Fall into the Abyss

Not flame, but colour takes them down, a carnival of drowning light, where violet bleeds into saffron gold and heaven has vanished from sight.

Four men, tied into a single knot, a fleshy wreath of muscle, hair and bone, each hand a hook in his brother’s flesh, each terror braided with its own.

One mouth cries out to the void, a wailing the falling wind turns silent. One throat is bared in sweet surrender. One turns his weary eyes toward us, as if to ask what we have seen; the last has buried his face in shoulder, he knows the fall is all there is.

They do not fight to climb, but cling, as falling things always do, for even in the jaws of hell it’s hard to plunge alone into the abyss.