As night fell the blue haze of day lifted to reveal the stars.
A sense of warmth sprung from the cold by virtue of their celestial glow.
The sky would have been such a welcome sight to behold, as it followed the sunset as a promising return to the dawn's first light.
Beneath such a somber shine of the astral glitter and be spangled heavenly jewels.
And amid wintry air, which hung poignantly beneath the noble black of night, a man gradually made his way up a black stone staircase deep underground.
Shrouding the floor of a cavern, mist and shadows meandered as they conspired to thwart one's ability to judge distance.
"Bolting like rabbits to their burrows". shadowy figures, wrapped each in their own little shroud of fog, took no notice of each other".
In the great catacombs, each 'rabbit' was for themselves, it appeared.
Only the bright light source from a flicking candle klein held in hand seemed to rouse them from uncorporal slumber with its scowling light.
Dank air seeped into klein's exposed skin as it made his face tingle.
Although klein attempted to rub away the uncomfortable chill.
To his dismay, the warmth produced could only flee back into the surrounding mist.
Kleins' cheeks stung with an icy burn.
Although klein didn't care to anthropomorphize the biting of ice on his face.
He couldn't help but feel that such a cold existed purely out of spite of his wellbeing.
As klein walked further up stairs a dreamy sea of smells rhythmically pulsed from within the narrow tunnel ahead.
It was unlikely the scent of a candle adorned with the smell of blooming flowers.
Instead, only the smell of fungi sprouting from dead thickets of tree springs and dense bushes that held loosely to the cave walls was what greeted his nose.
In other words it was the smell of death.
The abrupt introduction of such an aroma unsettled klein greatly, after all the sight of decomposition had been incessantly within view all the while since he had been traveling.
"Why was it only now that it made its self know to such a degree?"
"Perhaps there was a rotting mole up ahead or perhaps a giant worm up ahead, he hoped!?"
Klein could help but lick his lips in desire.
Not far behind, in addition, klein also smelled algae, and plants he was all too familiar with; it was the stink of nature that pandered for his attention the most among the musk of dirt and rock that had largely accompanied him thus far.
The air was bitter and mildly numbed his senses along with an arctic haze; it teased his skin with frostbite and burns as it whipped by occasionally.
A faint, drowsy, and musty scent of mildew and decay wafted about alongside dirt and debris.
A cold draft aided a pursuing chill into kleins' lungs and nose as it parted with the gift of winter in lonesome frost.
Kleins unkempt black hair swept down past his skinny neck.
Fleeting, misty clouds of dew and sweat condensed and fell incessantly from his chin.
It flowed down from his neck, in a sweet and salty down pour that collected on his back, if not in his shallow, unkempt beard.
It was a dark stripe amid the salmon color of his top, a spreading map of perspiration.
Under rolled-up sleeves, klein wielded arms of malnourished bony appendages that slackened to his side.
He was walking barefoot up the steps as he arbitrarily stood to listen to his surroundings.
He worked his frostbitten toes colored a putrid blotchy blue into the floor as he transitioned between each step.
His feet felt heavy, his steps had become laboured from the frozen bet of dirt and rock underfoot.
Klein imagined that he looked like a marching soldier freshly from within the thrall of battle.
The frozen-rigid clothes caged his movements, the blisters in his fingers turning to ice, and the maddening wide-open twilight of an artic cold stung his eyes with a throbbing tingle.
Stumbling out of the dark, klien neared the exit of the tunnel as he approached the house of worship with great relief; his head pursued his eyes as they glided over the descending stairs behind him.
"Hhere had the supposed dead animal he had been eagerly awaiting gone?"
Klein was tempted to venture downwards to find what should have been a fulfilling meal, he however decided not in fear of the undetermined remaining lifespan of his candle.
Although he felt regret and pitied himself, he knew there was not much that could be done.
Klein chapped lips curved to form a slight frown that accompanied a furrowed brow in response to his disappointment.
His trembling hands and lips quivered in response to the perturbing darkness within and the worsening of his physical condition and perhaps newly gained hysteria.
Klein was starving, thirsty; his energy depleted to no more than a destitute whimper.
Klein hadn't eaten in what felt like days, subsisting on muddied water seeping through the cracked dirt wall and the occasional hapless insect that scampered past and within reach.
He was bruised and beaten, like an old man weathered by time and the daily triviality of life.
As klein silently caressed his stained features in disappointment.
A silver ring flashed as it slid loosely between the knuckles of his middle finger.
Something rough and dank, like wet bark, cerrest his lips.
Attracted by his lips' coarse texture, he dragged his tongue slowly across their rough surface.
Tasting the fine bitterness of dirt and the pain from his split lip; his mood only soured further.
His head knotted fiercely by a scowl; with his mouth bowed and his brow bent forward, klein contemptuously tried spiting on the stone stairwell, attempting to clear the foul taste from his mouth.
Unsurprisingly, no saliva exited past his parched lips. His mouth was just as barren of moisture.
Klein felt every bit of this pain, thirst and fatigue.
As he moved further along, he strenuously clinched onto his largely exhausted candle;
The candle mirrored his sentiments exactly.
