom came
   My parents calling out to me with fear
Inside their eyes, and to my bitter shame,
   I cried and cried, because they're over here;
I heard their voices (soft and comforting)
   Caress my ears with words so full of cares,
Soothing my mind of every ghastly thing
   That filled and thrilled me with the stuff of nightmares,
Banishing all the dread of last night's dream
   Into the void of calm forgetfulness,
Soothing the ghost of one forgotten scream
   With all the love and warmth of sweet redress.
      So goes the cycle of my life this way,
      As fearful night gives way to hopeful day.

(To be continued...)

A/N: Written on November 2020. I finally finished this sequence in the early hours of 11/3/20! I originally wanted to use the 16-line sonnet, created by George Meredith his sonnet sequence, Modern Love (1862), but I wanted more variety of sonnet forms in this horrific yarn. So I included multiple sonnet forms from Shakespearean and Italian forms and their many variations to more radical forms like the ones from John Donne, George Meredith, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, John Milton, Edmund Spencer, etc. Like the previous piece, this sequence took a long time to write, over 3 years in the making, in fact, but it was worth it.

* Haemic = (adj.) relating to or containing or affecting blood.
** Heroic Sonnet = (n.) a Shakespearean sonnet with an extra quatrain in it. See "The Token" by John Donne (1572-1631). [See Sonnet 7, Sonnet 29.]
*** Caudate Sonnet / Tailed Sonnet = (n.) a sonnet with extra "tails" (usually a truncated 1st line that rhymes with the last rhyme of the sonnet and a heroic couplet with a different rhyme) at the end of it. See "On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament" by John Milton (1608-1674) and "That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). [See Sonnet 7, Sonnet 25.]
**** Alexandrine Sonnet = (n.) a sonnet written in iambic hexameter or Alexandrine meter. See the first sonnet in Astrophel and Stella by Sir Phillip Sidney (1554-1586). [See Sonnet 11, Sonnet 19, Sonnet 21.]
***** Meredithian Sonnet = (n.) a sonnet of 16 lines, written in four envelope quatrains. See Modern Love by George Meredith (1828-1909). [See Sonnet 14, Sonnet 24.]
****** Ope = (v.) open.
******* Spencerian Sonnet = (n.) a sonnet with an interlocking rhyme scheme. See Amoretti by Edmund Spencer (1552-1599). [See Sonnet 34.]
******** Terza Rima Sonnet = (n.) a sonnet written with a tera rima rhyme scheme; I took a page out of Shelley's playbook and made a mini sonnet sequence using it. See "Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). [See Sonnet Sequence 36: I-V.]
********* Keatsian Sonnet = (n.) a sonnet with its own unique rhyme scheme. See "On the Sonnet" by John Keats (1795-1821). [See Sonnet 37.]