The Dark Poet



He once again averted his gaze when she glanced over in his direction. Shy and afraid, he averted his eyes. The moment, the opportunity, had once again slipped past him. Like the many times before, he lacked the courage to meet the stare.

For Vince Falcone this was a typical day in the class. He, ever silent and afraid to match eyes; she, completely oblivious. Ever since the first day in the school, he had his eyes on her. The tall, dark haired girl who sat across the room. Whose eyes he felt were the gates to her mind, and whose elusive smile he sought to grab with each passing minute. Although he felt intense attraction for her, Vince lacked the courage to even strike up a conversation with the beauty.

The rest of the day dragged on, but Vince's mind remained on the girl. His school work had been slowly slipping down the drain for months. In his eyes, Amanda Harper was the girl for him. Perfect in every way imaginable. The problem was that he did not know how he could ever break the ice, let alone ask her to do something with him.

Later that day, Vince was at home, listening to classic love songs, when an idea popped into his head. Maybe he couldn't verbally express his feelings, but what if he wrote them down? What if attempted to write poetry?

He rocked back in his chair and thought. "I've never written anything before. Hell, I'm probably horrible at it... but poetry is supposed to be words coming from the soul, right? Just feelings on paper? Maybe I'll give it a shot and see how it goes."

Vince went into his notebook and ripped out a page. Next, he took out a pencil and put it to the paper. He let his mind wander off to the dreamy realms and the havens of the inner mind. His pen slid across the paper, recording whatever words of love and compassion that would find their way into his open receiver mind. After a few moments lost in his thoughts, he wrote down the final line and looked over what he wrote.

Is that you in the dress,
whose hair curls into a mess?
wounded on your heel I see,
feeling pain through the seam.

Talk and listen, though silent you are,
speak and hear, your mind is shut.
please release, I'm not relieved,
I'd give my kingdom for your dreams.

His eyes widened in shock at the words in front of him. "Wow..." he silently whispered. "I'm... I'm actually good at this." He smiled to himself and titled the poem as "Amanda", and signed his name at the bottom. He put it in his notebook for class tomorrow. He would put it in her locker before school began so that she would find it before their class.

He was extremely nervous and excited all at once. When Vince arrived at school, he immediately went to her locker. Seeing no one around, he slipped his poem into a hole in the locker and quickly made himself disappear. No one had saw what he did, and that was how he wanted it.

The bell rang at the end of class, and his nervousness took control of him. Though he was looking forward to her response, Vince was determined to spend as much time as possible avoiding going to class. He took long drinks at every water fountain; he spoke to every friend. He even occasionally dropped his pen on "accident" and had to retrieve it. But with the late bell about to ring, he would have to face the consequences of his previous actions. Whether good or bad he did not know.

He opened the door and took his seat. As he walked, he saw Amanda look at him hard, but she did not say anything. He was too afraid that she formed negative thoughts about him, and so he did not take his usual glances at her. Instead, he shoved his face into his textbook and hoped the class would end without incident. At this point he thought of himself as the biggest idiot ever and regretted that he ever wrote the poem in the first place.

When the bell rang, he got up and left. He walked down the hall and almost reached the door when he heard a female voice call his name. He stopped and slowly turned. It was Amanda. Amanda was walking towards him; a slight smile formed on her face.

"Hey, Vince. I, uh, I got your poem." She took it out of her purse and unfolded it. Vince bit his lip and his cheeks went red. "It was so sweet of you! I had no idea that you're such a talented poet. Poetry is like, my favorite thing ever! If you want to, you can come to my house after school". She smiled. "Maybe we could watch a movie or something?"

He stuttered "Um, I kinduh... er..." He looked at her. Her crisp, blue eyes looked longingly at him.

Vince gulped. "Yeah, sure! I don't have anything to do today." He paused. "Uh, you'll have to lead the way to your house."

She grabbed his hand and pulled him out down the hall. "C'mon, silly! Lets go!" The two of them laughed and went outside, hand in hand. Vince couldn't believe it. The girl he thought he could never say a word to actually wanted to hang out with him for a change!

They came to the house in only ten minutes. They went inside and Amanda told him to make himself at home while she changed out of her school clothes. The house was dainty and feminine, much like Amanda herself. He felt embarrassed knowing that his house was much dirtier and lacking any sort of flare or attraction to it. That's what you get with only a father and his son living in a house. Regardless, it didn't matter. They were here, not there.

He sat down in a chair and waited. After five minutes, Amanda came down wearing a short skirt and a very revealing top. She slyly smiled and asked him what he thought. Vince stammered and replied with an approving nod. She led him into another room and they sat on a couch. She'd chosen to watch a horror movie. It was about a couple who go away on a vacation. While they're away. the man starts developing a mental illness that leads him into insanity. He starts to verbally abuse his wife, and eventually he starts to physically assault her.

Amanda leaned onto Vince and whispered into his ear, "I hope I never meet a psychopath like that". A particularly gruesome scene came on in which the man beat the wife half to death with a crowbar. Amanda pushed herself into Vince and embraced him. Vince wrapped his arms around her. They held each other tighter and tighter until they started cuddling. Soon afterwards, they were making out. Vince was sure he had finally found love.

The next day they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend, and spent many more days just like the first. Vince hadn't written any more poetry since then, deciding that his one poem had done its job. He was content with where he was right now, and all was well for him and Amanda. Their friends and family supported the relationship, and months went by without any fights or trouble between them.

His performance and school continued to drain because of Amanda. Not from his uncertainty and inability to talk to her, but from spending so much time with her. Vince entered a period of depression due to failing a few classes. He did not spend as much time with Amanda, and felt a drift between them. Their friends and family noticed the change as well, and no matter what she did Amanda was not able to bring him out of the hole of gloom he had trapped himself in.

