Flash! Aa-ah! He's a miracle!

"Know what would be a miracle?"

"This blog not sucking Vultan's ass?"

Ladies and germs, it's that time again.

There was no respite; the vivid, violent dreams that ruthlessly tormented her slumber had now relentlessly stretched the abyss, to envelop her during her day. In the grey pregnant with growing shadow, whose fathomless shade of rough, irritating November was swallowing the worn hardwood, the corner of the rumpled bed that lay unseen under the sheet disheveled like her hair; was creeping as a malicious vine over the cold spaces onto her warm flesh, strangling the last tears from her weeping mind, she sat waiting, alone.

The maw of the sleeping, unseen pit, its voluptuous breath black as tar burrowing beneath her salty skin -- how she wanted to scratch and tear, praying that the poisonous vapor would leave and never return -- drove her away from the edge, nightshirt breathlessly clinging to her contours, her back haphazardly propped up against the grey headboard. All color had been drained from the room. The rich, scarlet bedspread, the ceiling -- her eyes darted at a most feeble sound. Cornered by the thundering echo, she had forgotten how intoxicating, how relaxing, the shades of the walls were, freshly painted mere weeks ago. It wasn't far enough, never far enough. She heard it again. Louder. Closer.

Brushing dark tresses out of her eyes, a strand caught on a fingernail, she pulled her hand violently away. Things weren't any clearer, only grey. The wisp of hair quickly vanished in the billowing gloom. Out the window, the fiercest scrutiny lain upon the frigid vista, no orange radiance sliced through bruised, purpled clouds; only unending fields of grey. Morning hadn't come. And she heard it again. Louder. Closer.

Managing to find an untapped well of resolve, she carefully ambled to the edge of the bed, her knees stopped as if blocked by an invisible force, and looked down upon the tired planks. Frightened like a child half-recalling the tangible horrors of old Poe, through troubled lips she weakly chuckled to no one. The floorboards lay motionless. The only heartbeat was her own. The nearly leafless boughs, carefully textured with frost, stretched in repose. There was no gust of deep autumn air, no flutter of a wing, slam of a car door in the parking lot that sat behind her property. No sound at all, an unearthly stillness.

Shaking off the sparks of frayed synapses, she stood up, pacing around the room dormant as a mausoleum of stone and dust. Not even the shuffle of her feet, the ruffling of the nightshirt against her nudity, made a noise. The shadows that danced in a Dionysian frenzy when the wind howled against the panes, elegantly waltzed when she caressed them, now shambled as the living dead, animated by -- she jerked, spinning her body around. Nothing. The house that would always settle in the evening hour, as predictable as the hands of a freshly wound clock, had failed to speak a word. She sat back down on the corner of the bed and, taking a determined breath, stared in silence.

She was no longer waiting, no longer alone.