It pulled a ragged tongue across its teeth
and growled as if the trooper posed a threat--
thirteen feet long, black hair wiry and wet,
spiked quills above, ebony claws beneath.
The trooper's gun hand shook like winter leaves;
the moon above looked down like God's dead eye.
The stars were buckshot holes in the night sky,
and Death was watching from the house's eaves.
The monster pulled itself up to its height
and cast its shadow down upon the man
who stood between it and its rightful prey.
Three sharp blasts cracked the belly of the night--
the child screamed, the trooper raised his hands--
and then the Shadow fell like Judgement Day.
2 comments:
Written Friday, May 12, at the World Horror Convention in San Francisco.
Good horror sonnet. Enjoy the quasi-Petrarchan form. Especially liked the image of the stars being like buckshot holes in the sky. In good horror, things don't turn out well, and the ending works. The elliptical nature of the statement makes it even stronger.
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