Hollow Gods

The hours they pull long at me. And what you've said has left me restless. It doesn't sit right and I find myself scratching an imaginary wound. I walked along a creamy desert, soft and silken fine. I explored quiet forests and mountains high. And when I descended down into the fire-less pits; I found a horror unlike any I have ever known. In the heart it was a ruin, an empty lifeless cave. Dormant and stagnant.

I sat cold and alone. Hidden in a sleeping colossus. Waiting.

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If you reached into her chest you wouldn't find anything there. Hollowed out, what was once mortal and soft had been altered. Changed. Rendered into the new machine. All the systems were there same as before. It breathed, it ate, it slept, it drank. But it was no longer human. No longer ubiquitous or pleasant. No longer something to be desired. Even the casual onlooker was put off. Whatever had once inhabited this shell had long since pass and now no man, woman or child would be able to place a name to it. A mere title of convenience. Something to manipulate this new machine.

Treat.

A false name. A lie. A sinister practical joke at the expensive of whosoever sought this prize. And sure as where treats are tricks are soon to follow. Perhaps the man who owned her was mad, or perhaps he had been spurned by her. The stories were many and each of them tinged with inklings of truth, and in the end if you took bits and pieces from them, along with time, you could puzzle together the legend. Whatever could be said of the man, one thing was true – he was nearly as empty as she was.

However, where his had been a slow withering from corrupt morals, a lack of ethics and a seriously skewed set of values; hers had been taken by his whim. As if in an ironic twist of fate, he was aptly named by fate. Mr. Trick. Whether his first or last or something in between, Trick was the official name on his birth certificate. An ill omen that cast a shadow over his family until he had crawled away from their all to bright and eager socially acceptable world too a slimy darker one where he could reign supreme. Often the worst nightmares are the ones that we wake to.

I Monster

What is it about us that so encourages us to want to find and destroy that which we fear or do not know? I have often watched movies in which the werewolf or vampire is sacrificed for the seeming benefit for the rest of the town – only to wonder what exactly it was they were sacrificing. Or even the anti-heroes. How can you not watch V for Vendetta and find yourself convulsing when V dies at the end – fueled with a furious anger and an all consuming righteousness.

Do christians honestly believe the devil lives in the form of a goat – cloven hoofed with slatted eyes? A concept they themselves created in their beginning by “laying all the sins” down upon the goat and sacrificing it to their then blood thirsty god. And if so why is it they cannot see what it really is – their own darkness refusing to die?

Why is it when everyone else is thrilled to see the monster die, a part of me dies as well. Do you not agree that it is the darkness as much as the light that determines who you are? And if you are content to deny a part of who you are – why then should you be trusted?

BFLP Syndrome

There are some days when I want to just sit back from it all. Days when I don’t seem to be enough, or maybe there’s just not enough out there for me to consume. Big-fish-little-pond syndrome. I’ve got the itch and it lies in a spot that I just can’t scratch, no matter how much it burns.

I want a million little things. I want just one thing. I want to be caught in the implosion, that magical explosion where you burst out and suck into yourself in a contradiction – the universe’s idea of a joke. Can you be everything and nothing at the same time? Is it possible to be content and utterly restless? I want to run until I am at one with everything – until I am nothing.

I’d like to explain some things, but there wouldn’t be any point. There rarely is in these hours, these moments, these tiny eternities that stretch on forever connecting and overlapping with one another like ripples in a pond. And if you could see further ahead, that telescopic glance would lead you to the past.

I’m sure the smile on my face is somber and sad, belying the notion that there is something wrong. And if there is I couldn’t be the one to tell you, taking every thing as it occurs. All of its fate and divine intervention and independent will. All at once there are choirs of angels and god on a throne in heaven while satan slithers in the shadows to coax you with ease to hell – and there is only me, no gods, no devils, no hope or faith or belief.

I wish I could tell you that I am afraid, that all this seems to weigh in on my like some crushing rock. That I am lost and merely seeking some small comfort.

But that would be a lie.

The object that I seek is just out of reach. Alas, I have continued the journey long past the death of Hope – she waits still, martyred in that room full of blood and roses and the shredded wings of angels. And I am here, which is nowhere. Where everything is nothing and all of it is riddles – some misspent youth in a looking glass with snarky beguiling cats.

I’d like to tell you that everything will be adequate and that time and faith will mend all that ails you. But I have never been one to lie unless it served a purpose. There are times when the journey serves no intention but to wear you down and put you out – when the sole function of the endeavor is to see just how much we can load on that camel. And I wish you would never have to go through it, never have to face all the horrors and monstrous things that lurk in the world, all those misdeeds and skeletons locked away in proverbial closets that would make Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster run screaming for the light of day – but I know of no other way to build the character.

