Mash-Up of My Writing {Writing Sample}

Asleep.  Wrapped in nosebleed soaked cotton,

her silhouette has been pressed through to the mattress in a carnelian stain.  

She’s the flower preserved between two sheets

in the name of a hunger that cost her the privilege of sound sleep.

In muted colors of night terrors seeping,

her neuro-fluid rushes in a rhythm of rain water flooding a storm drain,

leaving her head absent of equilibrium and near comprehended thoughts falling,

scattering like leaves in the scrape of claws on pavement.  

They flee the impending drowning

that will catch up with them at the cul-de-sac’s bend.

The spectral fingertips quietly spread out upon her,

caking her body in a clay mud,

painting her bare skin in wounds of rough bones, twigs, and stone weapons;

her body the war and the warrior.

Lifting her from the cold slumber, her limbs limp and head hung right,

her length of hair sweeps the cobwebs

and cold breath of the floorboards creaking in the wake of their footless steps.

Lithe are the hands of the dead,

a haunting toil of a surgeon’s precision with a new mother’s delicate touch,

stealing her body away to the pyre of sassafras and orchids

where they lay her upon the vessel of ceremony.

Commencing the sacrificial rite,

their rabid hissing and growling calls forth canine teeth and talons,

tracing the language of their desires into her neck,

painlessly slicing and folding back the flesh of her throat and meat of her tongue.  

Unhinging her jaw, they study scars in her teeth,

all the while seeking the source of her impenetrable silence,

while force feeding her the jackal’s whine and buzzard’s scream.  

She gasps a strangled choke as she is pulled into the sudden reemergence of life,

throwing her body over the edge of the bed,

coughing and spitting the taste of nightmares against the wall,

their long shadows hunching as they back away in a defensive creep to the window.

Turning in warning, they taunt her with the threatening of their return,

as they liquefy, running down the brick and mortar,

mixing with the rain, running towards the sewer grate.

The blood flowing from her head, out her nose, and through her fingers,

stains the memory of the terror to her thighs, breasts, and lips.

From the north corner of her room,

a new moon voice, reminiscent of  sub zero wind through frost bitten pines,

chilling her marrow deep.  

“When will you let your soul out to play?”

She doesn’t startle.  

Releasing her hands from a chalice pose beneath her chin,

her blood slips her palms to the sheets beneath her seated form.  

Closing her eyes to regain an equilibrium, she opens them slowly on an inhale.  

Her lips part, ichor-washed teeth barely on display,

exhaling a visible winter’s breath, she expels her silence in a hushed voice.  

“Blood. Stop summoning me.”  

“When will you despair, Small One?"

“Devil’s Hour. False shadow bravado. Blood cease.”

His fingers thrumming the darkness at his side,

as a thundering origins in his chest, soaring to his throat;

a guttural growl issuing forth,

indiscernible as to whether it’s an act of warning or amusement.

“Beneath my flesh. Crawling fingertips.”

Heavy steps carry him out of the shadows, stalking the foot of her bed.  

His nearly seven foot, beast-like physique,

broad shouldered with a horned head,

pale in comparison to the intimidating black abysses glaring at her.  

Steadying herself, she rises to her feet on the mattress.  

Her bloodied visage meeting him eye-to-eye.  

Without blinking or flinching, she holds her ground,

rooting in the knowledge that she is power.  

Her voice building in volume.

“Seizing my breaths. Fracturing my bones. Blood. Cease your hold.”

His massive hand darting out—stopping— just shy of clasping her throat.

An entity in its own right—silence— takes up residency between them,

sizing each up, before clearing a path for revelation.

“You..You fear me.  
Why else would you come for me through my mind—my blood.”

A hint of a smile reaching the left corner of his mouth.  

“Untouchable.  And so very brave.
I saw a crack in your foundation, Small One,
and I exploited it. I’m in there now.  Indelible.”  

A smile, equally maniacal, but ever more fierce,

slowly crawling the length of her lips.  
“As shall I, Mon Horreur.”

Without hesitation,

she grabs a hold of his wrist and forearm with both her hands

—no force or strain—just a moderate pressure to her clasp.       
“Pitch igniting.

A language I keep. Undisturbed.
Summoning. Blood—

Try as he might, he’s incapable of breaking from her hold.

“—& Fire.”

Her room immediately lit by the distinct smell of hide being branded...  

© Elizabeth A.K. O'Connell