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                   JOURNAL FOR SATURDAY 31ST OCTOBER, 2026
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SUBJECT: Another eerie something for Halloween
   DATE: Sat 31 Oct 14:16:42 GMT 2026

Another evocative little musing for Halloween. Inspiration taken from the
likes of Poe, Orwell, Wilde, Dante, Stoker, Brontë, Kafka, Plath, Gilman, King
and many other great writers. Enjoy, if you can…

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                              HAPPY  HALLOWEEN!



                                Private Litany
                                ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾

The sun did not set so much as it bled out, staining the horizon in shades of
bruised plum and rusted iron. Beside the path a river flowed, the water moved
with a heavy, turgid grace — an obsidian ribbon carrying the debris of the day
toward some distant, indifferent sea.

The man sat on the bench, a solitary monument of grey against the encroaching
gloom. His suit was impeccably tailored, a stiff, charcoal armour intended to
project an image of competence, but it felt increasingly like tight, stifling
bonds. It hung heavy on his shoulders, burdened by the invisible
responsibilities of the hours he had just endured — the demands of a world
that took and took until the spirit was all but consumed, grown thin and
translucent.

He hunched forwards with his hands clasped in front of him, his knuckles
white. It was a gesture of prayer, perhaps, but more accurately it was a
desperate attempt to hold himself together, to keep fragments of his identity
from spilling onto the ground. He quietly whispered a litany, a secret for
himself alone. He let out a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to carry the
weight of a thousand “yeses” spoken to people who did not care to hear them.

He straightened up stiffly, turned his gaze toward the water. He wasn’t
looking at the current or the skeletal reeds; he was looking into the deep,
silent “elsewhere” that lay beyond the shore. Evening waned, succumbing to the
inevitable, advancing night, “elsewhere” slowly fading from view. The
remaining heat of the day met the cold of the void. Tendrils of mist started
reaching out. Below the surface, something shifted — not a fish or a leaf, but
a sudden, concentric ripple that disturbed the obsidian glass of the river, as
if the water itself had taken a breath and let it out. He watched it fade,
wishing for a moment that he could dissolve into that black current, to let
the water scour the bureaucratic ink from his skin and the polite, hollow
laughter from his lungs.

For a moment, his eyes grew distant, searching the surface without looking,
trying to sense a crack in the world — a door, a sign, a momentary reprieve
from the script he was forced to play. But the river couldn’t help him. In the
encroaching evening it listened, remaining silent and indifferent.

Then, the streetlamp buzzed and flickered into life. It was a dying pulse of
electricity, a stuttering, rhythmic hum that fought against the thickening
shadows. When the light finally caught, it cast his silhouette against the
path in a stark, shivering outline — a harsh spotlight on a stage he had never
chosen, playing a part he no longer knew how to abandon.

He looked at the path ahead — it would lead home, always home. He could
meander, try wandering from the path, but the labyrinth of the city always
bent back on itself, guiding his feet like train tracks. Always he came home,
to the same chair, the same walls, the same repetitive ghosts of a life he had
built but no longer recognized as his own. He had no other final destination.
There was no other land to flee to.

He slowly, deliberately, shook his head. It was a silent “no” to the ghosts,
to the exhaustion, and to the crushing weight of the “already-done”.

He stood. The movement was slow, like a man rising from a long, heavy sleep.
He adjusted his coat, a small, private ritual of re-arming himself for the
night. He stepped away from the bench and walked into the growing dark, his
figure receding until he was nothing more than a shadow moving toward the
threshold of tomorrow, carrying the small, flickering hope that perhaps, in
the morning, the air might feel different.

--
Diddymus, in collaboration with Google Gemini AI


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