it’s fall. you go to the bonfire, but you don’t talk much. you’re hypnotized by the sparks. the tantalizing scent of smoke. you tend to the flames and poke at the smoldering embers below with a stick.
you were forced to go to church every sunday morning, of course. you never understood how anyone could stand the smell. they don’t even seem to notice it.
doors creak open on their own. you hear knocks in the wall. three. it’s always exactly three knocks. it used to scare you, but not anymore. now you just wish it happened more often. it gets lonely sometimes.
you like your music sinful. it doesn’t have to be loud or grating or filled with screaming and wailing. songs about lust, greed, about reckless hedonism and jealousy and wrath are a medicine you wish you could bottle and sell.
you like the night, but not for the reasons one might expect. yes, you like the darkness, but it’s more than that. you enjoy the light, but the sun’s too bright. when the sun goes down and the city lights go up? there’s nothing more beautiful.
spilled gasoline in a parking lot is gorgeous. so are the flower petals in a stream of water headed straight for the gutter. scars. deformities. injuries. tornadoes. spiders - and worse. you see the beauty the humans carelessly throw away.
you think a lot. you know that pain is the price of free will. without pain, evil is impossible, and therefore free will does not exist. you know that. you wonder how God or the gods or whatever is watching from above or below thinks about beings like you. wolves were made to hunt, right? why are you any different? why should you suffer in a lake of fire for being exactly what you were created to be?
one minute, you’re just watching trash tv. the next, you are stalking around your house, gnashing your teeth and muttering under your breath. you don’t know where the human ends and the demon begins.
you return to the television. you sit back down. you wish you could sleep, but you can’t. you don’t sleep well anymore.
