Angel of War

Chapter 11: Dreams & Visions

[warning: explicit human & animal gore]

She is hungry. Feverish with bloodlust. The villagers' screams are encouraging and she trills at the panic on their faces. The hunt is easy when the prey is so slow. A swipe of her claws rips a child away from it's fighting mother. The little girl's screams are painful but they don't end when she bites into the body. The flesh and organs are clear, everything else a blur. Why won't it die? Why won't the screams stop? She drops it in horror and the blood seeps into the grass, the dirt, everything turns crimson. Every artery and vein, muscle, viscera, tendon and fascia is so familiar, so utterly ingrained in her memory. The screams mix with the squealing of hogs and bleating of goats, then gunshots and men shout⁷ing. A knife coming down on a lamb's head. A limb being amputated. A woman's laugh turns into sobbing then screaming. A male choir booming out an anthem on the radio. A march plays in the background. The drums turn into thunder that shakes across a stormy mountainside lake. It's windy. The raven flying over fields is beating its wings against the gale before a wave of dark blue water swallows it. Everything is underwater. The hand reaches out from the inky depths and she is lifted out before the fingers can reach her. The surface breaks and all the air is flushed out like ocean spray. High above all the mountains, amongst the clouds, ethereal women ride horses, snarling wolves and monstrous beasts, reigning the creatures in with just their beautiful power and strength. Their eyes burn like lightning. Wings of ravens sprout from their naked backs, blocking the orange light of the sun. The stone towers below them shatter in thunderous collapse. There is blood on the cornflowers in the grass. The rubble is just the empty shell of their skeletons, littering the field. Only her eyes remain, watching, always present, in the clouds, on the setting sun. The organs scream on their own and will forever.