“Chance” Meeting

I cup my simple brew

Warm but I imagine

Quietly to myself

Something oh so warmer

And satisfying too…

As I meet your eyes

Is there a spark?

Do we feel the pull

The draw of fate’s strings?

I smile and give a little wave

You smile too returning wave

Though you waited a moment

I am so eager to know you

I’ve been watching for weeks

But I’m so very nervous

And terribly shy

Yes for weeks that’s right

I do hope I haven’t unnerved you

I have tried ever so hard

To go unnoticed

That is

Until now

Now you see me

Now I smile

You smiled too

Hesitantly

I felt that hesitation

A slight against me

So hurtful and minatory

Oh foul temptress

How could you so toy with my heart?

How cruel you are

And awful too!

You will pay

For hurting me so

I was your only chance

For love and life

A shame

You are so pretty

When you sleep at night

For that is where

I will creep within

And with careful hands

Snuff your life

A Culling of Pages

She looms above them

The huddled masses

A scythe of crimson blood

Poised and ready to strike

The Creator can do naught

But trust in her measured cuts

See how she leaves whole lives

Towns and people

Bathed in red

And all but forgotten

Only their Creator knows their names

But in the end

After the death

After the loss

It is made more perfect

More flowing and paced

When the editor finishes

Her culling of pages

A Sickness of the Mind

The light drips off of windowsills

Spreading iridescent pools

As I feel the cotton inside my mouth

Air like cotton but nothing there

I take a step and floor gives

Like quicksand meets rubberband

Senses flooded by hazy delirium

I stumble and catch the wall

Folding its plaster between fingers

As I walk towards her

The nurse cries in terror

Scrabbling at the door

“I… don’t feel… well…”

I groan stomach churning something awful

I feel the world tilt and my feet slide forward

She slams against the door and sobs

Lifting herself from its face

As I collapse in a heap beside her

The door warps below us

Bending bowing into a teardrop

Closing above us

And then shattering

Obliterated as I fall

She falls too

Screaming all the while

“DON’T WAKE UP

I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

I hear her cry

Just before a tree comes up to meet me

And as I land with sickening crunch

My bed shakes from the force

Of my body jolt

Hypothetical

If there was a man

Hypothetically

Who was everything you ever wanted

What you alway desired

And he hypothetically lived

In a big old house

Alone and want for love

Could you see yourself loving him

Hypothetically

Only in concept

A purely thought formed man

Chiseled features

And flowing hair

The idea of perfection

Hypothetically waiting for you

In his imagined house

Dressed sharp

Just the way you like

Yes

You thought you could love him

You thought you were there

Holding him and kissing him

And living and loving

So perfectly lovely

But you awake each day

Alone

This man forgotten

For only a moment

And when you return

To this theoretical place

He feels like you were allways gone

You feel so guilty

Hypothetically

You thought you loved him

You thought it was perfect

Until the day

You found him dead

Edges fuzzy and blurry and red

Already forgetting his breath

His perfect laugh

You realized

You didn’t love this man

You only thought of him

Hypothetically

And so you went on

Your life none the worse

And from time to time

You think to yourself

The perfect man didn’t exist

Except the one

Who lived

Hypothetically

What is Worse

What’s worse?

To know

That someone was living in the walls

Or find

That someone is dying in your halls

To feel

Your skin crawling like a beast

Or see

Your flesh, alive and hungry for the feast

I feel so overwhelmed

Distracted

By all this hell I’ve created

But I can’t help but feel happy

No longer slow and sappy

What’s worse

To find

The bitter taste of copper in your mouth

Or See

Her blood is splattered all around

To hear

Your loved ones crying for your help

Or watch

Your legs walk away all by themselves

I feel such satisfaction

By all of my abstractions

Horror is made reality

These terrors in their nascency

The Hole

As I walk down the street, streetlight conical safety passing, I feel something shift like an earthquake, but inward.

Something appears some distance ahead.

I squint, but whatever it is only appears as a hole in my sight, black and without texture. Slowly I walk towards it. I try to come at it at an angle, to see if any variation exists.

Perfectly spherical, and as I get closer I feel the hum of silence. A quiet so perfect that the sound of your blood flow and heartbeat is deafening.

Slowly I reach out and as my fingers pass whatever barrier this sphere represents, I can feel nothing beyond where my fingertips have disappeared. I pull my hand back and find my fingers are gone. I don’t find this alarming. Of course they’re gone. I was born that way. This still does not explain the sphere.

I pick up a rock and throw it within.

I should try throwing something inside.

I pick up a rock and throw it within.

I wonder absently what happens if you put something inside.

I take some change from my pocket, hold it above the hole and drop it within. As it passes within-

I wonder with increased curiosity what it looks like inside the hole. I lean closer, eyes wide and spark of curiosity clear. Closer. Closer.

Thematic Schematic

Home as horror

Bones to wood

Flesh to paint

Muscle to drywall

A living thing

And we

Parasitic vermin

What then

If this body

Developed cancer

Hallways to nowhere

Living rooms extending forever

A kitchen in a kitchenette in a shower

Expanding confounding extrapolating heuristic terror

Quotidian walls warped beyond reason beyond meaning becoming meaning

Home as horror