Sickly Feelings

Forced meat shoved the bloated
Abdomen bursting the rot within
And the mouth goes frothing unleashed
The poison till shame has its way
In punishment the angel lands bleeding

Gutter scum festers boiling the brain
Like slime layers the insides of your
Heart pains the glorious scourge
Whip the lashing and the laughing
As death putrefies meaning and
Suffering sanctifies a purposeless life

Bludgeoned skulls litter the trash fields
Where loveless souls decay in scorching sun
Lights the darkness so that stains
Reveal crimes and rats scamper infested
Lice-riddled snatch for the spread
When the Devil arrives to spend
His discards for the luckless sucker

Crude mind game gut slicing the innards
Pour to the floor spatters the red dots drip
Blood gushing crimson trickle a lip’s edge
Like a maggot desires companionship
And a razor lacerates a wrist hoping
For rainbows of finality, the vaporizing dreams
Of a maturing child walking her
Last day to school before
The stifling terror of another day
Unleashes the violence of its fury

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Hollow Places

Heart

I left. I loved her, and helplessness tore at me. I felt the weight of destiny and fate creeping into my thoughts by the murmuring wind grazing my face beneath the round sun. And I was walking home, grinding my thoughts for explanations when I noticed something in the leaves scattered beneath the bushes by the sidewalk. Something had caught my eye. I was the curious type when walking alone…“take my thoughts away,” I asked. I crouched over to look, and as I focused my eyes, I noticed red liquid spotting the dirt and leaves a little further inward.

I let my eyes wander about the redness, the splattered pattern that told me I might be looking at blood. Had I seen animals mangled and mushy in the road before? Yes, so I wasn’t quite shocked; that is, until I spotted the round lump that carried all of the characteristics of a human heart. The arteries had been severed and the glossiness told of the recency by which this life-pumping organ had been crudely extracted. My eyes fixated upon the object and my own heart began to pump rapidly. My stomach grew queasy and I straightened my back aghast, and I turned to look around to see if anyone had been watching. All was barren along that stretch of industrial warehouse wasteland, though I did notice, much to my sudden concern, an individual far off by a building, an individual who was looking in my direction.

I began to quietly move along, but I was too late. I glanced back to see what had evolved, and I quickened my pace when I saw that the figure had begun to follow me.

The Figure

I sensed the danger and I walked faster, yet the figure copied my movement. Now my heart was pulsating with nervousness, and I took an alleyway to try and throw off the direction of my pursuer. Sunlight shot at strange angles, and intervals of black shade contrasted the views of white with black, the hot temperature dank with discomfort. Dark shaded spots were cooler, and within it a nook where the buildings began to condense, I hid, praying I would not be discovered. I could feel my breath, and I did my best to conceal the noise, to try and relax.

And then I saw it, the figure that stalked me, edging through the visual plane, invading my point of view from around the corner. It walked slowly, and I say “it,” because it was no human like I had ever seen. The eyes were large black holes beneath a wide-brimmed hat, and two large nostrils sat enmeshed in a pall of what could have been rotting flesh, for parts could have been dripping while others were fixed with bruised, blue and burgundy tatters of raw flesh. No lips could I see, and instead the craggy teeth brown with disgust occupied the vacant space where such lips could have been, if such a creature could have even known lips. My eyes shut by the piercing look of two, laser red eyeballs. It’s jaw moved oddly about, the bones making a crunching sound, and it’s head faced me dead on. I was discovered.

Heartless

The figure stood mechanically, its mouth dripping with ooze as it stared at me, and I grew painfully nervous…I thought my fluids were about to burst in my pants. Our eyes fell into a gaze as though it were hypnotizing me, and yet in my peripheral thoughts, I sensed something dramatic about the fact I was not being attacked. The coat it wore was disheveled and dirty, and was not buttoned up so that I was able to see the rotted flesh emanating from underneath.

As though the being could read my thoughts, it began to move in towards me. The red eyes. Those diamond red eyes began to hurt mine, piercing into my soul, and my stomach grew queasy with the inability to move, and yet I was shaking so violently that I wanted to run, but I could not. I was frozen with fear. It came close enough that the foul odor emitting made me want to vomit. Then I saw the bloodied and gaping hole where a heart was supposed to be, and I realized this was where the bloodied heart I discovered in the bushes had once belonged. A heart torn, severed from the nurturing womb leaving behind a loveless corpse to haunt the souls of those who never find love.

Ghost

Towards the north end of the property a shadow sometimes passes that does not coincide with the passing of the full moon. The shadow is the ghost of an old man. Rumor has it that this ghost perpetually glides over the grasses hoping for a chance to outwit those that attempt to pursue him, for he knows he is about to be hung. His problem is that he is only witness to a murder, but has been wrongfully sentenced to death. He knows the bloodthirsty prosecution will not bend in their judgments, and to escape the prying jaws of mortality, he seeks to elude the authorities by making crafty movement among the trees and bushes until they pass by. The day of his execution a dog had found him and he was taken to that very tree where the wind sometimes blows the moaning sound of his expiration, and now his ghost is dumbstruck and caught between worlds thinking he can somehow hide from his fate.

I felt this ghost one night. I went to the tree to observe the strange markings told to be seen only by moonlight. I stood and a chill shot through my spine unlike any other, and I knew, I could feel the presence there before me. Unknown to such phantoms of feeling, I bolted with great fear, back to the house where my family would await to hear my fantastical story. As I approached I noticed a strange difference in the nuance of light emitting from one of the lower level windows, a light that seemed somehow slightly brighter than the rest. Struck by this detail I headed in this direction with the intention of ascertaining the reason. Instead of going in through the front door I went to the window to peer in, where I saw the spectacle that sent me shivering: I, myself, was in the room.

My father was watching as my mother was on the brink of plunging a great knife into me where I lie on the couch, and I became edgy with fear and cried out at this perfidious display. But my effort came to no avail, for my voice was not heard, though I thought for a second, my father turned and looked out the window. Before long my scream pierced the room as the hand of my mother’s rose high into the air, then plunged the silvery blade into my chest.

Why was I outside? Was I dead?

Why did my father not prevent the ghastly act?

Nothing became of my mother for she wore strange fragrances and utilized potions for as long as I could remember; she’d simply vanished. When I ran around the house to enter, all was dark and not a drop of life stirred. The hallway was empty and the low howl of the wind penetrated the silence. Before long I felt the presence I’d felt out by the north end of the property, and I shivered with biting fear, for I perceived I was not alone; the dreadful presence had followed me. I hid in a closet where I might find some safety, and soon, footsteps could be heard entering the room, slowly, one by one. I kept the door open with just a slight crack that I might discern the nature of the intruder. Clip, clop, clip, clop. In time the moon lit onto the face of one morbid and white, with eyes of coal and skin of pale like that of a corpse, and the features were of a haunting familiarity, for the features were that of none other than my father, wandering around the room as though looking for something.

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.

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.