The Gray Of The Coming Dawn:

A Prelude To Darkness

By Dash Crowley

I

HE SAT NEAR TO WHERE THE WORLD DROPPED OFF and lit a cigarette and drew on it and tapped the ash over the edge. Nothing to see save the sky and rock and the sorrow.

A crow called out once and then again and the faces whispered its secrets back and forth down the way to the quarry floor. Behind, a stand of napless pines swayed gently to some tune that they alone could hear; a threnody for all the life that was and what would never be.

The man regained his feet and stared vacuous and turned to make his way along the ridge and over the craggy plats and off into the dead wood behind the pine. Embers grew and fell from his jaw as his legs carried him further from the rock ledge. Microcosmic…