Endless
Revisit Death Prompt 6: Surrealism Horror
This was a complicated prompt for me; but I finally got through it. The holidays aren’t kind to all of us. I went through thousands of songs trying to feel the vibe. Happier words are difficult now with everything going on ~ heavy on the metaphoric prose.
The writer who gave it to me is someone I cherish deeply, her name is Kristin Peterson. I don’t know if she’s still posting but, I love her horror. The worlds she creates, and is an incredible human. I am blessed to call her someone close to family.
[Me, circa 2014, distorted by yours truly]
Stream of Consciousness POV, zero draft.
2. 3.
Memories live beyond reflection. Its lipstick stains grew mold where moist mushrooms live inside. Fingers glide along the grooves, everything is hushed next to the wick. Behind me, is a shadow who knows my name. They’re disfigured flesh lost, rotten in their reign. Together, pigments of our skin have gone anemic. Guttural wheezed breaths drift in and out of sorrow and song. Dreams trapped in our throats through asphyxiation and bated breaths. Ski mask slides to the side. My shadows face exposed, shredded at the husk.
We share a story, in the wild, in the lush.
Words leave behind the pages torn, swim between my toes and finds crevices to live in secret. All connections remain unearthed. Unfettered by the outside. Hidden messages imprisoned between bones. A spectre of life, our ruined collection.
Love slips past my tongue, I am your burned victim. Garments are failures shielding our bodies. It breathes in passages of your orifices, seeming ordinary broken on the floor.
Behind every abandoned building is a garden where we live. Without agency, or autonomy to be authorized into existence. Public castration, eyes without a voice.
Felt my fingers in the soil, tear polluted wetness. The unseen takes what it must, it begins with the fingers. Paint brushes slick the mud, pockets of stained glass slashed our skin. Now we, glisten in the glitter, shiny bright. Geometric juxtaposition, wishes on a spike. Film flickers at the knuckles, its radiant song severed at the palm. Channels move into meaning gone hoarse. Swollen valves cuts through foam, slow and deep. My ritual is not quite complete.
Performance needs to focus, where the sun stays bright. Mornings melon in the darkest nights. Without moderation paradise lives in the galleries, impulsive halos tilted parallel. Choices in trade for posture. Emotion without intention, saturated our minds. Fools pretend to be suitable, lives imagined. In the colors of their stormy eyes is abysmal. We spin in a dance, their mouths unavailable without validation. We kiss eternal, flesh on flesh, bye bye.
In the wild, in the quiet, in the spit.
Fight or flight faints and breaks off. Bones of my wrist replica underneath, carpals become poetry. Copies made. Skin scent glands breathe their petals; we’re alive in decomposition, in the wild, in the lush. Without theory. We taste behind our bitter veils, stare into our nonselves. A different version of you exists for every lifetime, through others vying eyes. Blood blossoms in slit wrists, ghost static low. We speak in crisis hotlines. Sweat no longer salt, pollutes the wild with filthy snow.
In the wild, in the hunger, I yearn.
Soil encompasses my face, blanketed by the insects crawled into my space. They scrape threads of life, faceless gardeners. Invisibility dissembles my identity. Tell me, I am still alive.
In the wild, you’ll wrap my heart, so that I may never burn.
Burn.
2. 1.
Blood pooled out of my mouth, born this way.
Strange energy filled down my legs, tiny little sparks pin prick the skin. On the corner of my ribcage, I lie. Uncertain if my captor is a lover or an enemy. The world could swallow me whole, if I let it. All that is alive moves around lethargic. Spliced imagery between here and now. Fingers crossed over my heart where it should live, pounding. Seeming human, as if it’ll be enough.
I crack my eyes, seeing an androgynous creature beside me. The creature’s eyes are relaxed, magnified by my movements. Wine on their lips. Tannins heavy, old world and new world interlaced. My lips are parched from the act, its renewal, the endless. The creature is my passenger, they put their long finger on my lips to press against mine. I let their sharp nail cut me, its pressure, a scentless finger.
“Water?” I mouth through the finger. Centuries have passed, and my decomposition meant nothing. The planet still breathes, I am still here in one way.
“How long have you been this way before I found you?”
“It depends on the year, does it matter?” My voice is hoarse, gravel grated against sheetrock.
“What are you?”
“What are you? You’re not human. You’re endless, like me.”
“We share similar specifics, but our needs are different.”
“Bold assumption for something you’ve never met.”
My passenger smiled, wine stained teeth.
“We’ve seen each other before; you don’t remember.”
The endless are invisible, their words don’t connect to me. They’ve become a phantom of my past. Fever dreams slip between reality and subconsciousness. Colors drain over my eyes, dripping into my eye sockets. Vibrations touch my innards and make them weep.
We’re not allowed coexistence in society. We cannot be more. They cannot be more to me. World’s suffer when they push their will into the dark to suffocate. Humanity is going to watch the stars burn out, and we’ll be here.
Ghosts have swallowed the corridors, names of endless are pages lost to only those who still remember. Why can’t I remember their face? I’ll never know the era by the candlelight. Torn by concept, by what I thought I knew.
The abandoned villa has been overtaken by plants where other parts have fallen apart, lost by time. My passenger’s face is expressionless, a blank slate. Destruction lives deep into my toes and I see the real when I take dried leaves and crumble it in their wine. They drink the leaves and crunch it between their teeth, petioles immersed.
My passengers eyes were the color of blood, hazy like an albino in heat. The way their mouth moved felt unnatural. Times chronos clock defeated by the apocalypse and this species. It defied mankind, I could close my eyes and feel it move, my words barely stay present. Tinkers with my insides, it does. Don’t know which way is up or down.
My eyes depart, shut down. I feel the passenger gnawing at my throat. Canines temptress tiger, ripped my veins webs clean off. My necks chunk disappears and reappears. Swims between pain and numbness. They smell of sulfur and gasoline when their lips touch mine. We trade messenger blood cells. Genetic vulnerability as we change. I’m their lab rat, they’re my eternal hunter.
One is one step above the other, the alternative let’s them devour them whole. Entangled, the world slows down for us. Ageless divergence. Uncovered mysteries without names. Devoid of placeholders, outside of lies.
We dream for the endless.
We only wish to burn.
 | A guest post by
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I loved the density of this - a lustrous, profound prose: apocalyptic, yet molding itself into the shape of consciousness. It is the kind of writing I would read while living and dying.
The writing felt lush. Gothic. Like a black rose growing and twisting inside the moldy wall of an abandoned house before finally bursting out. Loved it!