Much like articles of clothing, you must be broken in and worn down as vintage carries a great many things, including wisdom. And all the nightmares that you face are merely a question of obstacles, of choices you need to make – Athena weaving the tapestry of your life wondering what adventure you will find yourself in the middle of.

The Fates have no interest in building your life for you and so the gods gave you free will. The same determination that makes one abused child a sociopath and the other a champion for civil liberties – that makes one rape victim a prostitute and the other a founder of organizations to help the victims and raise awareness. They care not if you flounder and fail or fight and win, they are simply here to throw you into the deepest pool they can find at a moment’s notice. And it will always only be you that has chosen the area.


I have always preferred to imagine the worst. I like to spend my free time thinking of tomorrow’s possibilities and twisting them to breaking. Visualizing the most horrible outcome for any number of activities that I may be required to perform or happen to chance upon. Vivid and garish: the sounds of breaking bones and steel and glass; the slick feel of blood, like wet velvet; the sensation of exsanguination, of death, of broken bones and dislodged joints, of ripped flesh open wide, the possibilities are as welcomed as the impossibilities.

I enjoy the fantasy of suicide, the sensations of dying by various methods. The predicament of my body upon discovery, the assortment of stages it will take throughout its decay. I have never thought very much of this habit, and in truth its an exercise I take part in many times a day, some more than others, but always during everyday I can remember I having thought of it at least once. I have never set to undertake an examination – a thoroughly noted analyzation of the possible notions, the underlying meaning, the subtext of the subconscious, the wherewithal to complete the flights of fancy.

I like to imagine the horrors. I like to dissect each one, replay the action slowly and examine the inner workings. There is something to this – to knowing the terror intimately. Terror is stronger than horror, so the nightmares lent to it are greater, and if you can be well aware of this – of the things that given to creating night terrors in brave adults, then there has to be something said of preparation. Knowledge is power, and all power corrupts – and in all of us there is a capacity for power then we are all, on some level, monsters.

The demons and devils of lore are nothing more than the fears we harbor about ourselves. Satan is nothing more than the skeleton of the scapegoat we slaughtered haunting our closets. Maybe we’re all just afraid of being monsters, afraid of admitting the terrible things we are capable of. Though I’m pretty sure if we just manned-up and dropped our balls it would be more invigorating than we think.

To be at ease with the atrocities we are proficient in creating on a whim – secure in the knowledge that we are better for rising above and succumbing to these caprices based on any given moment and separate situation. To have the judgment we are all guilty of casting based not only on our mayhem but also on our benevolent endeavors. Maybe that’s really how it goes. Maybe the ticket to getting into heaven isn’t all those benign acts, but also the deviances we take part in with wholehearted gaiety.

Because It's Everything

And I might be beautiful if it weren’t for all these scars. This rot ridden soul. Putrid and hateful.
No matter how deep the razor goes it just can’t reach what’s wrong. Because it’s everything. Every breath, beat, lash, cell. Every day, hour, moment. Curling out, up, in.

The only way to get out is to break out for good. Break down. Decay. Big bright red Cheshire grin. Sloppy jagged hunks of flesh sickeningly remindful of teeth gushing crimson vomit. And it’s all tumbling out now.
Worthless
Wasteful
Wicked
Wrong
Wrong
Wrong
And if you ever did anything right they might love you.
If you cease. Cease to be. Think.

And if you could, please, just be a little less you. However, it really doesn’t seem to be worth my time, so why don’t you just continue on.

While you’re busy championing Jonathan Harker, I’m mourning Dracula.
And who is there to hold me while I lose control?
Who is there to ease the pain of loss?
Who is there to ease the heartache?
Who is there to tell me the sun will set and night will return once more?


Maybe they would be,
If you weren’t a Monster.

But then who would you be?

When One Monster Slaughters Another ― Is It An Act Of Murder Or Salvation?

Roving ashen lands, mortified forests, inert pools. Pushing onward, monotonously; surging, stumbling, rushing. Incessant the ambulation to obliterate the anamnesis. Reminiscence of recollections of reflections of memories. Escaping from what? to what? for what? What?

The monsters grow agitated, the demons restive, and annihilation is riveted in the gaze the observation. Crushed underfoot, trampled, mangled, vanquished, ruptured, shambling scintillas of something long forsaken. Integuments of eidola of reveries of wishes vanished antecedent. relinquished deserted obscured Absent the horror, the anguish, the mirth, the aspiration, the chiroptera, the coleoptera, the serpents.

Is a cavern still a cavern when it is desolate - Or is it nothing more than a chasm?

