The Tower
written by: Jose F Badrena
The tower
in which I find myself
bids me along its corridors—
a citadel of granite walls interlaced in hypnotic patterns,
a maze of rooms strewn
with trails of crimson wool.
Tyrian tapestries of enchantment hang,
etched with insidious sigils of the unkind.
A haunted melody beckons me
through the ivory door.
The air is suspended in Phrygian mode
There is little I see,
but much I perceive
within the tower’s domain.
I move blindly through the passageways,
hands trailing rough stone
like braille—
coordinates,
incomplete,
cold walls guiding my callused fingers.
As I whip unwillingly through darkness,
I see eyes.
Eyes—
peeking through the corner of the ivory door, now behind me.
Yellow, black, and eternal.
Reptilian countenance.
The fiendish entity
radiates heat
with every rhythmic breath.
Its eyes cut through eternity,
mocking the grips of death,
shunning the hands of doom.
The Gargoyle seeks the believer,
for only the believer
holds his armor high
in God’s name.
Endless, the gaze of those eyes—
illuminating every stone slab.
But within me: only
dark matter.
And then—
all goes black.
Sweat drips from my forehead
like sheets of liquid nitrogen.
And a laugh persists.
A doomful laugh — the kind conjured by nitrous oxide,
gunning faith down anesthetically
as the drops slip through my skin.
The light—
it shines again.
My gaze scans the ruins.
Nothing remains
but a mirror before me.
Piercing glass.
And yet
I barely recognize
the reflection.
I live eternally in my mind.
Time collapses in itself in the void.
Gravity compresses matter infinitely.
And the Gargoyle lives within,
while the prudent waits for a turn to speak —
mocking my thoughts,
permeating doubt into the eternity
that is the tower.
Death, in all its forms.
