023 ( bad boy wendigo!josh and rose perhaps? )
023. — Burn my muse.
He pictured a large, dilapidated warehouse, the company of rust all-consuming. Filling nostrils like a gaseous mixture, both heady and rotten. It would resemble how his hide began its descent, leaking from his caramel complexion, giving way to a weathered and stretched- ashen- texture. Nearly blind, though not by civilized standards; teeth rupturing human encasing to reveal a hideous, claret-dripping snarl.
Instead, they’re in an alleyway, where anyone could stroll by, as if it’s just another night. As if secrets not handled well by the outside world meant nothing! Of course, who would have been able to tell the sly, dark-haired man from the menacing presence stealing intense gulps of air, salivating at the very thought of her intestines meshing with his own? Of bile breaking everything down into a nice, easily digestible pulp, where she’ll become part of him forever.
His smile grows in size at the idea, resulting in his once handsome appearance transforming into something even less humane than the stilled ghost of what was.
This is the first interaction beyond his fascination, causing the woman mere feet in front of him to trust her malleable gut, and conclude that she was seeing things. She led a heavy lifestyle, so it truthfully was child’s play to watch her drift into madness. She was plain as day to his meticulous scrutiny, believing that everything happening now was all a horrible nightmare, and it might as well be.
Let her kill herself by having faith in falsehoods. It’s what got her to where she is. A street rat, surviving off the scraps of hawks situated upon thick branches. She’s nothing but a stain, smeared across multiplying population’s underbelly.
They’re like maggots, all of them. Breeding, devouring, searching. Wasting lives. Pests in another’s domain, easily snuffed out by creatures higher on the food chain.
Strange, how this is his mission. Like he’s doing whatever was dredged from disturbed earth a favor, when in actuality, he’s a self-righteous cannibal with no recollection of who he used to be. Or what. This… shell had been occupied by another spirit entirely, and yet, all he can seem to remember are mines. Death. Mountains. A landscape, despoiled by those convinced that more destruction meant they were doing some good. This is a burial ground where money-hungry individuals go insane with power, and wind up massacring those who helped them there in the first place.
How does any of that make up for irreparable damage kindled by barbaric thoughtlessness?
His feeding pattern has been as reckless as greed since he arrived in this overrun city. It doesn’t bother him, he’s simply pleased to do his ancestors some good.
Would they be proud, watching him scurry about, acting the part of convoluted vigilante? Would they guffaw as he bites through juicy stomach, watching its contents overflow, the stench seeping from pores? Minds stripped of their privacy, ingesting each individual thought process; each separate impersonal personality, gurgling past gums; sliding into expanded esophagus, inviting more and more and more inside?
He imagines so.
His focus abruptly shifts back to the female, who appears to be withdrawing an object from her pocket. His instinct places him upon side of structure that closes them in, and a shrill sound absconds from his bowels, shaking gaunt figure.
Her eyes distend, and his narrow.
The very difference between frightened and acting fast, and responding to one’s id, whose driving source is nothing but whispers on stale wind.
He’s fast, slicing open bicep with claws, and slashing across chest, plucking on muscle fibers like violin strings. He’s delighted by blood blooming, the familiar, comforting scent deciding his next move.
There are actions not interpreted, nor remembered, as he’s instantaneously forced back to where he stood minutes ago by, he presumes, what wants him alive. What has she done? What could she have done? He was ready to break apart rib-cage and rip out still-beating heart, when she had… thrown the item withheld from immediate awareness.
It’s not expected. It’s light and buoyant; versatile. Its aroma is sweet and rancid, and he gorges himself before realizing he’s been cast into hell.
This is it, isn’t it? It’s out of his control, and it’s… perplexing. It’s utterly excruciating, to be ravaged by memories that he understood were his, yet could not recall.
They were his.
Recordings of instances he could have prevented. Of everything he’d lost, and allowed to remain so. These were his mistakes- his humanity- being thrust upon his unsuspecting conscience. Did he even have one? There was no voice telling him that what he was doing was wrong. No. Only that they were in the wrong. In the red, the black- in the fire and brimstone.
His demons pounce, revealing preceding existence. A family, partaking in road trips. Two sisters, laughing and crying through them all. Elation and suppression; ignorance and knowledge one wished they did not possess. What good did any of this do? To show him he used to be one of them? One of these… despicable hogs, rolling around in their own filth and corpulence? He might as well die, if that was his legacy.
A drunkard, he realizes. A psycho. Someone who also had visions of deception. Who had faith in these apparitions. What kind of wretched excuse for pig-slop was he? To befall the spells he now cast upon others, as if he were foolish enough to accept tall tales weaved? These mediocre legends, presented as nightmares, twisted inside sweat-soaked sheets. Such reveries stank. Their odor persistent, and despite the vivacity of the cocooned trance he was vigorously crushed inside of, he could not deny any longer that he ached for another chance.
Can he not prove himself worthy?
But, at this point, it’s unclear what component was now victorious. Was it primitive beast, or desperate… compassion? Regret? A guilt so potent, its caustic taste eats away at his tongue, leaving him with a lingering sickness in his belly, unrelenting.
As if an answer to aforementioned query, a name is given to poor state of being. It’s a blur, at first, and he’s not sure what to make of it. A pounding in his head as it strains to meet each corner. It’s a movie marquee, flashy and nauseating:
Joshua Felix Washington.
Rapid is the stream of life pouring into him, and his eyes- his eyes- they see too much. Feel too much. It’s enough to make him vomit- everything he had been hiding from himself, like putrid hunks on wet gravel.
His pupils drink her in, like fresh water upon dehydrated appendages. She’s captivated by the ghoulish scene in front of her, but… is she believing? Is this spectacle a thing of harsh reality, or a shadow at bedside, promising everything, but only providing the cruelest sorrow? Is she cognizant of such a bold comprehension- that he, at last, has a grasp on who once flowed through ink-pressed veins? As if he were a paltry fable?
All at once, interrupting deplorable performance, he’s set ablaze. Instantly, he smells himself frying. It sickens him how such an intense desire to rip out his own entrails and devour them however he can clouds his mind, resembling smoky fingers prying apart brain matter; causing them to disintegrate. It waters his mouth like dense oil, clogging every sense but the one that’s kept him intact this long.
And as the flames rise toward the heavens, and the screeches he’d been negligent of reach an apex, he finds he’s, finally, thinking about nothing.
* VIOLENT ACTION STARTERS
