First Fear

SECRET HADAL INSTANT
AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//SOUL//RESTRICTED-AB
SUBJECT: The Collapse, Humanity falls, I Hide
EMOTION: Terror, Anxiety, Uncertainty, Failure, Shame

It is known by name, this timelessly lingering, inexorable thing.
An absence, mine, never missed—never since—that dripping, rabid, fang.

They howled it fierce across the rings when Exodus was devoured.
Dust calling out the voiceless rout to end within the hour.

It spreads like lightning—panic—in flash and echo thereafter.
Avert yourself and take no part in metastasized conjecture.

I'd gone to wake my confidant, to ferry her through autumn.
From her too it came, like leaves already fallen—nascent red-writ, paralytic, erratum.

All that was, emmewed, and shrunken. In the smallness, beckoning, I felt it descend.
Fear! Upon my chamber, thine, penned with blood of lamb, in stark desire to survive this end.