By: Byongho Lee & Alison Masson

Tears drip down the grey sky
A lone child walks home
Her hair, dark as the night
Sullenly does she roam

As the night turns pitch-black
A void figure appears
Cloaked in darkness and decay
Wearing a mask without fear

The specter stretches out a hand
Touching the soft, pale skin
The girl, filled with dread and despair,
Asked softly, like a violin

“What do you want?
I’m just a poor girl.”
My problems burden my shoulders
However, I cannot leave this world

Swift as a rampant blight
The hazy vision grabbed the poor girl’s hair
Darker than the devil’s fright
Escaping to his ominous lair

She wakes from a sound
A loud, repugnant tone
She was wrapped in long, white linen
Her stomach stifling a groan

Slowly, her eyes open
Slowly, see looks around
A strange place, a vacant room
With a dead body on the ground

The room, a hollow, of grey stone walls
A single ray of moon slight shown through the cracks
The castle that surrounded her, full of despair,
Cold as the blade of a murderer’s axe

The door swung open with a terrible bang
“GET UP!”  A man roared, with rage in his eyes
The startled girl could not even speak
After all she had gone through, this was her prize

He dragged her, by the hair, from her bed
And down the stairs to a candle-lit room
With braided rope, he tied her to the mantle
Engulfed in the abyss of encroaching doom

She trembled in fear as she watched the man
Tear up a floor board which then to her revealed
A box of sharpened daggers, ten in all
And at that point, her fate had been sealed

Each scream she screamed, more piercing than the last
As one after another, the knives flew from his hand
Grinning, he watched as the blood poured down
And with each of her cries, his grin grew more grand

He laughed his possessed laugh
His bellowing voice filled the vacant hall
Then he threw his final dagger
Her body, limp, on the blood-stained wall

Removing the binds that relinquished her life
The Madman hauled her with haunted haste
Making his way through a labyrinth of death
To a room that withers with waste

Thousands of skulls occupied the shelves
Uncountable organs were stocked in jars
He tore up her lifeless body, limb from limb
Then stuffed her next to petrified hearts

Dissatisfied by the crumpled form
Of a beautiful girl, now marred
He hacked off the petty head
Her stiff, pale neck forever scarred

Thrusting the head into a glass ***
Filled with water preserving her end
No amount of healing could heal her soul
No amount of life to mend

He cackled as he left the room
Remorse could never pierce his heart
He slammed the wooden door with a terrible bang
His prized collection, a gruesome piece of art

She wakes up from the distant sound
A loud, repugnant tone
Her eyes, soaking in the water,
Sullenly, she waited, alone

Her irises gleamed as she glanced around
Trying to depart her jail
Attempting to feel her fingers, or anything at all,
In terror, she began to flail

The Madman raced back into the room
With an demonic aura flickering with rage
His blazing eyes locked onto hers
Erupting acrimony exploded around her cage

“Silence!” the man roared
However, she refused to stay calm
Burning with a fury, worse than the maw of Hell
He grabbed her head with a grotesque palm

He whirled around through ripples of space
Lifting her head like a stone maul
Enjoying his twisted game
As he ****** her thrashing head at the wall

The thousands of skulls that occupied the room
Tumbled down, one by one
The madman, bewildered and bemused,
Became ever so shaken as he spun

One after another, they struck his body
Still laughter left his lips
For the thousands of skulls that rained from above him
Buried him alive as he tripped

The Madman’s body, entombed under his victims,
Forever to lie restless with his foes
Since he yielded to no guilt nor remorse
Forever shall he be sealed in his hollow