His slight hunchback, protruding spine and deep wrinkles that adorned his face emphasized his exhaustive survival.
He dug his left hand into the dirt wall, his finger gouging away bits of rocks and peppered dirt as he did so.
A natural stone step and palatial courtyard; a ghostly network of passages could be discerned trailing behind.
There, gray stone steps descending, sunken below the abundant shadow.
The underground passage into this petite chapel was hardly discernible in the dark.
Behind him, he saw yet another patch of darkness distinctive from the darkness that soundlessly guided him up these steps previously.
The candle was helpless to cut deep within that wall of dark oppression.
Klein could only describe it as a rotten strange night populated by shadowy silhouettes of surfacing horrors.
"Or was it rabbits, delicious meat?
Perhaps all of this was insanity? but can someone that insane express to themselves that they are insane?
These hallucinations periodically emerged from his peripheral view, like a phantom presence; it tempted his heart to verify its existence in reality.
Klein perceived a desire to abandon the candle in hand and, alone, bask in the darkness.
Like a demon deceiving him with a delusion of peaceful repose.
He struggled to withdraw his gaze away from the crazed imagery and the naïve musings of a dreary mind.
Klein felt that it must have been his extravagant imagination that yielded the sight of monsters of vaguely anthropoid outline brandishing prodigious claws on an uncountable number of beastil digits in the dark.
It was akin to a waking dream; a hideous unknowable monstrosity; a shadow darker than the surrounding void.
Klein was frightened by his own absurd impulse to join these ferocious figures.
Perhaps it wasn't anything so horrific; it could have just as easily been a deranged delusion of a man welcoming insanity.
Glaring down towards his shaking hands, only then did he realize they had unconsciously extended into the dark fog behind him.
Klein nervously jerks his hand back. It joined his side once again, his elbow brushed the flaps of his oversized tunics as he did so.
The candle, perhaps due to his hasty clamber, wavered greatly and threatened to extinguish.
Would it leave him stranded among these malformed silhouettes?
Klein froze, staring at its diminishing flame, he heaving a sigh of relief as it once again brightened to a "resplendent" blaze.
Perhaps he truly was being stalked by treacherous monsters of nightmares and sin.
What could be worse, klein wondered, utter madness indulged in hysteria or a gruesome death?
He felt the need to ignore these shadows else, risk further lunacy.
The maw of hopefully fictitious monsters and profane beasts hid themself within the silhouette of the stairs below.
Seeming still resigning his soul to damnation in expectant joy of a possible blonder.
Like the countless arms of the damned, they reached out from within the pitch blackness.
They writhed and relentlessly grasped for even just a sliver of his flesh.
Only stopped by the slight flicking
candlelight.
Klein even felt as if hear could hear the whales of souls damned to hellfire.
Perceive as a hollow echo, their screams and pitied cries demanding he joins them.
Klien had no grasp of what was real or fiction anymore.
He felt faint and just as hungry as though innumerable hands.Did they wish for salvation or did they crave his condemnation to hell to suffer alongside them?
"Perhaps this was hell."
Would they rejoice in his dissonance shrieks and rended flesh if given an opportunity?
"Was all of this a manifest of his desire and pain? ," he hoped for that to be the case, anyway.
While klein was making his way up the stares into the chapel underground, his hands suddenly slipped on a patch of frozen wet rock and even colder mud.
The debris underfoot of fractured stone and pebbles was swept aside, unable to maintain traction, his feat nearly sidle entirely of the stairs rough facets and cornerstone.
Klien felt his heart sink into his stomach.
"The fall would surely mean his end!"
It took every inch of his remaining will power to not scream in terror.
His body involuntarily edged forward, shifting his torso ahead, his elongated nails clawed ferociously into the earthen wall as he tried his best to maintain his balance.
Klein was utterly terrified.
His right hand held steadily on a still burning candle, fearing it being extinguished, while his remaining unburdened left hand was left to solely bear the load of his full weight.
With quaking muscles, klein pulled himself level with the ground.
His breath shook with noticeable trepidation and fatigue.
Stabilizing his footing on the path ahead, he grimaced in pain. A few mangled fingers were now present on his bloodied left hand.
A number of nails were pride from their nail-bed, chunks of missing flesh accompanied their missing status.
Instinctually, he flexed his fingers, numbing pain radiating across their maimed tips.
"For fuck's sake!"
He must be careful to take proper care of this wound in order to prevent infection.
Klein tried his best to ignore the discomforting sensation as he pressed his hand once again into the wall of dirt as he continued upward once more.
The friction of bare flesh and rock was excruciating. Gritting his teeth, he suffered the pain.
His mouth emanated the distinctive, jarred squeak of colinding, well-worn enamel.
His teeth were lightly stained yellow and blemished black and gray, a few absent teeth hid shyly within the creases of his cheeks.
Klein anxiously held his tongue, yearning to spit out a torrent of expletives. He restrained the saltery words eagerly tempting his heart in agony.
With such a raucous already created, he feared that if you were to agitate this irascible silence once more, he would surely attract grotesque monsters to his position.
All he could do was bitterly swallow the pain and continue in silence.
Klein rested the candle close to his chest in agitation.
