Feral Mirror Stranger

Genre: Horror/ Stream of consciousness POV Workshop

When we fall, our bottomless pit can be redemption. Busted faces, missing teeth, hands scabbed where skin used to belong is a sweet serenade. I didn't see the face of the person or thing that did this to me. They did not exist beyond my mind. Its shadow made me think of what hell is supposed to be. Someone's watching you at the corner. If you close your eyes it will be enough. They'll just disappear from where they began. A hand extends its claw on your shoulder. Alone, you taste the lust on their tongue. Savagery taking pieces of you with it. We will belong together, and we will die together.

Bloodstained blotches that kiss the camera frame. Consuming sight, where spatial awareness slips from our fingers. Throwing up blood wasn't enough behind the dumpster. Whole organs that weren't mine, attached and detached by the force of my throat. In the underground the neon signs cover the streets like an galactic glow. The shadows boots were made of latex, not that PVC bullshit. Blood barely soaked the ridges. Voice neither feminine nor masculine tainted the air as I crawled around the ground. Still hungry for more.

In my eyes, they could see the parts that kept me alive this long. It's the animalistic urges, no matter how torn up my body appears. Surging down my arms I try to swipe at this monstrosity before my face as the air breezes through its partial temporal body. I listen to it wheezing with a wicked low laughter, and gentle moaning as it takes part of my soul. Prey animal, I release from its grasp, and run down the alleyways, foot steps breaking way from the crunching of its mouth as if a ship collapsed into its jaw and sunk to sea. The eerie words were beyond the pale, "Tell me something, do you want to live as you are now? You're worth nothing. The more you scream, the more you'll like it."

I listened to overhead lights sizzling out from a hot frying pan in the sky and busting out over empty streets. Flickers, tubes of light shatter over my partial naked body as I travel. Run from a world with no bodies on the streets, you'll feel as though you're the last person alive. In witching hour the creature walked behind me, its cyber vibrations sounded as though people were trying to speak to me underwater. They were drowning, shrieking, and they were fucking their way out of existence. As I moved closer to the homes in the city the voices grew louder, deep into my cranial head cavity, electric waves heightened to the sounds of lightning thundering off. My body felt weak, overpowered by the stranger, and wondering if I would be able to fight it off any longer.

I limped my wicked legs to the bench and stumbled over the fake wood, that's probably hosed down from some park ranger. Keeps it pretty for the rich, keeps it nice for people unlike me. My fingernails started to change color from white to blue, a biohazard neon that glowed. My head was throbbing as I puked more leaving trails for no one. Not another drunk whore. Not another twenty something disaster. Not murder. Not relevant. Shatter in the dark. White gardens painted with my ancestry. Every second lost before it's gained.

**

A soft obsession, a forced fed lie. Dumpster diving to live. Homes underneath bridges, through the trails of the woods and nearby nature. Plots of land belonged to dead man's graves. With intention our bodies move through the world, full traveled and deserted. As the sun rises and falls, we feel the blisters long enough before the feelings are gone. Everything and nothing. What's your favorite dimension?

Sun speckled lights cross my eyes, the attention of the sights surround me. It feels personal without a mention. When the sky falls we leave behind the comfort of the noises we share with mud trodden paths of animals smaller than me. Dirty water creates a film around our body, a separation that draws a distinction in hierarchy. Society's justice a glimmering smile unchanged by the abandoned, lost girls. It's not physical enough to be real. All your limbs still attached, mind treading on rocks skipping the water. Missed connections, missed opportunities.

Years pass through the body, a book of flesh that nurtures the ground when it decays. Bones for the dogs. Splice yourself further away from yourself until you try again. Another century, another face. A reincarnation without a backwards button. You can't fix the past.

Press the flash forward, your button replays the memory of the city night lights. A serotonin knee jerking out of control. With your weapons and chains you sneak between the light and darkness, a smell of rot that parts the souls of the living. Its taint with a lick of sewage and seawater left out to dry. You remember the vagueness of their expressions, experiences of hatred, some fucked up simplicity. When you look within you there's a desire for the truth. Yet parts of you are fragmented heavy trees, hoping to be set free.

