graphic by lyn enrico
I become the beast to hunt down the next. It never takes me long to find the pack. They make it too easy— reek for miles. I hear their sloppy hisssing and slithththering still in the mud soaked ground. Deep in where they don’t belong. Scathing slugs screeching pussssssy— sacreligious scripture; sins due for a scraping. Glowing green He speaks it with such a sick spit, slaughters her glory. The sweet slick of dew air sinks into sweat, fate forged in forest fog. Night wood obeys my command, capturing him like vines, curled possessive like a lover gone mad. Tugging tight at taught flesh the wood splays The Man out before me. Opens Him to me as a sacrifice, a gift left at the altar of creation. The wood welcomes me, claims me as a champion of their own. We become one as the wood welcomes this saccharine slaughtering, bearing themselves like a table for the feast, the night moaning wide and hollow. Flesh flush to bark as I dig into him a mallet pounding into meat.
I dig my dirt scuffed nails against sharp ribs, plunging into his gummy center, scratching deep down his sides. Pulling the skin taught and flush, foiled, free, spoilt, spilt, spilling over. Blood like crushed pomegranates gushes like free flowing wine, my hands too slow to savor every drop. Kneeling at his sacrifice, sucking and slurping around the wound, savoring every precious drop coming for me. Satiated by the surge only until sliding up the seam stitched straight through the sternum, cracking down his center like fruit ripe for picking. Tongue pressed upon wet lung, relishing in its final quiver as my right hand finishes the job, heart violated from its cavity as he releases a final hollow howl into the deep wood. One last hissss like pussssssy whimpers out as the rubber cartilage snaps back into place like a spent bungee.
I sink my teeth straight into the heart’s stringy sinew. Still warm, spilling over and clotting as the cool air spoils its life, spilling over itself to meet my savory mouth. An amuse-bouche, a luxurious delight too sweet for common consumption. I consume for all, letting the red slop slap against my skin savaging for its ripe core. Mouth still dripping with boorish blood I slice up thorax, trachea, larynx— up the spine, along the skull’s rim, slipping over to the sphenoids to circle the eyes, pop them free dangling like dice in the open air. They pendulum swing as I make the stalk back to my sepulcher, claiming my prize as nature rids me of remain.
My creation awaits not much longer, glowing behind mirrored glass. Miss-matched and zigzag-ed together, a mausoleum to only the most perfect of specimens. All atrium and ventricle. Sinew, muscle and bone, almost perfect. Her frozen heart sits spindle wrapped in a silk web. The constant companion of my childhood, my early cursed creation. This heavy body will soon weigh me down no longer. I snip to fit my latest relic, stitching my precious oculus into its rightful place. A conquest most fitting indeed, I think, looking into the mirrored walls to see an iris matching my own shade seamlessly. I yearn for the trophy promised by the next turn of the moon, the perfect self that awaits.