Light cast into the street as he evacuated the house quickly as another plate smashed near his head, venomous shouts were aimed barbed with the vitriol of his beleaguered wife. Spurned again for his folly and his roving eye. A plate Frisbee’d through the doorway clipping his forehead as he turned on his heel and fled the onslaught. Afraid and alone until met at the gate by The Man in Black.
Only yesterday he had met the man in the local bar, after a few drinks openly talking about his life. How it should be better than this. How he should have all the delights of the world. How his wife and kids were just a drain on him. The Man in Black smiled. Assuring him that all will be well as the drinks poured and poured again. Only to wake up with a half-naked woman in his marital bed and his wife screaming at him. Screaming at the bed, screaming at the dead woman.
Registering the scene, trousers and liquor-stained shirt hastily pulled on, and duvet thrown over the offending body to hide the staring glassy eyes. The eyes which bore into his soul cementing shame and horror at his infidelity and capricious hate. He pushed passed his wife and two children, the stairs were vaulted, door opened, and he was gone.
The Man in Black smiled a rictus grin as another plate crashed into the Carl’s head, watching him crumple to the path as the wife’s shadowy silhouette was engulfed by the door closing and her frantic shouts punctuating the silence with the call to the police. Stepping silently towards Carl The Man in Black was more intangible than before as he pulled open his jacket retrieving a scroll dripping with blood.
“Can’t you remember Carl? You signed my contract about a new woman, being free of your wife and children. That was a fun night, and all delivered as per your contract. Next time you must really read the small print. If there was ever going to be a next time.”
The ground split open as many shadowy hands grabbed Carl and dragged him down into the infernal fires. Another contract signed and sealed as The Man in Black smiled, turned and walked away.
Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the place they leave. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going.