On the porch of the bar, you get a cardboard of soup and nearly turnt beer, and you grapple with the bad men in the universe. Fire in their eyes louder than sirens for the sky when it shifts. A mother's tongue diluted by every drifting thought. You'll break every pint glass until you're banned from every roof with a home. A disco where people have lost control.

When the snap happens, it's nearly nerve wracking. You should've ran, but the genderless stranger towered over your body until it left you as the rodent. Half asleep, half anger rising to the beat of the tempo. Your teeth opens wide hearing the tendons nearly snap and take a part of its neck. The blood glows with chemicals as though you released the tomb, and you let it become nuclear. Stillness forever, then expanding. They take your bottom lip and bite into your mouth. You cannot close your eyes as you exchange their blood with yours. Golden speckles of glitter, the glow is tainted. Battery acid, and the muscles of your arms embrace their inhumanity.

Unhinged, you are kill or be killed. Fuck or be fucked. Slamming your head against their frontal lobes, you bounce their brain cells as they attempt to shove foreign needles into your arms. Partial injection, you pull the syringes and snap them between your fingers. Shards hit the men in the face. A car explosion on glass, blinds them from the overhead lights. Listening to their screams, you feel adrenaline and excitement. Your stranger unmoved by their pain, tangles with your flesh rubbing off the mud, and exposing the skin. It wants what it can't have and you want them to fight for it.

My fingers collide with their face and seeing the body bend itself inward, before it inflates as if their body were made of rubber. Somewhere in your brain, there is a frightening chill that slips up your neck and between your lips. Old gods dead, lost themselves to jerking off to man meat. Replaced the world with them because they thought our struggle was beautiful. I was supposed to hold the crown over their head, let the halation burn me sideways.

My stranger extends its claws and slices me across my chest cutting my fabric, exposing the dirt and the grime. In words of encouragement, I find a jagged shard and jump straight through the center of their collar bone slicing up the main artery. Weakly, I drop the shard, where I listen to the mistake of the glass falling and wobbling with the ground. Polished with rainwater, it begs for my embrace. Ignorant of my intuition, I pout seeing the stranger's eyes change from human to a colorful glow. I watch as they rip off old skin, and drop it to the ground. Their latex knee high boots smash the dead flesh. Somewhere, they're laughing, but my mind is scattered. Swimming in memories as the fight is pulled down with the gravity of my legs.

From the shadows, I see them descend upon me.

I escaped partially.

*

A little lost oxygen joyride. Mirrors show how the car drags me out of the city. My hands are rested on the black latex. It glistens dark colors with the tattoos changing shape. Head wretches forward feeling the poison take over my veins. I keep rejecting the ability to give in between the cursing breathy wild eyes of my stranger. We’re not friends.

"Look at you. You're disgusting." They say as they drive us out of the city. No, I don't want to leave with you. Let me stay. Let me die there. Let me.

One of my wiggly hands pulls down the passenger mirror, vision traveling toward double, and triple. Boils live on my neck as I see my skin falling off of my body exposing the muscles, rinds of sorrow. My blood turns to the closest black you can get without your feet getting sucked in. An abyss without color, my dislocated jaw makes it hurt to smile. All jig jagged running high on baby fumes.

Further reflection, I suck in the bile and see my canines sharpened. An edged knife in the mouth, unable to cry, you feel the chill rush through your veins as you see your monstrosity. Half dead, your body hidden behind the grime transforms with extra bones that weren't there before and you're unimpressed. Fighting your way to the handle of the car, you see the cliffside show that unearthly ocean glow.

Ghosts call to you as the damnation spreads hell to the nights sky. World's not lost on you as you quietly flip the mirror from your eyesight. A fucking abomination in hindsight. Bleak colors fade as the golden air shines from your driver. You cannot change what you are, a feral animal filled with shame.

Every ounce of strength, you remember you're the forgotten. Wings fallen, but not obscured. You can't help but watch. You can't stop it. It lives in you.

A twist of the wheel.

Burn, baby, burn.

[Thank you Kristin Peterson for the prompt from the Stream of Consciousness Workshop POV.]