Certain peculiar hungers,

Unconventional urges,

Can only be sated

By something quite specific,

But sated they must be.

A small body,

Vibrant and joyful,

Lured, taken, stilled;

Youth and vitality extinguished,

Tears gently wiped away.

The ritual begins.

Body lovingly made ready:

Washed, drained, sliced.

Artfully presented,

The meal is prepared.

The meat approaches slowly;

Eager saliva lines the mouth,

Parted lips tremble,

Quivering tongue moistens,

Impatient teeth gleam.

Soft skin, musky sweet,

Subtle, salty hint of sweat.

Tiny hairs lightly tickle.

Playful tug of slight resistance

Before it stretches.

Flesh, dense and heavy,

Greasy layers of squelching fat

Ooze gleefully between gnashing teeth,

Ecstatic tongue undulates,

Meat reduced to savoury pulp.

Squeaking enamel slides along bone.

Brief pause, then muted crunch;

Mouth sliced by splinters,

Bleeding cheeks add metallic tang.

Offering welcomed by gaping throat.

The layers of exquisite pleasure

Derived from such unusual fruit,

Plucked with great care,

Eaten with deference and reverence,

Are a rare bounty that must be savoured.

Every fresh young morsel

Offers their own discreet delights;

Tantalising nuances of texture,

Sweet subtleties of flavour,

Each devoured individual unique.

So many more are out there,

Being sweetened and fattened,

Ripened and readied.

A bountiful orchard of innocent youth,

Just waiting to be consumed.

If they could see the thoughts

Squirming in your squalid mind,

They would be repulsed.

You sit among others

And pretend,

But you are not one of them.

Dress in their cloth,

Feign interest in their babble,

Emulate their affectations.

Your words unnerve,

Your intent - malicious;

Pretend it’s a joke.

Wince through a rictus smile;

They’re not looking closely,

They’ll think it’s sincere.

Your skin begins to peel,

Putrid flesh beneath revealed:

Mask it with a sweet scent.

Rancid breath seeps

From your rotting mouth,

Don't get too close.

Each day

Your pantomime

Becomes more difficult.

Your voice strains

To maintain the charade;

They’re catching on.

Violent visions

Swim through your brain,

Harder and harder to resist.

Inevitably

You will be seen;

You will be rejected.

I know all this

For I, too,

Am an impostor.

Writhing insidiously

In every fold of your brain,

Seething maliciously

In every breath from your lungs,

Oozing dangerously

In every pulse from your heart,

Thrashing wildly

Against your very soul.

Formless, ever-changing,

It is teeth and claws, tentacles and eyes.

It is rage, weakness and pain;

It is impulse, urge and desire.

Suppressed but always present,

Rotting, fermenting, seeping, spreading;

It sleeps and dreams dark dreams

That worm into your waking thoughts.

Whispering suggestions of lust,

Encouraging fits of gluttony,

Demanding acts of violence;

Eventually, you will succumb.

Obey it and it feeds.

Feed it and it grows.

Its whispers become shouts,

And you become its plaything.

Your wretched shell,

Now a mere puppet,

Can only watch

As its dark fantasies are indulged.

It releases you 

Into misery,

And gleefully observes

The desolation it has wrought.

Greedily it laps up

Your regret,

And gorges itself

On your anguish.

Temporarily sated,

Coiled in shadow once more,

It bides and slumbers.

It knows it won’t have to wait long.

What life, a shadow?

To be irrevocably tethered,

Imprisoned and ignored;

An unwilling mimic

Dragged along and forced to perform

A pantomime of emotions.

You give the illusion of interaction

Yet feel nothing.

Worthless blotch, have you desires

That cannot be expressed?

Animated stain, have you needs

That cannot be fulfilled?

Appearing unbidden

And being silently banished

Without fanfare, without notice.

You are powerless.

You lonely phantom,

Drifting through others

As they drift through you,

Voiceless and intangible.

You of no substance,

What would you do

If one day you were made flesh,

Able to express?

Would you share the rage

of being silently entombed,

Or the beauty of the ephemeral

And the transient?

Oh! But I have babbled

Too long on this foolish topic,

Your existence is no concern of mine,

For you are nothing.

A sealed chamber,

The walls quiver.

Soft, warm, dimly translucent.

Lights and shadows play across the surface.

All external sound is muffled

Yet vibrations pulse throughout.

Cyclical polyrhythms throb and resonate,

Gurgling fluids seep and flow.

300 days of solitude,

300 nights of dreaming,

Aimless and adrift.

The walls tremble and close in.

~

The air is dry, stale.

Small, cold lights buzz and flicker above.

Cacophonous drones reverberate

Through every surface.

Straight-edged walls, floor and ceiling.

Rough, hard, angular.

There are openings

Through which I can travel.

There are multiple rooms, many rooms, a labyrinth of rooms.

All uniform and grey,

Repeating endlessly.

I travel for years and arrive nowhere.

~

A world with no walls.

Light and warmth radiate from above.

Air blows freely, carrying sweet scents.

The only sounds are pleasant rustlings, distant and gentle.

Underfoot is cool, firm but yielding,

From it sprouts a floor of softness.

I dig my hand into the ground.

Inviting. I dig further down.

I carve my own walls,

Create my own room, then

Pull the excavated ground atop myself.

Here I will stay.

Their hand stops shaking

As they prepare a drink.

They pour a perfect measure almost automatically,

In one clean, well-practiced motion.

They close their eyes as they sip,

Take a deep breath,

Swallow,

Then exhale in a long, slow sigh.

Warmth spreads slowly across their features.

Their face relaxes, the lines fade,

A countenance that was hard and stern

Morphs into one of welcoming joviality.

What was hidden is now revealed.

Bitterness is replaced with revelry,

Things previously dismissed are encouraged,

The night seems endless with possibility.

They are transformed.

In their ebriety

They enjoy a fleeting moment

Of pure, unbridled joy.

This too though, fades.

Left behind is something worse than before:

Their expression is more fierce,

Their voice now snaps and barks.

Kindness has become emptiness,

Enthusiasm has been snuffed out.

Their eyes have darkened, their shoulders slump.

Their body has aged terribly within moments.

They are dejected and broken,

A child’s toy when the key has wound down.

They turn away; dismissive, cold and silent.

Their hand begins to shake once more.

𝄆 A young man and an old man walk along a beach,

They pause beneath a manchineel tree.

Black ocean laps the shore.

The young man plucks a fruit.

The young man eats the fruit,

Then tears open the old man's abdomen.

White sand stretches on.

The old man dies.

The young man spits the stone into the corpse.

From steaming entrails, a boy forms.

Yellow sun burns overhead.

Time ebbs and flows.

The young man becomes old,

The boy becomes a man.

Red clouds loom on the horizon.

The tree blossoms. 𝄇

Dust-covered puppet, long forgotten,

Dragged into the light.

Slack strings pulled taut, scream under the strain.

Jerking and jittering, joints stuck and scraping,

Wide grin flaked and fading,

Jester’s cap askew, bells jangling discordantly.

The selfish hand above, spastic and flailing. 

A string snaps, a limb dangles uselessly

But still the puppet is forced to twist and gyrate,

Madly dancing to a tuneless melody,

Faster and faster, twitching and writhing

For an idiot’s entertainment, until,

On a whim, the game is over

And it is thrown into the dark once again.