Saturday Matinee - The Dark Man

He first saw him when he was a little boy.....he stood off in the distance....down the dirt road that led to his family's farm....just standing there....not moving....just staring at him....even though he was too far away to see the stranger's eyes, he felt them looking at him....watching him....
He turned to call for his mother and when he turned back the man was gone....
he saw him again over the years as he passed through his childhood and entered adolescence.....
It was during his fourteenth year that he first heard the man....
The man was too distant for him to actually hear his voice but it came to him, softly, on the summer breeze....
"You will...."
There was more be he couldn't make it out....
I will what? He thought about it and by the next day he'd forgotten....
It wasn't long after that that he discovered how much he enjoyed all the pretty things in his sister's closet.....and that filled his days when ever he was alone....
When he saw the man again two years had passed....his long hair reached to his shoulders.....he hadn't cut it since the first time he slipped on one of the pretty dresses that he loved so much.....his parents fought with him but he wanted what he wanted and didn't back down....
Again this time he "heard" the mans voice.....
"You will be...."
And again he heard words but they were so quiet that he just couldn't understand them....
He didn't see the man again for three years....he was nineteen now...his father had him working as an office assistant....he just hadn't developed the musculature to handle working out in the fields.....
His hair  tickled the middle of his back.....and he had a full wardrobe of pretty things that were all his own....
He started to walk toward the man....hoping to end this mystery but he found that his feet simply wouldn't move....
The voice came again.....soft as velvet....
"Two more summers and you will be my..."
And he blinked and the man was gone.....
As the months went by he wondered what the man had meant....
He rose early on his twenty-first birthday....
Without thinking he opened his secret closet and removed the beautiful white gown....
He stopped in the garden and made a beautiful bouquet for himself....
And when he stepped around the corner of the house....the man was there....as he knew he'd be....
The voice came to him softly....
"Today's the day.....today you will be my Bride!!!!"
And suddenly he felt that this was what he'd been waiting for all these years....somehow he'd known that this was what was meant to be......
The man was facing off into the distance as he approached him....
Even near, when the man spoke it wasn't in words....it was as though he could speak directly to his mind.....
"I have waited so long for you my beauty.....and now you are mine...."
The man turned and he recoiled....he wanted so badly to scream in horror at this thing...shaped like a man....but clearly something else.....the thing grabbed at his hand and he could feel the unnatural flesh....cold and damp....and his mind was shattered as madness consumed him.....and then blessed blackness took him
The man smiled....maybe it was a smile....as his Bride went limp in his arms....he didn't mind.....he pulled her closer to him....it wasn't her mind that he wanted....