The man stood on the edge under the gray sky
looking down towards the world below.
No one noticed him.
He lived his life in silence;
his face contorted
telling of a deep pain,
beneath the crushing weight of a meaningless existence.
A ghost to wander long concrete corridors
among the featureless staring faces of lost souls.
His heart was but an empty shell;
devoid of love and light.
Until one night, sitting in silence,
he noticed a small flicker of a flame within him.
Over time the flame grew brighter,
fueled by his hatred for the world so cold.
The fire became wild and raging
until he could contain it no more.
That night, within his dark quarters,
he vowed to become a master of the blackened art of screen printing.
To create the ultimate print.
A hideous masterwork of incomprehensible beauty,
with no end to the depth of its darkness,
no answers to its mysteries.
By candlelight, he immersed himself in the dusty volumes
of the ancient screen printing texts,
with an obsession bordering on madness.
By day, he put his newly found knowledge to the test
creating print after dark print.
His emaciated body grew weak.
The skin stretched tightly over his facial bones
resembling a skull in the candlelight.
On the moonlit night of his six hundred and sixty-sixth print
he fell to his knees ‘neath the stars and called out to the Dark One.
“Hear me, prince of the night! I wish I may, I wish I might…”