Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

The Writer's Whisper, II: The Story of The Pen & The Sword Begins

II
The Story of The Pen & The Sword Begins
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1

    Before there was light, it was written, there was the darkness.

    Where the African sky met a graveyard of clouds, where the river and the desert called for death, the darkness called to two lone riders in the smoky night. A merciless master, the night cried out in agony, with the ghosts of forgot tribes. In this neck of Godʼs country, the desert was an o*gy of wanton violence, where the world was a smoke cloud waiting to wreak havoc. A waking nightmare. The moon slung itself low against the sky, sitting on the clouds all plump and fat as the stars kiss her passionately, and then, she sucks them in. One-by-one, a loudmouthed leering, Iblis beckoned the mouths of monsters towards him until its belly is full, ravenous, waiting.

    Forget me not, the ghosts would cry in their tribal tongue. Forget me, not.

    In the dead of night, the demons bent around every shadow, the blood thicker than water. The sand hissed with the snakes, swallowing them whole. The river, swelling with rage, glowed like a ghost-ship, the spirits made you. The blackness of the sky was just a second layer of self-hatred, a second layer of fear, of resentment, and it just peeled at your flesh and bone back until there was nothing left but blood. Clumps of blood that consumed and corroded until you became a ghost too. Rotting underneath a rotting sky, lost and broken.

    Godʼs country was never Godʼs country because first you bled, and then, you burned.

    The desert took no prisoners as the two riders raged through the sand storm, choking on every fume, every breath. Slowly feasting on their skin, ravishing their organs, until they began to walk on a water. Shells of human beings. Muddled hatred burned brighter than the sun as the two rode into the clutches of the night, the cancerous moon a cold joke against the scorching, haunted heat. The wail of the azaan ripped through the dead night like sirens calling to the sea, stabbing through the skin with the help of the riversʼ spears of light. Their feet already burned raw, skin molten against their hijab and ghutra, the sand polluting the earth with the carnality of the crimson moon.

    Forget me not but forgive me so, the tribal leaders cried louder. Or first you will bleed, then you will burn.

    A single whisper:

Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
I look upon ye Weïrd Sisters,
And make a simple plea:
Circus, o Circus
Turn to the forest.
Circus, o, Circus.
Feed me.

    As the two lone riders approached a sinkhole and surrendered to Godʼs cannibalistic shadowlands, the sand swallowing them in a suffocating cloud of heat and smoke, let it be known: this is not a story about forgiveness.

    Because before there was the light, there was only...

    The Darkness.