The tranquil complacency in the peregrination is sufficient to succor that ache within. Vaguely devastating when dwelled upon, but evanescent is the thought entertained before the instinct to unknow is reclaimed. The erratic cadence of the atrium discounted. The gait incremental. What ignes fatui that evince wayfarers to their expiration capitulate and venture to beguile. Entice. Inveigle.

Verdant the meadow. The eruption of hues addling; quailing, traipsing the periphery of the expanse. The clement cachinnation disseminates tremors through that vagrant malaise and the quavering of the auricle are lissomely buffeted. Be afraid. Sidle into the grasses. Contiguous is perfection. He smiles and that quaver is back. Endeavor, infiltrate the unfurled limbs primed to enfold. Defunct within the embrace, stationary and taciturn. Compliant winnowing. The sneer on his face and the neoteric effulgence in his eyes has that muscle hammering. Assimilate the javelin as it perforates sternum, atrium, glissades parallel vertebrae.

This might hurt if you could remember how pain felt.

You might be shocked if you had not known this was coming.

Thrust into the heavens, it is the paralyzing cynosure of the stars that astounds you into lacrimation.

When one monster slaughters another ― is it an act of murder or salvation?

I Miss The Moon

She ran hard and fast. Ran on through the grasses, thundering between trees and bursting through bushes in a fury of twigs and leaves. Her wolfskin was hard upon her and that itself made her heart ache, pained and weary with recent events. Foolish she had been, and yet was there ever a time when she was anything but a fool? The miles passed swiftly beneath her feet. Pounding through dead leaves, dank rich earth thick with the scent of vegetations decay; over rocks and pebbles crushing into brisk waters flowing with their angry torrents – grasping grabbing so eagerly for her. She wanted to let go and embrace its caress deep into its raging rocky depths, but the anger and pain burned high in her and she galloped on. Running into the night as though she could catch the moon, so close and still so far; nearly hiding in its new skin. She wanted to hate them, those silly things with their exemplar ideals; such farces and still so embraced. Naive sheep with their stories of how the hero defeats the boogieman, the big bad nasty thing.

They had come with their silver, ignorant and full of fear. Immunity was hers through chance and accident; and what a charade to think it might kill her, that maybe if she just let enough sink down into her it would work its toxic will and bind her to death. She howled the anguish. She envied them with their ignorance to believe that everything was better when you hunted down the monster; how can that be when you are the monster? And she ran ran until everything was burned away by the sheer need and will to run; ran until there was no more fear or rage or pain. She ran until forever passed beneath her feet.

You Had Your Night In Shining Armor, I Had My Monster Under The Bed

What is it about the monsters that makes me [us??] cry for them. When I see a movie I do not plaudit for the dragon slayer, but the dragon. It is not the hero I want to see at the end – covered in blood and gore from a job well done – but the werewolf. It is not the slayer I hold my breath for, it’s Dracula.

I was nine when I had my first crush. He was tall, dark and handsome. He was Dracula in the ’92 version of Bram Stoker’s. Seeing him left me breathless and at the end my heart truly ached at his peril. I connected more with the monster than any other character.

Still evident today in which characters I love from even the most mundane of shows. House and Cartman –who you only love because you hate– I love for very different reasons. I want to BE them. In ancient times I would kill them and consume their flesh to invoke their attributes within myself. They’re an addiction—strange, bizarre and fascinating. Like the two-headed cow you can’t help but stare at. Only, where the masses generally find themselves a little sickened and/or horrified, I can only proclaim desire and interest.

I would merrily frolic into the night of Stephen King’s werewolves and gladly plunge into the maw of the maddened creature if only for that brief encounter. Most would urinate in fear, with confusion I believe my reaction to be far different.

LUST

The breath that the masses hold in fear for being found, I find myself bursting with anticipation. Secretly counting the seconds until the cold claws tightly grasp my arms and shoulders before plunging into ferocity. The toxic giddy-up causing your heart to burst full of adrenaline at the need-to-flee fills mine with wanton desire.

Perhaps this has filtered thoroughly into every fiber of my being; because I find myself carrying a great disdain for the masses. Not all of the normals, just a majority. Secretly I’m combing through them to find the dark star shining within.

I rage harshly and fiercely and love just as passionately. I want that in return. The monsters have it. We are kin and I am wanting to be ravaged. I want to combust beneath you. “Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.”

The trick to monsters is you have to be as eager to consume them as they are to consume you.

I am ready.

And I am hungry.

Come out, come out, wherever you are…

clapping; bravo, hallelujah, hosanna; acclaim, accolade, citation, commendation, compliment, encomium, eulogy, homage, paean, panegyric, salutation, tribute

acclamation, cheering, cheers, ovation, plaudit(s), rave(s)