It threatening to sear his remaining garments asunder.
The contour of the walkway receded with view with each step further along, unilluminated by the compact candle he carried in hand.
This wall of darkness hovered fixedly in the foreground.
Though he had just traveled through the path behind him, if he were to take even a step backwards, he would without-doubt be immediately devoured by the monsters within.
The candle was presently his only solace, although it did little to disperse the trepidation in his heart.
Perhaps if there were truly monsters within, this candle was the only thing keeping them from devouring him in his entirety.
The steps, his muddied hands and long fingernails crusted from dirt and blood, were the only thing highlighted by the soft candlelight.
His dirt laden hands were so caked in filth.
they were indistinguishable from the dirt wall surrounding him.
Only the conspicuous empty lines of splintering dirt and clay from his gesturing palm made the dark wrinkled flesh underneath apparent.
His left hand steadily felt the rugged exterior of the earthen wall as his right hand still held steadily onto the candle.
Jamming his hand in it's the wall's fissured surface, he felt the embed stones and clumped dirt, he continued his sluggish trek up these seemingly endless steps.
The stairs were directly connected to the church's doorless archway, and a porch that was likewise unlit.
the candles' probing flames sent feelers of light into the Already scarcely lit chapel, it partially highlighted the building's black stone interior.
Despite the staircases, slight incline and modest dimensions, at most consisting of twenty to thirty individual steps.
The pervasive darkness outside left little room to safely navigate.
He spent tremendous energy trudging his way up the irregular fieldstone steps, wary of each foot's placement.
Subconsciously counting each step, when
his arduous journey upwards concluded, he took a moment's respite.
Although the journey was brief, it still proved to be torturous, his fragile, malnourished body trembling greatly under the strain.
He had grown diseased, his mind drowsy and filled with the tired thoughts and desires of relaxation.
Or perhaps, instead, his dejected eyes beckoned death to release him of such a tedious mortality.
As he walked up the stairs, he found that he had surprisingly made his way to the last step in a stupor,he had reached the lobby at last.
His left hand that originally held him steady and clamped firmly against the wall fall ethargicly to his side, passing the archway overhead into the stone interior of the chapel. He let his torso drag across the blackstone within.
He had made it through the underground thoroughfare and into this stone construct.
He slowly made his way up to the nave and into its crossing, along the center walkway of the chapel.
The shelves to the side were empty, and filled with dust, as well as the weaving of spiders. Entangled within was a variety of dead insects.
Between those two bookshelves was the center most altar.
And behind which was a fireplace choked with rubble. It was his only source of light besides his now dim candelabra candle in hand.
The walls, a deathly pale, flickered in the breath of the flame.
He dreamed of the promised food to sate his depressed spirit. He wanted to indulge himself on the forgetful bliss of satiation. Even a piece of stale anything would suffice.
"Hunger, it strips the body to a bleak anatomy, and dissolves mind and spirit within one ravenous physical appetite."
"Only when it faded could despair overwhelm fatally.Klein asked for death to overtake him plenty, for him to fall into a wakeless stupor for eternity."
Klein could be considered strong when compared to most. He wouldn't take his own life, he would carry on until death bid its seductive demands.
Sitting in the monastery, he lifelessly made his way to one of the many tattered old pews nearest to the right most bookshelf.
He took a seat in the row nearest to the entrance, he lazily scuttled along its surface until he reached the bench's edge.
Planting his squalid; shoeless feet on the right armrest, his long jagged toenails unintentionally dug deep into its soft, rotted surface.
Grime implanted itself from his filthy toe nails into its wooded exterior.
He hastily guided the rest of his body to lie down, the periodic strain of such an awkward, momentary position left him to let an audible groan, he painfully rested his back onto the wooden seat with a resounding crack.
His gray, patchy linen garments listlessly sagged off the pews' worn edge.
Their patchy construction left large holes, exposing various parts of his body to the elements.
Dirt and what looked akin to excrement mottled its surface a myriad of repugnant brown and green.
This said much about its equally malodorous odor fatiguing his nose of its presence.
Perhaps his body wasn't used to such a relaxed posture from days of demanding activities, his back silently protested in pensive discomfort.
Relinquishing his desire to relax lying-down he subsequently sat up in response to the aching.draping his arms behind him, they hung over the backrest.
The extreme discomfort was now only replaced by his previous sunken mood.
Flexing his forearms, he pushed his back outwards against the seat.It cracked on the backrest's edge, releasing some of the day's accumulated tension.
"Now my body won't even allow me to relax"
klein remarked, the grimace etched on his showed his resignation.
He was present even before the first congregation had arrived.
He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing.
He was a compact, lanky man, with precise features, a lot of clumped black hair, and thoughtful, dark brown eyes. He appeared worn and weary.
Tendrils grew from his eyebrows, and coarse white hairs sprouted on his lips and chin.
He wasn't old by any means; in fact, he was only...?
Klein couldn't even remember his own age now; "how bad had his memory become? ".
Although he supposed that it was to be expected in the absence of any way to tell time.
Living underground left little room to track such changes; only the growth of some rather large and peculiar incandescent mushrooms gave light to the endless darkness here.