(Continues from Like a criminal, it stalked)

The knife danced across the desk 
drawing arabesques
spelling out a grotesque 
tale about my romanesque
heartthrob who was statuesque
no more in the devil’s burlesque.
Razor-tipped claws now caressed
flesh my lips had never blessed
before death possessed
a love that had never coalesced. 

I shook my head and pushed away the poetic mutterings of my grief. I’d get Jase back and we’d find a frame in this crazy afterlife where we could be together. Besides, he still had a lot of ‘splaining to do.

After I wiped tears I couldn’t cry from eyes dried by death, I refocused on the dagger and its message. Just like everything else since I started chasing my story, what it wrote made no gods-damned sense. Scratched into the desk’s mahogany face was this cryptic message:

On a street called Mercy resides
an ear listening to the hill’s
song uniting the fiendish cries
of Hells’ maddened Carnival rides. 

Where was this Street called Mercy? I stood smack dab in NYC. Did Mercy ever venture there? Who was this chick Fiona? The blade had also written her name on the desk. Okay back to yes or no questions. They were safer for my sanity and my credulity had already stretched way past its limits. I was in danger of snapping.

“Is Fiona involved in this?”

Yes. The blade tapped a street called Mercy.

“Is Fiona at–“

Yes. The blade hovered over the word before I had finished my sentence. Okay so this Fiona person was at a street called Mercy and Jase’s black magery obsession had started there too. Well, I knew my next destination–a street called Mercy.

I turned to go, no goodbye needed, not for an inanimate object. But the blade had other ideas. It shot forward and stabbed me through the back. Staggered by the blow, I turned solid and my feet tangled with broken glass tripping and tipping me out of the shattered window. Light blazed out of the gems set in the hilt and crossguard throwing out brilliant wings to catch and glide on the air.

Find the earlier parts of this series here.

For the November Notes Writing Challenge hosted by  Sarah Doughty of Heartstring Eulogies and Rosema of A Reading Writer. 30 more days of your favorite ghost and his poetic adventures. Enjoy!

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