🦷

DEFILED

Her skin began to crack, rotting and drying up rapidly.  I watched as it flowed over her skin like a virus.  Her features looked all weird, her eyes out of place and smile crooked. Ink flowed grotesquely out of her eye sockets. I didn’t understand it at all

Promptly, I look the other way Why do you look like that? Another day passes, and the ink spreads to another. It runs down their neck, and I watch as another body begins to rot. The smell of a corpse made my chest itchy.

My forehead starts to drip. I wipe it with the back of my hand It doesn’t run clear. My fingers are stained with it, and begin to mould I brandish my knife, and cut them off They fall to the floor and patter like raindrops.

The ink puddles on the floor It won’t stop spreading Why? Where is it coming from? I never had to realise before But today, it’s me.

I struggle, cutting off another limb I look at my blackened appendages on the floor with pity I don’t need it, so it’s okay if it goes

My chest still feels itchy.  Has the disease spread even there? I wipe the knife clean again, My reflection shows in the blade Have I always looked like this? I can’t recognise it.

It slices cleanly as usual. 

My skin parts, and I scramble to feel inside I break off my ribs It cracks like fireworks. I cover my mouth to choke back my vomit

Urgently, I reach my hand into my chest It violently breaches my fragmented ribcage And tugs at my vessels and nerves, searching. It’s tangled in the wires, but I found it.

It’s infected.

My fingers wrap around the rotten chunk of flesh And rips it out, the splatter landing on my chin It pumps weakly, the black ink dripping down my forearm

Full with my selfishness and desire Yes, the one who started it