The Mask of Black Spinel

Frice the week along with night had fallen to sleepless slumber, Trapped again 'tween times when thirds are three in number. I sense a grimace gurgle in these halls of boned wall, The aching whims and shaking limbs: Myself, a wretched thrall. Discomfort settles in the neurons pinned into this dermal moist regalia: The trap of mind on pointless rocks in suits of animalia. The void of space cannot compare to the empty sucking at this skin, Inflating in this burst-less blimp engorged by spooks and djinn. As I'm trapped in horror within this boiled prune of goosed bump, A blacked mask appears and trades my smile for a grump. It floats above the frigid Winter floors and sickly skies of Summer, When pleasure and purpose adjourn, and leave behind a bummer. Two holes are dug 'neath rubbed bone, vantablack with wan complexion, A masquerade of gaze from eyeless holes, and predilection-less infection. Its visit means my curse has crept in yet again, a mask is haunting all I see, Though I've never seen such as black, nor with such little will to be. I teeter 'tween terror and torpor, sweat turgid, yet gelid: A melted spheroid, Tied undecided if I'd cry for a try, or tarry and just be destroyed. My breath and pulse waxed laggard, then waned ever faster, Aghast by this pixelate mask's schorl-hewn raster. Whence to this vision avowed, and to vacillation succumbs, To undulation the mask strums, inside my eardrums. Rumination begins of who brings apparition, perhaps arisen from adumbration, Of visits from revenants whose reaping lends grim, the living certain cessation. Then reminiscence arrives to mind the anamnesis: Of the Book, that I might otherwise dismiss. Within it parchment pages, whence in refuge resides a clue, To what this mask is made of; when, where, and why; by who? Pins prick from prior paralysis, upon my dermis disguise of bone, I shiver and grab the book and beg, bound reason to me be shone. Within this covered lexicon read acrylic words in arcane diction, Which most readers would anthologize, as ancient artifact and fiction. Although this book was bound in an archaic age, Amiss the folly that fable unfolds in every page. In desperation I stir commotion, and read each folio, Longing for lights yonder Bill's Romeo. Yet each passage read of occult sorcery, or a variety of mages, No line of such a sable mask, appeared to me on any of these pages. All hope seemed to escape with passing page, turned by my flustered fingers, Then a sudden zephyr blown ingress to the page on which I linger. On the bottom right reads in numeral: “Six-hundred and sixty-six,” And reads a magical recounted chronicle of legend and spooked tricks. The vestige of the murky mask that glares in mockery, Shares the ashen-sheen once seen on this page by me. An oblong oil-painted portrait, dark and foul parchment-pink, Its caption: “The Mask of Black Spinel", inscribed in bloody ink. To the left of the image reads like a spell, A warning such masks are made of hell: "Animated by wizards whose avarice bear blithe the thaumaturgy, To forge a warlock’s soul inside corundum stone, The augury, legerdemain, required of magical metallurgy, Siphons iron from fires inside his pelvic bone. His soul is trapped in a putrid shell: His very own decapitate skull, On which will glow a satin spar, humming words of argot, The eyes shall cry with weeping sinks of pale and sickened hole, Luring victims to view the dread of its hypnotic spinning target." Such dread and morbidity of lost souls is most tragic, When trapped in masks made for but mischief, evil and magic. What malice must succeed from such a tumorous terror? And what reconnaissance be sought by its hidden wearer? Returning my focus to the wraith stealing my laugh, Half of me remembers that it's made of wrath. To its horror, the mask of cadaverous complexion, Recalls then, that it's my reflection.