The man in front turned around to glare at him. Clive must have kicked his seat in a moment of frustration. Riddled with shame and self-consciousness, he tried to fade into the long dark shadows of the theatre and to become as impenetrable as the concrete wall behind his head. He wished he could become indifferent to his surroundings. There was no escape. Clive's inner voices were very restless tonight, only occasionally drowned out by the din. He longed to silence their incessant cries for attention. They were virulent, slow acting poison; always demanding something or another and there would be hell to pay if he did not comply with their wishes. It wouldn't be long now until he gave everyone what they wanted. He waited with the complex of a messiah for what was to come. Redemption for all would soon be in the making. Might would make right.

At last, the theatre dimmed and the magic tapestry unfolded on the movie screen. The moody flicker of the film projector spun its magic resurrecting old screen legends. With each flash of light from the projector, each and everyone's final destination grew nearer. Clive's dark mistress had arrived. He could feel her thirst for vengeance. This dark nemesis, nexus to the vast beyond waited for the offering that would be forthcoming. Silently, she waited in the wings until called forth to deliver all from the evil that was their inheritance.

The troubled spirit began to relax and felt himself drifting off in Dali's lucid landscape of dreams, fluid and free. Then came the scene in the movie Clive had been waiting for. The blood bath had begun as naked lovers trembled in horror before the paragon of death.

"Lugubrious lovers be mine!" cried the jealous husband aiming the gun at his rival in love and then at the woman he once loved. The two lovers dropped in a tangled heap on the floor as the crazed killer surveyed his murderous masterpiece with a haunted look in his eyes.

"Until death do us part!" He roared with bitter sarcasm at the irony of this very truth. In an acute state of anguish, he reached for the pistol laying invitingly on the ground and raised the weapon to his head. His own death would be highly symbolic. Deliriously he searched for an explanation.

"The left side of my face, the side of the bed she slept upon, the side of the altar we exchanged wedding vows only days ago...."

He pressed the barrel of the gun to the left side of his temple and pulled the trigger but the bullet narrowly grazed his flesh. He then fired the next shot at his right arm and pointed the gun to the right side of his temple crying out in excruciating agony as he slowly released the trigger, "For my best man who stood at my right giving his blessings, saying he'd give his right arm to have the kind of love we shared."

As he collapsed, shredded flesh dripped onto the floor like wax of a candle extinguishing its life. As the credits rolled, Clive clasped the gun tightly to his breast. He heard the audience muffle their cries of horror and pitifully sigh over what they'd just seen, wiping their tears away as though to erase the memory. How could they even pretend to understand! He arose from his seat seized with blind fury. "What do you know of betrayal!?"

Smug and superior they were; so above it all. They didn't understand what it was like to be at the mercy of another's selfish whims, a victim of circumstance, alienated, abandoned and alone. They all had someone, someplace to go, something to call their own. The game was over. Clive brandished his weapon, bowing his head in shame for a moment as he'd never communicated his pain so deeply before to anyone. His anguished heart was wrenched free from its bitter agony as he fired the gun repeatedly. Their pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears. At last they understood the real meaning of life. Suffering. Slumped over in their seats, they were free of their illusions.

Clive drew his dark mistress nearer. She was waiting for him to follow her to the great beyond. It was almost time. Clive's inner voices would instruct him what to do next. A final shot rang out piercing the silence and the gun fell from his blood-stained fingers. Writhing in bitter-sweet pain and ecstasy, he fell submissively within the inner sanctum of sleep. Clive's life-force escaped like the crimson blood flowing from his wounds, and he knew he could at last relinquish his elusive search for identity; control he never had in life would be his in death.

As Clive journeyed through the tunnel that joins this world to the next, he was no longer mortal, but messiah and king wearing the crown of glory. The purgatorial promise had been kept; his demons would give birth to eternal realms wherein all would inherit the kingdom of their souls for having denounced their illusive natures. They were on their way homeward. Just needed someone to show them the way.

The End

Alexis Child hails from Toronto, Canada; horror in its purest form. She works at a Call Crisis Centre befriending demons of the mind that roam freely amongst her writings. She lives with a Shaman and Calico-cat child sleuthing all that goes bump in the night. Her fiction has been featured in The House Of Pain, Lost Souls, Screams of Terror, and Top International Horror 2004 published by Rainfall Books /BJM Press. Her poetry will appear/has appeared online and in print in such publications as Decompositions, several times in The Dream People, Gothic Fairy Tales, The Harrow, Horror Carousel, Lunatic Chameleon, Midnight Lullabies anthology, Skin and Bones, Whispers of Wickedness, and elsewhere. Visit her website: www.angelfire.com/poetry/alexischild/