The ravens are gathering. Jackboots crash on polished squares. Iron clatter of battle-shod horses over wooden slats. Cross stiff flatts, flaxen meadows and sunken marshlands. Watched by hooded shapes high on castle walls. Black turrets pierce tense, sullen skies.
In the courtyard, more and more ravens make landfall. Dead-eyed, tattered fans and swirls. Stilt-walkers, frog-steppers, poker-face wood-peckers. Determined worm-pickers.
...........................................................................Donnie is overheating. Warms to his psycho-social polemic. Begins to grow monstrous. Transforms. Deforms. Cruelly, smiles. Sparkles tyrannical. Flexes monstrous increase. Assumes, inhabits. Heaves and thrashes telescopic articulations of metal tentacles. Welcomes the upward, outward surge of cyborg power. Winding tighter and tighter, against, against, against.
Roars and spasms. Rises high over dwarfish humans. Tiny brains: witless, careless creatures. Fly specks: swat them, swat them, snuff them out. Spirals wildly, further out.
Stands collosal. High above Pandemonium. Unfurls gigantic, sleek Dark Angel wings. Steps out super-sheathed in metal scales. The new Black Star. Epic, titanic. Onto the threshold. Liminal. Teeters tense points on the edge of cold black space. Grey cloud-wraiths curl around mighty, monumental feet.
Ready for the final step. Leaden skyfall to thumping brake, jagged rise and silent glide through cold, breathless nightmare realms to protean cosmic outer distances. Beyond the birth of heaven and hell.
Are you OK?
Calm down.
Just sit down.
The spell is broken. Gretchen calls him back. Back from the edge. Shrinks him back to human size. Restores. Resumes his human shape. Warm blood, heart restarts.
