If I listen... Who will speak?

Who's words will move you? Make you think? Make you feel?

Certainly not Flame's.

A cigarette dangled from my mouth as I walkedthrough the cemetery. The hundred year old corpses still rotting beneath my feet. The sun was making it's descent behind the horizon and everything was still.

With every exhale I could see the air and smoke exit my lips and wisp towards the heavens.

Can Angels get lung cancer?

The ground was hard, each step stiff like I was walking on pavement. I assumed it was a mixture of rotting bodies and wooden coffins. That couldn't be a good combination for the soil and mother earth.

It wasn't very often that I took the time to come here, to the cemetery. Thousands of bad memories all buried in one spot.

You get to remember your loved ones by chipped headstones and overgrown grass.

It was difficult to even remember where my Wife was buried. Which row, how far in, the longitude and latitude. She was, literally, a corpse in a stack of corpses.

I didn't decide to come here for her or myself. I decided to make my way to this valley of death for Flame. Apparently places like this make him feel empowered, strong, ever living. I'm just trying to get to know him and his cult of misguided youths a little better.

The sun was fading rapidly and it wouldn't be long until just the light posts and the stars lit up this burial ground. Nothing was out of the ordinary at this point, maybe the darkness takes to get all of the kooks to come out. Maybe see some of the dead rising and start to munch on any living flesh that they could find.

Oh wait, I'm not in Flame's horror movie he calls life.

Halloween is quickly approaching, so I would assume there would be all kinds of people wandering the cemetery as soon as they sun set. By the looks of it, I'm sadly mistaken. It seems as if most of the angsty teens who can't get snap out of a pathetic stage of their lives have giving up on jerking off on headstones.

If only some adults I know of, would do the same.

Just ahead though... What is that?

It looks like two eyes staring back at me from a distance.

I could hear a slight growl coming from the direction of the eyes.

Wolves?

Did Flame know I was here?

I took a few steps closer, easily, nothing to sudden. The growls were getting louder and the eyes were fixed on me as I moved closer.

I could start to see the outline of the animal and I kneel'd down.

A loud whelp and the beast came charging towards me.

Aw, how cute.

A French Poodle.

"How'd you get out here, girl?" I asked it, not expecting a response anytime soon.

I pet the monstrous poodle a bit until he let out a happy little bark and pranced off on it's way.

Apparently I'm not the only one who can get lost in this sea of stone and rot.

Seconds, minutes, hours.. I don't know how long I was wondering around looking for this piece of stone. That's all it was anyway, who knows if the grave diggers played some sort of joke and switched the bodies around.

It's a quite the joke really.

Maybe a riddle. Is my loved one here? Is it in the plot next to this one?

We don't care or even think about that though, the dead become whoever the headstone says they are.

Ah, here it is.

Amanda McManus
Loving Wife, Sister, Daughter
1980 - 2003

The three years of weathering is starting to take effect on the stone. It's a nice touch really, makes it look old and dignified.

It's easy to be indifferent when you aren't confronted by etched words on stone.

Standing over the burial plot, knowing that someone you loved is right underneath you rotting away. It's quite the experience. I'd imagine it's be easier to believe that they are up in heaven, sitting next to the big man having a grand old time.

Or you can imagine that they are in a better place, not on this earth filled with political correctness, hate, anger, death and disease.

Or they're just dead. Nothing there, just gone. Rotting beneath you. It's the hardest to cope with, but it's also the most realistic.

Death is harder on the living someone once said.

That someone obviously didn't think about what it could be like to be decaying and eaten by maggots in a tight little box six feet under the ground.

What about being cremated? Burned to ashes with nothing left of you but your teeth and being kept in a box on someone's night stand for the rest of your life.

Either way, sooner or later there won't be anything left of you and you'll still be stuck in a box for eternity.

I don't know what I was looking for coming to this place. Maybe I'm just trying to relate to Flame in some way, shape or form. But there isn't anything here. Nothing that's going to help me understand why he is the way he is, other then possibly being stuck in his youth and not being able to grow up.

Parlor tricks, his silly beliefs of an underworld and a Goddess of the night, or whatever the fuck he rambles on about.

There isn't too much to the fellow that we haven't witnessed already. He's been around long enough and failed time and time again. Why would Illusions be any different?

His witchery and "powers" won't do him any good against someone trained to fight. We've all seen it before, many times. He's so wrapped up in his cult he doesn't take the time to realize that everything he stands for is false and it isn't going to get him anywhere.

Flame is a "master of Illusions", with his fire balls, wolves, and all that mumbo jumbo. However, we all know that Illusions are called that because it's exactly what they are. They appear to be something that they aren't.

Flame being a worthy opponent for my championship is possibly the greatest Illusion of all.