Multicolored ivy of an unknown origin entwined itself around the magnificent mausoleums affectionately, like a mother lovingly embracing her sleeping child. Moist, green fog crept around the enchanting cemetery, shrouding it in perpetual and exquisite gloom.

Throughout the countryside, dark gossip was prattled, behind closed doors, while the children slumbered peacefully in their warm chambers, safe from the icy winds of death that virulently rampaged in the outer darkness. The elder folk frightened each other with ghastly tales of weird and disturbing occurrences that took place within the enigmatic and ancient burial ground left behind by an unknown mysterious race from lost yesterday.

These tales were always whispered so as not to attract the iniquitous creatures from out of their shadowy crypts, for it was a belief among the people of the realm that creatures of chaos traveled freely throughout both time and space.

The stories said that from deep within the abysmal interior of the cemetery, the ominous, melancholy songs of sad, dead children could be heard while ethereal apparitions danced about in their morbid shrouds to the funerary rhapsodies.

There were also reports of lovely angelic entities cavorting sinfully with the demons of darkness, elating passionately beneath the shimmering starlight. These obscene acts were enough to send icy shivers of horror through the systems of these simple-minded and often times superstitious folk. Perhaps they were right to be afraid. Maybe we should all fear the unknown levels of super consciousness, where exists the surrealistic creations of our soul and spirit. It is said that we constantly create in the hidden world the products of our thoughts, desires, and emotions.

Surrounding the cemetery was an old dilapidated village composed of crumbling cottages and seedy shacks infested with rats and cockroaches that crawled throughout the settlement infecting the destitute and wretched inhabitants with sickness and disease. These miserable folk struggled for survival, unable to rise up from poverty due to the barren land, and over taxation by the cruel and heartless sovereigns.

Within a shabby cottage, located directly across from the necropolis, lived a young, sickly boy named Despair. This pallid, emaciated child appeared as an angel that had been thrown from heaven to be ravaged and tortured by unholy and merciless fiends. It is well known that lack of love combined with overexposure to pitiless violence will break the spirit of even the most noble of souls. Despair was no exception.

On one miserable evening, after consuming his meager daily food ration of half a potato and a piece of stale bread crust, Despair was summoned into the parlor to confront his malicious and horrifyingly nasty parents.

His father stood before him, an apelike, leering slob with a bald, greasy head and a disgusting pot belly hanging far down over his belt. Despair’s mother, tall and stern with short cropped grey hair and icy blue eyes, observed him with a wry grin while leaning back against the railing bordering the staircase.

They lunged viciously upon the mawkish boy and after stripping him of his ragged garments, made the child lay upon his abdomen. Then they each took turns whipping him brutally with a thorny branch taken from a black locust tree. The pernicious couple smirked, in sadistic enjoyment as the thorns bit deeply into the child’s soft flesh, creating crimson welts upon his legs and back.

Despair’s eyes clouded over in oblivion, enduring the pain and humiliation that he had been accustomed to. His soul cried out to the guardians of eternity, “I pray to you, oh Keepers of Holy Sunlight, to remove me from this unbearable dream of darkness in which I have become ensnared.”

Alas, always throughout the collective experience of sentient creatures, that have been twisted souls longing to defile the pure spirits of angels. This they do by extinguishing their flames that burn so sweetly in the enchanted realms of reality.

Although Despair was sore and fatigued from the fierce beating that he had earlier received, he crawled outside his window and hobbled cautiously towards the ebony spiked gates. As he approached the portal, owls and whip-poor-wills called out their sweet, sorrowful welcome to the evening.

The gates then creaked open allowing his entrance into the gloom-shrouded cemetery. An enchanted, ethereal melody then began. It was difficult for Despair to perceive whether the music was real or imaginary, for at that point, very weird things began to occur.

Rainbow colored fog swirled around the tombstones. From out of the corners of his eyes, he had surrealistic visions of skeletal figures fiddling and piping while adorned in extravagant and flamboyant garb. Within the haunted mist, there seemed to be beautiful dancing corpses oscillating to the morbidly magical rhythms.

Then, from out of nowhere, there appeared before him a lovely young lass, about his age with wavy, honey blonde hair and large green eyes like ferns reflected in pools of sparkling spring water. She wore on her lithe and delicate frame and off-white gown that carried the scent of the deep, dark earth.

