Open Mic: In the Company of Shadows

Chapter II

…Eleanor came hurling through the void…
Her body crashing onto the cold, jagged stones down below.
Her skin scraped and exposed, her bones aching from the blow.
Yet... s l o w l y she rose.
The air was thick and corrosive, suffocating, oppressive
there was no mistaking this place for somewhere pleasant, like Heaven.
She felt a devilish presence; something as ancient as night
as staircases unfolded right in front of her eyes.
Pillars hung from a sky that was hardly divine,
the stars darkened with time.
The steps arching like spines, charred and coated with slime.
This primordial site was so bizarrely designed,
that it was hard to describe. It seemed partly alive;
she felt it watching and waiting
like a Black Widow spider when it's stalking its prey.
There was a pulsating quake, like a heart-thumping sound,
causing ripples and waves as it pumped in the ground.
While the faintest of whispers seemed to swirl in a mist
that surrounded the remnants of a magnetic disk
it was eldritch in nature, a non-mechanical compass,
that spun erratically fast until the Shadow Man stopped it.
His rotting eye sockets and abominable grin
could strike fear in the hearts of the mightiest men.
"Eleanor," he sneered, jaws dripping with tar,
"You’ve returned to the Hollow, after veering too far."
"The Hollow?" she echoed, her voice trembled with dread.
"Yes, the Hollow," he hissed, as the mist turned red.
"It's not a place, IT’S A THING," he sporadically screamed.
"A primal hunger that feeds on your psychotic deeds."
Insanity's pull began to tug at her mind
as the compass transformed into a carnival ride.
She was back to the night that the fire took place,
wearing a hospital gown, and crooked smile on her face.
Kerosene in a can with a lighter in fist;
fuel spilling behind her before igniting the tents.
“So you remember it, child,” the Hollow intoned,
not the voice of the Shadow, but distinctly its own.
"I was present at birth, and when you killed your first pet,
for every person you murdered without a shred of regret."
She tried her best to reject it, but she knew it was true.
She saw the blood in her nails, and her face on the news,
and she remembered the smell of the hospital food
her prison cell of a room, and all the antipsychotics
that would help her forget, that she was always a monster.
She wasn't locked in the Hollow; it was something she fostered
deep down in her conscience, she was part of its roster:
a cosmic evil incarnate, a living vessel of death,
an antediluvian darkness, transmuted to flesh.
Not possessed by its essence, but enmeshed and enthralled.
She accepted her calling while the Shadow Man crawled
into the depths of the fog, and the Hollow dissolved.
She saw the hospital walls and fluorescent white lights
and she was back on that gurney, where she had medically died.
But to the nurses' surprise, she went from dead to alive,
as her vital signs rose, and the doctor apprised,
"I think we've gotten a pulse."
Eleanor awoke, fully conscious again,
with a glint in her eye and a monstrous grin,
psychotic and twisted, reminiscent of his.
And when the doc leaned in, he could see it was crucial
the Shadow Man smiling in the pits of her pupils

My boy, hope all is well!

Man, that really was a fun battle. I remember reading your verse and thinking “whoever wrote this piece is a fucking genius”.