[i]The Grin in the Window[/i]

While writing late into the night, beside a fickle candle's light,
In hopes of holding fast my fractured mind—
My tortured eyes caught foul a sight, a fearsome, freakish, fatal fright,
A grinning ghoul with muzzle most maligned—
            A simple pane of glass it lay behind.

Its wicked grin gave me a start, I rose—and fell, struck faint of heart, 
I scrambled swiftly from the watching wight—
Its flashing fangs did dread impart, yet then from view it did depart,
A being born from only sin and spite—
            A Cheshire grin it wore as it took flight.

My mantle bore my saving grace, a rifle framed beside his face,
With pallid paws I knocked aside our start—
My harrowed heart did throb and race, and aiming for the glass I braced,
Awaiting then the ghoul along to dart—
            A corpse returned by means of blackest arts.

So standing, shouldered, tension taut, my canine nose in search of rot,
My senses seeking but the slightest trace—
I felt the fade of every thought, that night and all the Hell we wrought,
Attempting to forget his last embrace—
            A clatter came upstairs—a fallen vase.

I started slowly up the stair, below my breath a paltry prayer,
My finger on the trigger growing fraught—
And freshly fetid was the air, it brought to mind his earthly lair,
A shallow grave untended in its lot—
            A cracking followed swift my first gunshot.

It hid inside the looking glass, its smile was cruel and crude and crass,
Its gleaming grin was more than I could bare—
I shot again into its mass, until the fiend within did pass,
A rifle's roar a deafening fanfare—
            Alive again, I came back to my chair.