She had a sanguine smile upon her youthful face as she spoke. “Welcome, Despair. My name is Promise. I’m so glad that you have come to play with me, for I have been waiting for you a long time and have been very lonely.”

Despair became immediately enamored by the lovely young maiden with love and compassion in her countenance, although he was somewhat taken back by the entire peculiar scenario.

“Come Despair, I would like you to meet Mother. She would very much like to meet you, for it has been many years that you have been away.” Despair was confused by her words but he felt very good about everything that was happening.

She took his hand and led the gentle lad deeper into the ghostly, yet colorful necropolis. There they came upon a majestic shrine with the rarest, most exotic flowers growing around it. Above them, in the swaying branches of sycamores and black willows, ravens peered down at them with mysterious eyes.

The snow white monument was of an angelic winged maiden mounted upon the back of a noble and powerful griffin. Directly in front of the statue was a black rectangular hole containing a wooden staircase that led down deep into the realm of the unknown.

“Do not fear, my dear friend,” whispered Promise. “You are dear to my heart and I would not want to see you hurt for all the world.” Despair not wanting to break away from the only joy to ever enter his life, relented. “I shall follow you Promise, because I trust you, and I have faith in what you have to offer.”

As they walked down into the subterranean passage of mystery, Despair felt like he was being pressed and squeezed by the tunnel’s liquidy, surrounding darkness. They moved slowly towards a glowing light until they were pushed through a soft and slippery opening. It was from being a dark, wet cavern like he imagined it to be with slimy worms and decomposed bodies. Instead they entered into a realm of sunshine, rainbows and woodland paradise.

In this heavenly world, the squirrels and foxes sang of friendship, while the oak and rowan trees smiled and greeted the ferns and wildflowers beneath them. This, Despair thought, was too lovely to be true, for he had never imagined that such a beauty could exist.

Standing under an elderly, majestic sycamore tree stood a tall woman adorned all in black. Although the raven-haired, violet-eyed lady appeared grim, she radiated peaceful and healing energy. “This is our mother Circle,” said Promise joyfully. “Mother, look who it is! Despair has finally come home to us. Can he stay?”

Now, the melancholy child knew that never in his forlorn experience had he ever beheld such beauty. When Circle spoke, her voice sounded like a waterfall, the chirping of songbirds, and the whispering of the wind all at once.

“Welcome to paradise, my dear son. You have suffered much. Come to me, my love.” Then she folded his frail body into her loving arms, and her healing light absorbed the pain and sorrow caused by his wretched life experience.

“Would you like to come with us, Despair? The choice can only be made by you.” He knew the answer, for it was written upon a scroll within his heart. “Yes, I feel that I should. It seems like this is what I am supposed to do.” Circle smiled down at him and took his hand within her own. She and Promise led him towards a mysterious ebony palace, with red crystal spires scraping the violet sky.

The gates of the alien structire opened before them and they became swallowed into the chamber of the unknown. Inside was a plush and comfortable interior adorned in colorful tapestries and smelling of summer meadows, where young dreamers made love under the sunlit skies.

“Despair,” whispered Circle. “There is something that you need to see.” On an emerald green altar decorated with swirling leaf and flower patterns, sat a glowing crystal orb held within a brass dragon’s claw.

Circle sang softly, “Gaze into the crystal, my sweet child, and behold the dark spirit of vengeance.” As Depsiar stared in to the globe of luminous energy, he saw his own garbage-ridden shabby house. Within, he observed his former parents savagely beating a trembling, sickly child. As the slovenly man dealt a particularly brutal blow to the child’s back, the small boy exploded into sharp fragments.

These crimson shards of death scattered across the filthy parlor. They then transformed into creeping, crawling creatures of mayhem. The wicked couple screamed in horror as they were ripped apart; their skin peeled off by the gelatinous, tentancled abomination. Their wretched existence came to an unseemly end as they were devoured by the obscene cruelty conjured forth by their own Karmic wall of sin.

Despair wept softly as the images faded from the crystal orb feeling lost and frightened, which is how many feel when confronted with swift and dramatic change.

“Do not be sad, my dear child. We all experience the results of our creative work while in the outer realm. Promise and I are your family now, for you have died, my son, and can now begin your true life.”

Promise held Despair’s hand and smiled sweetly. “You now have a new name. Forever more you shall be called Rejoice.”