Extract from Book Three

John Erickson
Illustration & Graphic Design
johnraptor@aol.com
www.geocities.com/johnraptor_socal

The tower was a dark silhouette in the still night. It stood over me, tall and solitary, reaching up into the black sky above where it disappeared. There was nothing around me, just an open expanse of grass and fields, and dark shapes that I think were trees. There was no sign of life, no sign that there was anything else out there, that there was anything more than this tower.

Standing there, at its foot, I could feel it, the overwhelming sense of loneliness, of isolation. A desperate fear that I would never speak to anyone again, never look on another person's face as long as I lived. That I was alone, that there would never be anyone else, that there was just me and only ever would be.

And slowly water began to run down the rough, stone face, heavy streams, like rain on glass during a thunderstorm, carving grooves into the rock as it flowed downwards towards me. The tower was weeping.