Another painful night, another toxic drag

The fumes consume my lungs entirely.

Like clammy hands wrapped tightly around my chest

Clutching, squeezing all the vim and vigour out.

I walk, dazed, under the blinding moonlight

Blink, and it's neon motel signs and cracked windowpanes.

I don't know if I stumble in, or if the stifling miasma

Swallows me whole, and I am

Spit out into the

Maws of the devil.

But perhaps

I am the devil itself

For I paralyse a gaggle of children

Fix them with my cruel gaze, hard as a box of nails

And sharp as one too. They blench under its steely force.

My tongue flicks out- savours the stench of smoke I call

home. Relishes the sickly notes of copper and sodium

That stain chapped, frozen lips. My own, as is the blood.

But it belongs to others all the same, for it only flows

By virtue of that being drained from other bodies.

Other healthy, happy, innocent bodies. Not people.

Stripping them of soul and spirit, reducing them to mere

Names on paper

Flesh slick with blood, run through with knives

Gripped by calloused hands. Hands foisting the same doom

Onto others. The viciousness perpetuates. Feeds on itself

And festers, spreads, like some virulent parasite.

Tonight, I act as an instrument. Unveil weapons

Like they’re some grotesque masterpiece. Instructions

Etched onto my hardened pupils,

Which know remorse, sympathy or emotion, no more.

A tiny girl emerges. Grabs, stabs, and it's done.

Sanguinary, but she triumphs in its gore, and I know then

I've created a monster...