title: Dark Poetry From A Gothic View: Tears Of An Immortal
author: Rev Magus Hockett
description: Reverend Magus M. Douglas Hockett, better known to his friends as Shadow on the streets and among those he rides with, is, at the time of this writing, forty-one years old. He was adopted in California at the age of nearly three years old from an orphanage (and via a government experimental genetic alteration program previous to that) in the San Jose / San Francisco area, despite being born between Santa Monica and Venice Beach in 1967, on October 31. He was taken by his adopted family to Connecticut and New York and was raised there until he graduated high school at the age of fifteen. Attending several colleges, he was at a loss being an abuse survivor and former victim of the same; and after nearly two years in college, he joined the U.S. Navy at the age of seventeen in 1987. He served overseas during Operation Team Spirit 1988, which was also the Pre-Shield (Desert Shield) Readiness Deployment Force before the historical period of Declarations of War known in U.S. History as Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, etc., etc., etc. After three ship-and-shore tours in the Philippines during the Marcos/Aquino Revolution, two ship/shore stints in Hong Kong / Kowloon during the Chinese Triad and Tong assassinations of British and Australian citizens to force the British pullout of their government and the Australian government, one ship rotation in White Beach, Okinawa, Japan, during the activation of the Death Cult and Sarin nerve Gas Attacks, and two ship/shore tours in Pusan and Pohang, Korea, during said Team Spirit 1988 International War Games, he was discharged on a full medical honorable basis.
zlib_text: > _Footsteps in the sand, leading me on …_
  
  >  _Looking up, I see the scaffold, the hooded figure with its head on the
  > block, the hooded figure of the executioner, the sharp blade of the axe
  > glinting in the burning sun_.
  
  >  _The axe falls, the victim’s severed head rolls on the wooded platform, the
  > hood comes off—_
  
  > “My head!” Raistlin whispered feverishly, twisting his thin hands together
  > in anguish.
  
  >  _The executioner, laughing, removes his hood, revealing—_
  
  > “My face!” Rastlin murmured, his fear spreading through his body like a
  > malign growth, making him sweat and chill by turns. Clutching at his head,
  > he tried to banish the evil visions that haunted his dreams continually,
  > night after night, and lingered to disturb his waking hours as well, turning
  > all he ate or drank to ashes in his mouth.
  
  > But they would not depart. Master of Past and Present!” Raistlin laughed
  > hollowly—bitter, mocking laughter. “I am Master of nothing! All this power,
  > and I am trappe