Finally, his depression had been enough for her. She solemnly broke up with Vince and they went their separate ways. Vince was understanding, but his depression, to simply put it, was too great. He no longer saw his friends outside of school and he became very introverted. Weeks went by with no sign of happiness finding him again. He thought about all the memories he had with Amanda, and how all of it had started: a poem. The idea of writing again was enough to bring a weak smile to his face. So one day at home, he began writing.

He wrote a few poems. One about a sickness affecting a group. Another of couples being separated, by distance, anger, even death. All were topics of despair and sorrow. Expressing his feelings through poetry had calmed him, and he had a good nights sleep for the first time in months.

The next day at school was peculiar. For one, dozens of students had caught Strep Throat and were not in school that day. Some of his friends had broken up with their girlfriends and boyfriends. A few of his friends apparently packed up and moved overnight. There was even a rumor that there had been a car accident late last night that killed four students. These events were strangely familiar. At lunch, Vince took out the poems he wrote last night and looked them over. With a look of horror, a chill ran down his spine.. All of these instances were eerily similar to the images the poems painted.

After school, Vince went home and plopped down on his bedroom floor. He held a pen in one hand and stared at the paper in front of him. He sat for half an hour, unable to believe there could possibly be any correlation to his poetry and the real world. He scoffed at the very thought of it! Reluctantly and curiously, he finally decided he would test it. He wrote a poem that described a hamburger appearing on the counter of his kitchen.

He got up and walked into the bathroom.

Sitting on his bathroom counter was a burger. Vince dropped the pen in shock. He stood for what seemed to him an eternity at what could not be there. What should not be there. There was no doubt: it had appeared. He retreated to his room and wrote another poem, describing the sack of money at the foot of his bed.

After he wrote it, he turned around.

Sitting at the foot of his bed was a sack of money. His breath became heavy and he slowly sunk down to the floor. He opened the bag and poured out the bills inside. It was tangible. It was real. The bag and the bills were here, in his room. Despite everything he knew, the unexplainable had happened and what he wrote down on paper had somehow come into existence. The paper he wrote the poem on was a normal piece of paper. There was nothing unsettling about the pen. Vince concluded that somehow, whatever he wrote a poem about, it would find itself from the realm of fiction and entwine itself within the fabrics of reality.

Could that be why Amanda liked him? Perhaps the poem he wrote, and titled in her name, had changed her. Could it be that the love he thought he found was nothing more than the work of some sort of magic? Was it just words on a paper that made her love him, not him himself? The thought of Amanda never truly having feelings for him left his heart even more broken than before.

Vince went out for a walk. He wouldn't even think of telling anyone about this power. None of his family or even his closest friends could know that he held such a powerful ability. Hell, he was still trying to come to terms with it. A walk to collect his thoughts and get some fresh air was what he needed. He took some of the bills out of the sack he had conjured. After all, it would be pointless if he did not use it. Once he got outside, he made his way to the store to buy some snacks. Then, he went for his stroll.

A few minutes later, he came upon a gut-wrenching scene. He saw Amanda. He saw Amanda making out with a boy. Rage built up inside him. Rage directed at Amanda and this other person who was caressing her in the middle of the park. He would have gone up to them and told her off, probably call her some names, but he caught himself and continued to walk on by. However, the anger continued to build up inside him and clouded his judgment. He angrily walked back to the store. The store sold paper and pen, and paper and pen he bought. Vince walked back to the spot where he saw Amanda. He half hoped they'd be there, half hoped they wouldn't.

He came around the bend, and as he expected, they were still there, happily carried away in the act of touching and kissing that he once knew. Vince sat down on the side of the path and watched them. He coldly stared for minutes, and for every second he observed his mind became a burning forest of hatred and malign sadness. In his hand was the pen and the paper he bought at the store. He looked at it, back at the couple, and back down at his paper again. With his emotions in flames he set his pen to the paper and let his frustration take over. He wrote and wrote all the dark thoughts in his head. Of death and mistrust and gore and horror. He wrote of a couple meeting death in a horribly gruesome way. Once finished, he titled the poem as "Amanda".

His eyes were transfixed on what he just wrote. It was the darkest, most hate filled poem he had ever laid his eyes on. He knew what was to come, and a mad grin slowly spread across his face. A show was about to begin, and he had the best seat in the house.

First, the two of them stopped making out and the guy got up. He was yelling something about bees and swatted at the air furiously. More of the insects appeared and they all descended on him, stinging furiously. He cried out in pain at the stinging and stumbled into the middle of the path. He eventually fell to the ground trying to fight off the insects. Amanda was about to run over to help when a loud neighing echoed in the distance. In a few seconds, a horse-drawn carriage was seen speeding on the path, obviously agitated by the bees. Their driver was unable to control the panicked beasts. Amanda sprung up and tried to run over to her lover, afraid of what was to come. She was no more than ten feet away when the carriage came upon him. His cry of agony was silenced instantly and replaced with the sound of bones being crushed beneath the weight of the wagon. What was left after the horses ran on was death. A mixture of blood and bones and flesh laying in the pavement, a pool of dark blood flowing into the grass. The epitome of horror came to her face as she backed away, hand to her mouth. Unable to cope with the death, she turned and ran off screaming into the woods.

Onlookers had seen what happened and rushed to the boy, though it was hopeless. He was obviously crushed to death, and ceased to live. While the others scrambled to help, Vince instead listened closely to the night. Moments later, the roar of a creature was heard and above that was the high pitch scream of a female, which was then drowned out by the sounds of tearing and snarling. Satisfied, Vince rose to his feet and walked back home.

He laughed to himself. The first of many.