A young man in a park. Hair graying before his time. Blue jeans and a gray T-shirt. A long button-down shirt -- sky blue decorated with clouds and rainbows -- unbuttoned. Reaching past his waist, it looked like it might be the lab coat of a nurse or a deranged, New-Age scientist. Or an entertainer.
The sun shone. Birds sang. Flowers bloomed. Trees rustled lightly in the gentle puffs of wind.
He looked down at the children seated in the grass at his feet and smiled. He winked at the kids as he continued to stuff the handkerchief into his closed fist. With a wave of his hand, he reached into the "O" formed by thumb and index finger and began pulling out silk after silk, daisy-chained into a cloth rainbow, with large, grandiose motions and a look of shocked surprise on his face. He gathered the prismatic kerchiefs into his hands and balled them tightly. When he opened his hands, a large bouquet of rainbow flowers sprouted forth, almost threatening to jump from his grasp. The children roared with laughter and applause.
He smiled and bowed. And stopped, eyes wide.
A stagnant wind blew across the park. Hot and still. Carrying with it the scents of decay. The sounds of crickets and cicadas droning endlessly on. The flowers in his hands wilted.
His smile failed and he stood erect. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Recovering quickly, he waved to the children and vanished in a flash of rainbow light. The children laughed and clapped and then sat there, waiting for him to return. When he didn't, the braver among them decided that they should all go looking for him before their parents called them home to dinner. They never found him.
He wasn't certain how much time had passed since last he'd been here. But it had to have been some time, indeed. The place was falling apart. The full moon, once perpetually frozen in the sky had sunk to a graying horizon that seemed faded and frayed. The stagnant summer air seemed more stagnant than usual. The smells of death and decay seeming more dead and decaying. The omnipresent crickets, hidden in the tall grasses of summer, sounded grating and weak -- almost like machines whose parts had worn out for lack of oil. The droning of the cicadas seemed caught in a loop: eeeer-er-eeer-er-eee... eeeer-er-eeer-er-eee... eeeer-er-eeer-er-eee... A bad sound-effects tape that had gotten stuck in place.
He would have cried, had he been able. He hadn't wanted to return to this place. Especially not under these circumstances. Especially not to see the place so deteriorated in the absence of its master. But there was no helping that now. This was where he belonged.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Slowly.
One...
Two...
Three...
He opened himself and it all came flooding in. The gray rushing towards him from all directions -- obliterating all in its path. The crickets died with a final metallic squeal. The cicadas ended with the sound of a needle being dragged across a record.
And then there was only gray. And quiet. And him.
And the gray swirled around him. A derby formed atop his head and dissolved. The smell of cigarettes blew by him and faded away. And the memories came to him and they did not leave him.
And he was there. In the gray.
And he was there at the Royal Graves of Ur.
And he was there at the Valley of the Kings.
And he was there. In countless tombs. On innumerable battlefields. In an infinity of cemeteries and mausoleums and crypts and mounds and barrows. At the scenes of accidents and bombings and earthquakes and eruptions.
And he was...
And... he... was...
"I AM ESSUNCIUS!" He screamed. And the gray blasted from him -- redrawn instantly into the midnight of a crisp, clear Spring. Glimmering stars shared the sky with a full moon that shone bright and white. Spring peepers chirruped happily in ponds and puddles. Fresh dew covered spring-green grass and flowers that had closed to await the dawn. Here and there, pale mists hovered at knee level in a cool air that was neither too cold nor too hot and that smelled of new growth and honeysuckle.
And Essuncius smiled as he absently scratched his five-o-clock shadow. That was more like it.
A brown and green ballcap materialized on his head and he tugged its brim down over his eyes. He adjusted the silver-hoop earring in his left ear.
"Now *this,*" he said, "is a proper Midnight Eden."
The building had fallen apart rapidly in very little time. Once stately and old, what was left of it was now simply old and decrepit. It leaned alarmingly to one side -- toward a crumbling wall with a gaping hole that looked in on what had once been a library but was now only a haven for largish, swollen, toadstool-covered lumps that could once have passed for books. The hardwood floor, once lacquered and polished, was now all splinters and dust. A large rotting mound at the far end of the room still resembled the desk it once had been, at least in general shape and size if in nothing else. The whole place stank of decay gone rampant; the result of unleashed chaos and untamed entropy. Of flowing ruin and destruction for destruction's own sake.
And as Essuncius stood there looking over the scene, he couldn't help but smile at least a little. It seemed somehow fitting that this had been the place. Somehow fitting that it had ended up this way.
He raised his hands in a grandiose gesture that sent his rainbow-laden labcoat fluttering and the earth answered his movements; rumbling and buckling and rising as bones of the ancient dead -- so long ago passed on that not memory or history existed of their previous owners -- pushed their way out of their cold, cold graves. They twisted and bent and broke, forming an ornate cross of femurs and ulnars, tibia and fibia and ribs, decorated with delicate finger bones radiating out like rays of the sun; all displayed proudly atop a large pile of skulls.
And gaps in the bones that made the crossbeam spelled out letters that none could recognize or name, but that all could understand: "S I X".
His tribute done, Essuncius lounged back on a small white cloud that floated gently above the waving grass of the courtyard. He put a hand to his lips, a slender wand of wire ending in a small loop appearing between his fingers. He inhaled deeply, pursed his lips and blew, watching with a smile as irridescent soap bubbles danced across the lawn in whatever waltzes he decided to send them.
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