Presence

We drove the road that went away from town toward the outskirts often, and every time, we passed a dilapidated house that sat in the distance enclosed in trees, whose sidings were marked with barely discernible forms of graffiti. One day, I hadn’t realized my business would bring me close to this place; close enough at least, to where a few more strokes of the bicycle pedals would land me on the doorstep. The sun was three-quaters of the way, and the shadows began their length, and I stood outside, looking at the windows that seemed to stare at me. I stepped up, onto the wooden stairs, and the noise creaked into my ears. I walked on the deck and into the house, and the debris littered the floor. I went through a small hallway into what used to be a kitchen, and grim and muck and dirt encased the area, making me slightly sick. Then I heard the scratching, and the hair on my neck stood straight. Scratch, scratch, scratch. I looked outside, startling some miserable creature, and as I my head leaned slightly out the window, I felt the fingertips of someone run across my neck. I turned, shaken, my heart beating, and seeing no one, I ran as fast as I could. I took my bike, and before I left, I took a glance at the house, and a teardrop poured from my eye. I never went back.

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Forgotten

Soulless, hollow eyes
Mouth agape
Bare

Grey, scarred skin
Crimpled fingers
Empty

Thin, brittle body
Deaf ears
Nervous

Me, long lost
Forgotten
Dying

Ruse

I begin, with a friendly smile. I start, and my conversation taps into your interests. I play along until we are friends, but all along I am eyeing the life-force you breath, the life-force that flows in your arteries. You don’t realize, but as I create an ever greater presence in your life, you begin to experience mental difficulties: you’re angrier, you’re sadder, you’re frustrated. Without you noticing, I crawl and slink my way into your life, and then slowly, with each passing day, each passing hour, your life begins to dissipate. I grow with power, while your will fades, until I am a towering monument to the destruction I have wreaked upon all that you hold dear, where the only alternative is to banish me, to kill me, or to succumb to the pyschological terror until you become a zombie; vapid and broken.

My ruse has worked, again.

My Disembodied Companion

With every last strand of my thinking grapled and strung by unseen forces, I see the woman as she hovers, her scarred toes hovering inches from the ground. Her eyes are like shards of broken, beaming glass and her expression is empty, a hole in space. By her side, her arms dangle loosely, and she hisses when she breathes. She is telling me something, and I listen. I am curious. I hear her instructions, and her knotted hair moves in jagged ways when she tilts her head. The chance for me to conform is now, and I only have to follow through to be a part of what she is. And when I tell her I understand, she won’t go away.

I lie down to sleep, and she remains in the corner of the room, staring at me.

Opposite Living

His drugs, their guns, her body, the man’s blood…the victim, the connections, the smuggling, the late nights, the convulsions, the withdrawals, the miserable pain: it all equates a way of life. More needles, more opium, my fake and greedy smiles, my headaches, the friends that hang, the hip coolness and vogue of vulgar opposite living. We feel the reverberations in the throng of hell, and we feel so good when he fires into a body, long after it’s dead, because he’s bored; bored only until the boss wants information from the next worthless junky. Strippers dance and the iron pumps while the pervert scours the earth for a lay, and when his dick falls off from the putrid green spots eating away at his flesh, he screams because he knows he can’t do it anymore; but he’ll find a way because he’s fucking sick. But we have a professionalism to maintain, and you won’t see any of this, because we have our freedom to live. Did she still feel good about the starry eyes she had after she got hooked up, doped up, then raped? Did he still want a piece of the action after his back and his face was branded with red hot iron spikes?

What did the others do?

They lived wholesome lives.