"banished" by Elizabeth Wilcox

I stand on a precipice, waiting to fall.  The world stretches ahead and below me; strewn with shadows of the coming dawn.  Finally, I feel the time has come.  I fall; arms outstretched; eyes wide and stinging with the bitter wind.  Earth rushes up to my welcome embrace—ready to accept me in it’s grasp.  I laugh at the soil’s eager thirst for blood; a rain it waited impatiently to receive.  Yes, the earth rushed up to my open arms.  Swiftly, it tumbles upwards; or am I crashing down?  It matters not.  An instant before it’s greeting stills my heart—death is cheated.  If one does not live, how then can one die?  I puzzle the mystery to myself.  Yet, one feels one can nonetheless; and the feeling is all the worse for one who has partook of death’s bitter cup is not soon to forget the taste.  A wry smile twists my bloodless lips; ice runs through my cold veins.  Always cold.  Eternally cold. 

I soar over boundless plains.  Fly over city and field alike.  None see me; they do not want to see.  None hear me; they will not listen.  My throat opens and I give voice to an unearthly scream.  “Death comes.”  I say.  “Death comes swift and sharp; prepare.”  This is my work; the work of one damned.  One dead who never truly lived.  Lady Death’s forerunner—crier of fate.  Feared by few.  Forgotten by many.  Doomed for eternity.  Beware my voice; it cannot lie.  “Death comes swift and sharp; prepare.”  I am many.  I am alone.  Call me what you may.  Phantom; specter; it matters not.  I am forever unchanged.  I am Banshee—and with me comes Death.