"The Vampire's Refuge" a dark poem by Victoria Grace

 

(Original Picture sourced from Pixabay, edited by me on Ipiccy)

Stalking the darkness was a predator approaching prey, a creature hunting flesh,

wrapped in misery and cloaked in death.

It tore open men and women's bodies,

delighted in agony and consumed human breath.

History didn't stop the monster roaming the lands,

searching for new victims to sacrifice.

Civilization grew with this monster,

denying its evil and clueless to its obvious disguise.

Things got bad,

people hated and changed with time.

Innocence was the vampire's enemy

and its diseases infected blood, consciousness and mind.

Countries fell and skylines rose

from the mud, from the blood, out of the flood of pain.

Hungry mouths made and spirits sucked out of veins.

The vampire kept taking new shapes, forms and disorder.

The life kept flowing from the holes in its victims

and in and out of shadows it moved,

waiting for new eras and new slaughter.

It didn't take long for the world to end,

as it was, it struggled along on its last gasping breath.

It didn't take long for people to retreat to their last hiding place,

not quite existence but not quite death.

Sorrow built upon itself a new framework, structure, and home.

The vampire moved into those spaces too seeking out flesh and marrow, survivors' essence and soul.

A thousand years passed,

and some humans were scattered from one continent to the next.

The sun was still shining, the birds were still flying,

but life had slowed, industry toppled, and all that was left were scattered families' nests.

The vampire had achieved almost everything it sought, planned and desired.

The memory of the past and glory of man had been whittled down to a passing reference;

half-believed, inconsequential, long since transpired.

What was left were phantoms, but the hearts itself were not quite dead.

The survivors still clung to fragments of themselves,

their children were still loved and their blood was still warm and red.

The vampire could not yet retreat, could not abandon its cause.

It wanted deadness itself, blankness like it,

so it hunted down the last hiding places--from vulnerable flesh it refused to withdraw.

It slunk into tight corners, descended to its original home, the dirt.

It manifested as new rot in the food and created brand new hurt.

There were no more cities to conquer, no more armies to infest.

There were only the left over pieces of humanity's heart, their left over heartache, and this was their final test.