I Have Many Names

Just a warning here: this is kinda long...and creepy.

My bare feet pad through the cool grass, as i stalk determinedly toward my destination. A powdery yellow colonial house looms invitingly before my bloodshot eyes, daring me to enter. A cryptic smile forms on my chapped lips. I never could resist a dare.

My stalk slows to a prowl, as the house gets closer. It is more clear to me now. The door is a soft, light brown, and a white trim decorates the rooftop. Just what I need. A gentle home, for a gentle family, with a gentle child, waiting to be bred.

I tip-toe around the perimiter, looking for my key to entry. A window meets my trained eye. My smile grows. Everyone knows that the best time to hunt is when the seasons should be changing, but aren't. People feel lucky, as though they had cheated mother nature. They want to know what else they can have. They become careless. Foolish. They make silly mistakes. Mistakes that give hunters their window of opportunity.

My smile grows, as I notice my pun. Window of opportunity. Hah.

My kitchen knife slowly cuts through the screen of the window. This is the chance I have been waiting for. A warm, late summer day, where the windows are open enough to let in the cool, fresh, relieving night air.

I step through the gap, careful not to make a sound as I land on the tile floors.Despite my best efforts, I catch my breath, hoping that not a single peaceful soul was disturbed by my demeaning presence. Hearing nothing, I continue on with my dark journey.

The first bedroom I reach is that of the parents. Their slumber is disturbed only by dreams of the welfare and happiness of their young, innocent, beloved children, as i slit their throats. My footsteps are nonexistent in the ways of the sleeping, as I slip out of that first bedroom, and into the next.

This bedroom consists of a single soul. A young soul, of no more harm to this world than the fresh grass on which it lives. But this does not stop me. This boy does not deserve to know he is dying before he does. But I cannot help my meathods. I slit his throat, just as I did his parents, and his eyes flash open, full of confusion, then fear, then request of help, before fading away.

Just like his parents.

I fade away, just as his eyes did, from the memory of the young boy's bedroom.

The next room is of that of a girl, a child. A very young child. A child so young, I nearly hesitate from my duty.

Nearly.

As my kitchen knife advances towards her young, unknowing throat, i realize something key. This girl is beauty.

~

I go by many names. Some call me dream stealer. Others friend of war. Most the grim reaper. More call me death. However, the one thing that doesn't change as I move from place to place, challenge to challenge, dare to dare.

I can never overtake the thing that is beauty.

For she goes by one name.

She has one image.

She has one purpose.

And she is Life.