The Thames Pest

At first there's just a feeling

As if you're being watched

A hundred eyes climb your spine

A creeping peeping

That has you inclined

To keep a tight grip on your dagger

Mimicked by your tightening chest

Protecting a sensitive treasure

Locked within a Recoiling breast

Which suddenly feels all too exposed

Like a cliff edge nest

Being circled by crows

On the cusp of a pecking

A pointy reckoning beckoning

Alerts your perceptions

To ominous detections

A lurking presence that can't be placed

Which stalks in the shadows with little haste

Instead approaches with a pace

That is drip, drip, drip, dripping.

Inevitable and slow

But nonetheless chilling

Fluctuating and dissipating

In the peripherals of your vision

Fight what is frightening?

Or bolt like lightning?

These thoughts divide your mind like an incision

As you find your body trapped

In a frozen prison

With treasonous limbs disobeying decision

Wait!! Listen!!!

The Waters' of the Thames boil and bubble!!!

The full moon tonight Illuminates your trouble

As the shimmering glisten

Of Natures' mirror is disturbed

Small critters freak and scatter,

As do all the birds.

Only you remain steadfast

Like a speared through lookout

Impaled at your post

Bearing witness to Hells' host

Rising out until the moon is blacked out

There's no doubt you feel violated

As you're engulfed in a shadow

Like a hallowed place desecrated

By a thousand teeth

You will be perforated

Devoured as you cower

During this your final hour

Stripped of your meat like a butcher made redundant

Your lungs hung like a pendant

From mechanical mandibles

Expelling repugnant gastric smells

And as the Smoke is exhumed

To the toll of Hells' Bells

In a hot mist you are showered

By the screams of the devoured.

As it's jaws open wide

All bravery and pride

Crumble before the rumbling groans

Of the men before you whose bodies' have been deboned

Afraid and Flayed before you've even prayed

Only by an army could you now be saved

For the Thames Pest

Will never rest

Like a midnight prowler in search of its prey

Like a dominant master demanding you obey

You're enslaved to decaying bravery

A Knavery that sealed your fate

A curiosity that that ended too late

Now witnessing your own demise

As all trace of you is taken

For higher powers

By treasonous deeds

Your life has been forsaken

The Year is 1488. A stormy nights' sky explodes above the City of Rome. Lightning and Thunder fight for attention like ancient Gods on a celestial battlefield, warring for dominance over the realm of man. Citizens and animals alike seek refuge from the destructive power of this storm, its cold, howling wind penetrating bone like a thousand flying daggers.

In the back room of a seemingly abandoned boarded up town house, a middle aged man sits at an old oak table, furiously scribbling onto a scroll by candlelight. Flashes of lightning explode in the sky outside, shooting illuminations that pepper the crumbling plastered walls of the room like fireworks in the night. Walls which are covered with the detailed sketches of scientific diagrams, recorded on wine stained scrolls crudely nailed in place. Beads of sweat begin to develop on our mans' brow, as his drawing intensifies. The desire in his heart to 'leave his mark', akin to the storm raging outside which seeks to scar the land with its presence. Suddenly a loud crash of thunder startles our mystery man, breaking his concentration. Dropping his quill, he walks over to the half boarded up window to peek out at the eerily empty street below. Nothing moves in the blustery gloom except that which wind has possessed. Our mans' darting eyes examine the shadowy corners of the familiar world outside, turned sinister by the dark. He watches long enough for his mind to create shapes in the black; terrifying mirages which cause him to look away. Joking to himself that it is only his mind playing tricks on him, and satisfied that no actual danger is present, with a sigh of relief he turns away from the window and motions towards the candle wax covered table where he was just sitting. The warm feeling of relief washing over him is suddenly interrupted when a creaking floorboard outside the door of his room, freezes him in his tracks. As he ponders its origin with a quickly developing dry mouth, a second creaking floorboard almost causes his heart to stop mid beat. His fear-ridden eyes glance at a cheese knife on the table which is just out of reach of his sweaty grasp and frozen stiff legs. Suddenly a bang as loud as cannon fire explodes into the room. The old oak door splinters and snaps apart under the force of 10 heavily armed Vatican soldiers brandishing flaming torches, their highly polished armour and swords, glistening like the moon in the dimly lit room. Like a gluttonous river bursting its banks after days of gorging on rain, the Soldiers flood the small room of the town house, uprooting everything in their path. A Vatican Cardinal who enters the room moments after the soldiers, orders the seizure of all drawings and the immediate arrest of the man who created them. As our mysterious artist is put in chains and dragged out of the room kicking and screaming for his life, the Cardinal picks up from the wine stained pile of papers on the table, the most recent sketch that the mystery man was working on. Eyes brimming with aspirations' of glory inspect the detailed document, as the burning reflection of his flaming torch lights up the Cardinals' eyes like the fires of hell. He smiles a sinister smile to himself, rolls up the scroll, conceals it within his clergical robes, takes one last look at the room before exiting into the darkness of the house from whence he came. Left behind in the room is a lingering silence, like a violated prostitute gasping for air as she awaits her next abuser.

Somewhere within the crypts of the Vatican City later that tempestuous night, the same Cardinal carries a jangling set of large iron keys and a flaming torch as he marches anxiously past dreary dungeons reeking of fear and excrement. The screams of the damned echo through the dark stone corridors, whose fingernail scraped walls are interrupted by the heavily bolted doors of the Vatican's' many cells and torture rooms. Bony broken hands reach out to the passing Cardinal for salvation through rusted iron bars which, had they tongue to speak, would tell the tale of many a forgotten prisoner. In the shadows, withered husks of what used to be men, lick at the rainwater which drips through cracks in the masonry and pools on the floor of the cells. Like dogs, these figures in the shadows, furiously lap at the dirty brown puddles in hope of quenching their endless thirsts. Putrid Pools not even deep enough to drown themselves in, ending their suffering.

'The image of God reduced to a Beast, by Beasts in the name of God'

Thought the Cardinal as he witnessed the men desperately drinking. Only for a moment could he watch them, before the powerful smell of malignant disease violated his senses and hastened him forth towards his purpose. A handkerchief containing rosemary and other sacred herbs covered his nose as he marched on, unlocking doors and racing down dark claustrophobic staircases, all the time bearing an anxious expression specked with perspiration. He arrives in a room which resembles a library brimming with scrolls and treasures and places down on a cobweb covered shelf, the scroll that our mysterious man in the house was working on moments before he was arrested. The Cardinal then leaves the room with as much purpose as he entered, locking the stiff door behind him with a heavy clunk before disappearing into the endless black of the Vatican's' dark underbelly.