red-artchive

[red-artchive]

[red-artchive]

a star burns out

[red-artchive]

jane doe from ride the cyclone yippee yippee

[red-artchive]

As a frail child, I'd grown accustomed to bouts of nausea. The nightly buffet of powders, pills, and syrups created a relentless fog that embraced every nook and fold of my brain. My eyes, rivaling those of an old dog. My lungs, smoke-withered, punctured, bloody. My disfigured spine reached for the floor, my knees threatened to knock against each other with each step.

As a frail child, I'd grown accustomed to a useless vessel. And so I grew, odd and lanky. A small, skin-deep mass settled on my shoulder, a quiet, insidious guest. Another abnormality, one of many, I figured. So I let it fester, my companion the lump. I was blind to the eyes that gawked and the mouths that sneered. My lump became my crutch, the only constant in my miserable routine. It was always there, its blanket-like warmth lulled me into security as it kept growing and burrowing its pus-filled sac deeper within my skin.

I fought back debased threats of detaching my mass. Blissfully ignorant of the greasy stench of pus and dead skin that followed me everywhere, I grew confused. My lump wasn't that bad; it was innocent. So it stayed, through turned noses and broken bridges. I couldn't care less, we were now inseparable, neither by scalpel nor chains.

One day, my lump grew with alarming vitality. It donned pearly white teeth on its round, bumpy surface. Curved, taloned claws protruded from its small, bony limbs, and coarse dark hair grew in matted clumps. I could no longer turn a blind eye to the permeating smell of this rotten carcass I'd declared my friend.

The gazes lingered longer, laced with hatred and disgust, and the whispers grew louder, a cacophony of animosity. I can feel it pulsing beneath my clavicle. I hear its urges to kill, a siren-like song never ending, it whispers the demon's language deep in my medulla. This lump will soon take me, and I will be nothing but rotting flesh and strings of pus, a horrific cocktail of decay. But it's what I deserve. I let this demon fester in my useless body, providing it warmth and support.

I will take responsibility for what I've let out into the world. I'd grown accustomed to this horrid sack of flesh I'd let grow on this useless excuse of a body.

I'm sorry I couldn't protect you from it.