A Perpetual Silent Praise

The body lay crumpled on the bottom step leading up to the dais.  Twisted into grotesque contortions by the violent spasms that had wracked his body in the moments before his death, he lay motionless, his face an obscene grimace.  His mouth was open in a final, silent scream. A dried, bloody froth of spit and bile was encrusted around the cracked lips. Thick, dark blood pooled around his face.

It was cyanide; he’d been poisoned.  The cyanide had bonded with the hemoglobin in his blood, inhibiting the red blood cells from carrying oxygen.  As his brain became starved for oxygen, the synapses began firing off random, desperate electrical discharges causing the spasms that had thrown him down the stairs. His skin was blue and livid with bruises.

And still the four living creatures stood around the throne at the top of the stairs and the seven lamps before the throne continued burning, their flames casting flicking shadows over the corpse.

To him who was slain
be a perpetual silent praise.

And, without speaking, the four living creatures said ,”Amen.”