Farael

I dreamed that I woke up in the middle of the night.

I got out of bed with a chill’s grip on my spine, craving a smoke. I rose from bed and slid into my denim jeans and walked across the room towards the back porch, with a cigarette between my lips and my Zippo in my hand.
The whistling wind outside the sliding glass door suggested I should not go out into the porch barefoot, but my lungs ignored it. My thumb was already playing Prometheus on the Zippo and I was too lazy to go back to find my boots.

I stepped onto the porch at the same time an enormous cloud obscured the moon from sight. In the distance, a siren wailed its warning in the night.
I could hear a faint buzz coming from the gargantuan flood lights of the paranoid old fuck three houses down the street. Aside from that, the stillness was nigh absolute. And so was the gloom. I lit my Marlboro and took a deep drag, and it seemed to sizzle a tiny complaint. Not that I cared.
I stared at the teasing moon thinking of an old burlesque show from the 20's I'd watched on the History Channel in scarred black and white film. In it, the dancer was covering her attributes with two fans made of feathers as she danced and pranced around in her now-extinct glory.

I took another puff of my cigarette when, out of the corner of my eye, where unspeakable specters seem to thrive, I caught a glimpse of movement at the far corner of the patio, just beside the wooden fence.
Something stirred in the shadows. Its silhouette was too large to be a dog's, and the rustle of its limbs on the unkempt lawn was too subtle.
Without thinking, I abandoned the higher ground of the porch and stepped onto the cold grass, which sent a shiver up my spine to the back of my neck.
At the same time, as if mimicking my motions, the four-legged shadow seemed to move towards me, but stopped after a couple of steps, returning to what was keeping it occupied.
When it was within full sight I realized it was feasting on something, perhaps a morsel stolen from the dumpster at the back street. Almost offensively, it ignored my approach.

I walked very slowly to within a few feet from it and the celestial stripper, sensing my apprehension, spared a few of her rays on the intruder.

It was a large cat, the size of a mountain lion, but with the sturdy elegant curves of a jaguar. Its fur appeared to be a deep maroon, and when it turned it's head towards me, I saw that it was eating a large pigeon.
That wasn't all I saw. It's face was incredibly, maddeningly human, also of a deep maroon color, almost the color of dried blood. It lacked the thick fur of the rest of the body, like a gorilla's face, it blended into the fur almost seamlessly.
I hesitated and, for one second, thought about running back towards the house. Then reasoned that it would probably trigger its instincts to hunt me down like it had its prey. Instead, I stared at it, not quite afraid, not quite believing what I saw.
It's eyes were completely white, like hard-boiled eggs, except for a pinprick of a black pupil at the center of each, eyes that promised the rage and the hunger of the Bottomless Pit it had likely sprouted from.

I stared at it in awe and licked my lips with the tongue of a parrot, dry as a nun’s twat.
It looked me straight in the eye and purred my name.

This prodigy of fright, this prowler of the boundless gloom, spoke my name.

"That's my name, pal. Don't wear it out." I said, with the sheer bravado that can only be summoned in a dream.
I struggled to keep a firm aplomb and my voice almost did not falter. But the firefly caught between my fingers betrayed my nerve and shook almost imperceptibly. But not quite.
I smoked the last of the little traitor’s hazy life in a long pull and tossed it on the ground, where I absently stepped on it with my bare foot. The ember hissed briefly on my skin, then died.
The thing sniffed the air, with something not entirely unlike the pleasure of anticipation.

After a minute that felt like Lent, the thing broke the dreadful silence.
"I have always been Farael, of the Black Sands of the South" it declared grandly, its voice a cacophony of gravel and broken glass.
Not "I am", but "I have always been". And somehow I believed it.
It's mouth was a twisted crown of red thorns, of such length that would have made Yeshua deny Cephas three times any night. There was no white in it, only thick and sharp and red thorns, pointing in all directions.
"I have been commissioned by those below to devour your flesh."
I believed that too. In spades.
Silence fell upon us once more. But not for long.
"Devour my flesh" I repeated numbly. "My flesh. Mine." I said this last word a little more loudly than I intended.
Farael of the Black Sands of the South assented with a little laugh that reminded me of a hyena.
"My flesh is all I've got" I continued in the same, outraged tone. Almost as if the whole scene somehow affronted me.
"It won't be easy" I spat at him, surprised at my own words.
The laughter that came from it suddenly rose in pitch and volume, as it jumped at me in a flash of red, white and pinprick black, mouth opened wide as Dread Charybdis.

But the joke was on him, this Farael of the darkest fantasies. I laughed at him too. Laughed so hard that the sound of my laughter carried me away from him, back into the waking world, where the likes of this fiend were all but powerless.
I awoke again, laughing. I sat up stiff and drenched in sweat and turned about to find the TV remote, still in chuckles. I turned the tube on and sat there bathed in white noise until the sunrise came cascading through my window. By then, glee had gone sour.

Later that morning, I went out into the backyard with my breakfast of a cigarette and a cup of black coffee, to find a dead gray pigeon on the spot where Farael had stood in the whirlpool of my dream. Its chest was pierced almost through with a single cruel red thorn.

So I ask you, my esteemed reader:
Have you ever heard of a creature with such a name as Farael of the Black Sands of the South?
If so, does it bite or is it an idle barker?