enigmaofherself

Please note the following short story may contain triggering material in relation to eating disorders and suicidal behaviour. The light coming through her window is a cold, clinical grey. It scratches her bare arms, clawing through the thin glass of her bedroom-shaped coffin. She watches the lines and shapes of non-sunlight march across the floor, giving the shadows a wide berth. Ghosts live in those shadows and don't like to be disturbed. Footsteps seem to come towards her, but after a few held-breath seconds, she realises that it was just her heart beating away the cold. It gave up momentarily. Where is everyone? Gone. Out. Hiding. Havin

Do you not see? This thing, this rotting, aching thing, is dying in our fists. Scarlet sand grains, they fold and they twist, vexing into some intricate grave, barring our entrance so that we may press up against the gateway into another world – a world that is not ours, not ours but theirs, and they hate us, they do, they hate us and I know why. Do you not see, see how we're losing our footing in this reality, this sanctity, this sanity, this calamity, malady, this abstract mortality that the gods have sewn into our eyes with needles woven from the skies? They caw and we claw, raging with a blue fury that we cannot own nor control, a se

This weight festered in the pit of my sanity, rucking and leeching without contempt or malice, pouring putrid resonance into the empty silence that hung around my neck like a noose just waiting to be tightened. This feeling - was it such? A feeling, a sensation, a threadlike emotion – was too difficult to explain yet it scorched my insides like a hellish flame, burning and melting and reaping all it could. Parasitic and paradisiacal, full of ecstasy and torment. It took a hold of me and I had no choice but to be brought to my knees, unable to see the light any longer, my retinas burning and this bitter, brittle, blood-stained thing insid

Having to drag this carcass around is exhausting. I'm the puppeteer of carrion, a hulk of flesh that I have to manipulate into amiable positions, painting expressions onto the hard membrane with a brush that's too small. I kick my legs out to make it walk and we sidle down the dirt track as one. When no one's looking, I lean the roadkill up against the lamppost, dirtying the posters of lost children. The glow from the yellow bulb gives us a kind of halo that buzzes like the stink of flies. Taking a deep breath, we start up again and I think that maybe I can hear the sounds of chains being dragged far behind. The further I go, the heavier the