Weary, resting in velvet armchair comfort, I close my eyes; inhale deeply, then exhale, Inviting myself to believe the lie that I am calm.
I feel the serpent writhing in my gut, Grimvael, Slithering upward around my spine, Briefly constricting my throat, Before coiling within my mind.
His unwelcome arrival announced, I feel his icy black tendrils, Reaching deep into my most wounded memories, Feeding, feeding, Drinking his fill from my hidden sorrows, One thousand memories fastened to one thousand suckers.
The great serpent stirs forgotten places, Twisting, twisting, Until sleep claims me.
Spotted first from the starboard side, A fearful captain gazes upon the Ocean of Dreams, And there, the great green eye of Grimvael, The immortal serpent of sorrow, stares back, Its endless body stretching outward, Vanishing into distant stars.
Without warning, the serpent descends; Black scales and ocean spray shroud the sailor in mist, Creating a terrible stillness, A silence held between breaths, Before the mighty serpent erupts from the sea, Its vast eye unblinking as it crashes once more into the depths.
The creature’s wake topples the ancient ship, And as the captain treads dark water, He cannot witness the nightmare from above, As Grimvael’s immense black jaws open, Rising from beneath him in dreadful silence, Before snapping shut, Consuming sailor and ship alike, Then slipping beneath the dreaming sea for the last time, Returning the sparkling green waters To a terrible, waveless calm.
In chambers hidden beneath remembrance, Where old grief hangs like dust in ruined halls, Where silence pools in the hollows of the mind, And forgotten names drift downward like ash, There coils Grimvael, The sleepless serpent, The black-mouthed keeper of sorrows, The dream-krate of anxious souls.
No cradle bore him. No heaven suffered him to rise. He was born in the first trembling of memory, When fear first looked backward, And called itself thought.
He dwells not in flesh, Nor cavern, or sea, But in the labyrinth of recollection, Among wilted childhood gardens, Half-heard confessions, The scent of mourning rooms, The faces long buried beneath forgetting.
There he winds himself, endless and patient, Through corridors of our unfinished grief.
His mouth is black as a crypt abandoned to rain, A wound without gleam, A silence ringed in hunger. His venomous black tongue stirs there. Where no serpent hiss escapes. Only the sound of memory fraying.
Its darkness opens not outward, but inward, As though the night itself had learned to feed. From those jaws spill whispers stolen from sleeping men:
The words never spoken, The apologies rotted to bone, The dread of tomorrow, The trembling knowledge That joy departs unnoticed.
And his eyes, if eyes they may be called, Sealed in ancient shadow, for Grimvael has no need of sight. He hunts by remembrance. He tastes regret upon the spirit As wolves scent blood upon the snow. Across his body, black as drowned velvet, the scales glisten with funeral sheen, Obsidian pressed smooth, By centuries of forgotten terror.
He coils in impossible spirals, A cathedral of serpent flesh, Each curve tightening around thought itself, Until memory bends inward and becomes a prison.
Yet it is beneath him, Beneath that terrible body that horror flowers. A thousand suckers line his belly. A thousand pale mouths, Wet and patient as grave-lilies, Ringed in trembling circles. They cling, oh, how they cling. To thoughts half-born. To shame hidden beneath laughter. To old wounds one swore forgotten. To the sleepless turning of the midnight mind.
Each sucker fastens softly, almost tenderly, Drawing from memory not blood, But heartache. One drinks a mother’s sorrow. One drinks the terror of silence. Another feeds upon a lover’s absence, Upon letters unsent, Upon funerals replayed behind shut eyes. And still they hunger. They crawl unseen through dreaming, Pressing themselves to recollection Until joy grows thin and grief becomes familiar.
In fevered nights they gather, Those thousand hungry mouths, Around the trembling chambers of thought, Draining certainty, deepening shadows, Teaching the soul the old language of dread.
Thus men wake unrested, Their hearts heavy with unnamed weather, Their minds crowded by ghosts that bear no faces. For Grimvael has passed near. The Sleepless Serpent remembers what mortals bury.
He keeps the inventory of wounds. He nests in unfinished mourning. He winds himself through forgotten corridors where fear drinks quietly from memory.
And when the candle dims low, When the house falls mute, When sleep comes thin and fractured, You may feel him. A pressure in the dark. A thought returning unbidden. A sorrow without origin.
Then know, Beneath the trembling chambers of your mind, Grimvael stirs, sleepless, and eternal,
his black mouth open, his thousand suckers fastening softly, to the fragile edges of your memory,
Dan Verkys 