Blake

Part I

Blake was a massive, apocalyptic beast, who lived among the ruins of the central cemetery. His icy gaze spread hatred and anger. Every morning, you could see him walking hunched over in a blunt black suit reminiscent of the Victorian era.

Back when I lived near the cemetery, I used to drink bitter coffee made on a bulky stove and watch the black crows through the dirty, smoky window. I smoked counterfeit Cuban cigars with extreme toxicity while hot ashes and cobwebs dripped from the cracked ceiling. Heading out for the morning shift, I could see Blake chopping dried corpses, mummified in the mists of time, with a sharp axe to start the fire.

That was his way of greeting us: raising the scythe threateningly, spitting angrily into the ground, and making the sign of the dagger that would sever your head. You couldn’t help but love him. He was the one who would take you to the eternal and dark realm of spirits.

Part II

Black clouds and bitterness covered the city from the Valley of Sorrows to the Iron Gates. Ashen snow fell gently and densely over the cobbled streets and dilapidated old houses. In the cemetery, roses the colour of smoky doom grew, smelling of calamity, clustered in rich bushes that adorned heavy souls like lead. He had lost love but gained the eternity of darkness.

He wore a thick black cloak, frayed at the edges, with a pointed hood and a burgundy cord embroidered with the symbols of the brotherhood. Sitting on the driver’s bench of the carriage, Blake aimed at you like an eagle through his pure glass-like cold eyes, crystal clear. If you didn’t avert your gaze quickly, you would fall into a deep crisis of sleepwalking and heresy.

The ash-grey horses were covered in soot and had the consistency of metal. Dressed in royal blue travel harnesses with the marquis’s coat of arms embroidered on both sides of the collar, they struck their hooves on the roadstones, sparking and kicking up tartar dust. If they had caught you under the iron horseshoes, you would have been instantly transformed into shattered pottery from the time of Neolithic civilizations.

The carriage that once carried the marquis’s messengers from one corner of the county to another had been transformed into a hearse. The passenger cabin carried the relics of the plague, and the black curtains hung, hiding the bodies covered in lime, lying on top of each other like storm-toppled logs.

Blake looked at the sunrise and sunset in the blink of an eye. His heart was hardened, his breath froze the despair and weeping above the graves. He rose from the saddle and pulled the reins with a sharp tug. The horses started trotting as if on a long journey. The wheels cut into the curb, scattering gravel on the roadside.

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