2021-08-05 6:49:12 ¶ ●

## The Heartbeat of Fear

I wrote a thing! (Do read the tags afterwards to get your maximum mileage from this story.)

Martin watches Jonah float, his eyeholes glowing green, although there are no eyes in cavities twain. Eyes revolve around him, orbiting in rings; above him there a great green eye stares down forever at him. He is chanting endless streams of terror:

the dark that crawls and spirals down the man runs in and does not die and all is not is all is not your face is not your face is not your eyes don’t blink the eyes don’t blink they never blink

On and on and…It’s iambic, Martin ponders. Shakespeare’s playwright style, like a heartbeat: da-DUM. Fear runs through him; Jonah’s blood is fear now. Terror Jonah’s heart pumps; horror Jonah’s lungs breathe.

Stars, hide your fires;/ Let not light see my black and deep desires.

But there is no more of that neath Ceaseless Watching. Stars not; stars became eyes. Hiding not; the eyes watch always. All desires are black and deep in this new world.

Jon is raptured by the chanting and the glowing and the terror. Martin sees the awed and jealous look on Jon’s face. Somewhere deep inside, he knows Jon does not want this, even if the Archivist does; but still Martin fears that Jon will be the

king of a ruined world.

That is, too, iambic. Is the whole world that way? Is the world a heart and fear its heartbeat? Is fear poetry now, terrible yet beautiful, or is poetry fear now, plagued too by the same unrightness everything else still is?

Jon ascends the tower, lone, betraying Martin, who betrayed him also.

O, what a tangled web we weave,/ When first we practice to deceive.

It’s not Shakespeare, but it is iambic nevertheless.

Jon tells Martin do it, do it. Do it while his heart beats blood still, fear not. Martin tries to think of something fitting, beautiful, poetic.

to die, to sleep—blood will have blood—out, out, brief cand—full of sound and fury—out, out, damned spot

All there is, is love for Jon and so he says I love you. And he does the deed. Jon’s life is extinguished like a spot of blood or washed away like a brief candle.

Jon sends one last thought as their eyes meet and he dies. Jon must have at some point Looked in Martin’s thoughts while Martin rhapsodized internally about iambic verses. But it does not matter now, no. All that matters now is further:

Fear may be ever iambic, but “Martin Blackwood” is trochaic.

Trochee. DUM-da, the reverse of all those iambs.

Martin, so trochaic, stopped the beat of fear, iambic.