Spineless.

Claws that wander, talons that ponder.

A moment unwound and lost.

There’s at least a second pause in each sordid head… where blustery silence ambles in.

Caught and trapped amongst the bitter webs gossemar touch, you fear for what might become of you.

If it isn’t already too late.

Another searing day closes with slumping of pretentious shoulders, sliding the responsibility of discomfort to its darker sibling.

You rise, to the screeching yowl of the stiffened legs that hold your throne high. Teasing free the zip that crouches at your neck’s atlas, hidden beneath a wispyly determined pony tail, you begin to

P

U

L

L

Dare you reveal yourself to the shadows of wisdom and truth?

You dare.

Shedding the uncomfortable flesh with a gentle, pendulous sigh, you giggle at the guise that slaps the mottled floorboards.

Free!

At last you are free!

No longer the bobble-headed and meek, which scuttles to meet each and every whim.

Powerful; snatching back control of your own autonomy… you smile.

Dropping to your palms, you draw in the soles and begin to crawl. Mucoidal pools form in your wake, a ghastly trail of poisonous promise.

Click.

Not the soft click of a door lock…

Nor the melodical click of nails tapping…

The click of joints snapping.

With each reach, and every drag, your body realigns itself with its archaic order. Folded, and leathery bound with cavernous wrinkles that foretell of eons past human memory.

This is who you truly are: a creature of tender destruction.

You need something new- a new coat to slip in to.

The perfect fit is not desired, you can adjusted to many a seam.

They become you, just as you become them.

No one find the mangled remains- why?

Hunger drives the sane to insanity.

Folding yourself into a corner of malaise, you crouch spider-like, allowing yourself to remember…

It had been an abnormal day, where winter sun had warmed the spring blossoms, and you had an unsettled notion of being watched. Yet, there was nothing amongst the dusty shelves of abandoned and abused tomes. The glass panels hadn’t rattled once, not even a whisper, announcing the door’s yawn.

Thud.

Halted your raised hand strangulating the obese stamp, you listened.

Ears strained to the point of forming a muffled delusional whistle.

Thud.

Snapped around too fast for the geriatric seat, you topple backwards as the back of the chair finally departed.

Clunk.

Frayed metal covered by rusted fabric, you knew the sound of hopelessness, leaves the librarian’s perch spineless.

Thud.

Again, eerie disrupted sound waves.

Thud.

It came from the Young Adult section… or did it?

Soft, your gnarled hands rest the stamp back upon its bed and closed the cover of ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’.

No one escaped the wrath of the prematurely aged.

Thud.

Nimble, as May’s flies, you slunk between the stern shelves. Notes of dust, sorrow and time seeped out of slumbering pages, once the smell offered comfort… now only trepidation found the coil of neurons.

Too late to turn back.

Time hitched, no scream broke your lips.

Caught on something hooked, you fought for freedom only to become fatally insnared.

You never saw the obtuse gnashing jaw that ended all you were. One second drowned terror, the next all emotions extinguished.

The creature chewed your skull with delectable thought, swilling each mouthful of crushed bone with tangy blood. It felt the sharp pop and cooling goo from the eyeballs, an insight to an expanded palette. Savoured the fresh meal; its first meal- and ultimately its last- since it was stitched together.

When its tongue was cloy with mashed cranium and splintered brain, the last fizz of iron danced in its nose, it sighed.

Unpracticed kill, but success.

Skilled fingers worked free the spine, and sought pleasure from the blinded crack of a skeleton forced apart.

Spineless.

Organs churned in the corpse, a failed attempt to hide from the grotesquely warted tongue that greedily lapped. Supped: that’s what happened to the liquidised innards.

A new skin.

Spineless.

Memories fade, you are no more.

You are just a phantom in someone’s mind…

They will never know of the truth.

The truth that the librarian is meekly monstrous, lingering in the shadows for its next meal.

A meal that will become a spineless disguise.