A Trapped Shadow

I sit alone in a lifeless house.

A house that's proudly dressed the same for years. Taupe walls stand proudly in every room, with vigorously shed tears of mold, rust, mud, blood, tears, and decay decorating their frames.

The low ceilings above are miserable and desolate, dimly lit bulbs and surfaces are covered in silky patterns. Patterns secreted from the abdomens of the venomous arachnids that skate around the house.

The living room is shaken and weeping, cloth and wood have been gouged from her furniture and scattered on the floors by the villainous felines I adopted.

Lamps, rugs, and shelves have been split and eaten by something, and expensive items droop and bleed, covered with insects and dusts that occupies their surfaces.

Shattered porcelain, silverware, and mirrors litter the floors of the house, trapped and stained behind crimson.

Footprints huddle under the chaos, and stenches I've long been accustomed to linger and sing here proudly.

Is it the smell of abandonment?

Is it the smell of decay?

Is it the smell of blood?

Is it the smell of shit?

Is is rotten food?

Is it garbage from a stomach that couldn't be digested?

Is it sex?

Or, is it the sins I've buried in the dark?

I don't know.

I sit on pieces of glass I've made into a chair. I've gripped an old, brittle pen, nearly dry of the royal ink that once filled it. Traces of it have long decorated the stacks of paper beside me.

I'm not writing yet.

The voices in my head have grasped my attention. They're casually entertaining me. Entertaining me with the lies I've learned to mask as the truth. With the secrets I bury in the dark. With a body adorned in rich, luxurious, and vibrant scars, that's entertained and engaged in activities that make the angels cry. With a heart made of two double-sided mirrors, where light and darkness constantly battle to overcome each other.

I'm scared to touch the paper on my lap.

I've touched it before, many times actually, and the white in them shamelessly revealed the monster in me. I've grown in darkness, hid in darkness, satisfied and have been satisfied in darkness, but even in the darkest and deepest cave, light always reaches.

I don't want to write. I convince myself that I won't, but the voices beg me.

They practically brought me to this house, to confess my sins to the pages. They're begging me, enchanting me, cursing me, and forcing me to write like I did last time, and the many times before that. They say my handwriting has to be luxurious, entertaining, demeaning, and careful. That my handwriting has to reflect what's on the papers around me. That my secrets, regrets, shame, and filth, has to be displayed proudly and shamelessly.

So, they guide my hand slowly. They guide it until the pen's tongue ravenously touches the page.

I hear it. I hear the words that are coming out of its royal mouth.

It's words are lucrative, disgraceful, and deafening. It created echoes and voices that bounce inside the lifeless house.

It eats, and eats, and eats across the page. Even when murderous winds and rain tears through the broken windows and roof, it's still eating. Even when glass breaks, rats, cats, screech,hiss, claw at each other and cower from the rain, it still eats.

It eats using my hand as a vessel.

I'm laughing. Smiling. Gnashing my teeth. Shivering fiercely from the cold, excitement, and pain that hugs my body.

I can sense it.

I can feel it.

Another piece of my real heart has broken, sinking into the belly of the monster I've created.

But the pen won't stop eating.

It's filled pages I can't yet count, it's nearly exhausted the royal ink in it, yet it's still eating.

Talons bite into my lean fingers, signaling my hands to stop. But I can't. I can't stop until the page on me and the pages around me are trapped behind my filth, behind my darkness, and behind my secrets I bred as children.

I only write to entertain and appease the voices in my head. I assure myself. It's only to entertain and contain the monster, in case it runs loose.

I'm blind to what's happening, blind to what's being written, and blind to my emotions.

I've suddenly stop writing.

My eyes, hands, and brain are mine now, and I look down and notice fifteen pages or more, neatly arranged like homework, are suddenly in front of me.

I'm reading something ---

words, words that I don't want to and shouldn't call my mine.

They're words that belong to someone else ---

to something else, but not me, not me who wrote them.

They're so unethical, revolting, and vulturous, surely not reflecting who I am or what I've done.

Something's clawing at me. Talons the size of a hawk have latched on to my lean skin, and are shredding me apart. My face, arms, chest, stomach, legs, and back are being ripped apart, and red liquor hastily escapes from me.

Are these my nails? I ask myself.

아니야, 그럴 리가 없어.

Hot tears escape my cerulean-colored eyes, simmering under the tears that fall from the sky.

I'm retching and throwing up, adding a layer to the stench.

I'm covering up my gaping wounds with the garbage that my stomach refused to digest. I'm hugging my knees, rocking back and forth with my face pressed between them. My eyes are closed, I'm entering a lucid state of detachment, and listening as the sky hurls curses at the world beneath it.

Suddenly, I'm kicked from behind.

I find myself soaring through the air,

hitting one of the proud walls with a thud.

I land on my back, gasping, eyes panicked and confused, as I struggle to catch my breath. I’m convulsing as sharp fragments eat and nail me to the ground. Hands I can’t see wring air out of my lungs.

I can't think straight. Shooting stars explode my vision, and my eyes are about to close without my permission.

A sharp and blunt force pounds my forehead, my chiseled black and wavy hair absorbs the liquid that pools from it.

Something hard, stagnant, yet familiar rams into my mouth. Over and over again it rams until thick and salty liquid explode inside. The liquid joyfully rushes down my throat and makes its way into my stomach.

Moans escape from this individuals wicked mouth, and their fingers are still wrapped harshly on my neck.

I can hear familiar laughs and voices, both sweet and dark that blend into the night.

I croak a plea to stop, I jam my talons into their fingers, but they don't leg go, they can't let go until their carnal desires are fulfilled.

Me and my attackers aren't the only ones viewing and partaking in the attacks, even the papers the pen ate into are watching.

I feel kisses and tongues creeping up my body, fingers hastily rip the clothes off my body.

I know what's going to happen, the pages know what's going to happen, it's not like this is the first time.

I give my eyes permission to close, and I sink into darkness.