A Convoluted Nightmare
Outside; friendly voices float atop the yawn of falling beams. A distance stretches out between us, a steel door 3000 decibels thick.
Blackened corridors are softly inhaled by a downy quilt of smoke and ash. Grotesque lions tear at my silhouette until a red-faced, podgy little boy is all that remains. Death longs to pick my soul from between hideous tombstone molars. One final attempt at escape, one last glimpse into the frightful false mirror.
A young woman showers next to me. Her limitless eyes scan my thoughts with clarity of intent, enough to melt the mask right off my face. The way the shampoo glides over her hips will haunt me on some far-off day, when everything else becomes unrecognizable. She turns, smiles her bludgeoning smile and motions for me to touch her. Naked and terrifying. And she wants me inside her. But I'm only ten years old; my fragile head spools anxiously at the thought. And I look awful, although clearly she doesn't think so. But I do, I always do, then all at once I vanish down the plug hole.
Florida. I’ve never been, but here I am. A space shuttle is parked by a palm-lined boulevard, behind are vast hotels with M.C. Escher-like staircases. I stand accused, of adultery no less. I rush around covering my tracks, erasing evidence and conjuring up alibis. My decade-old clothes are wet through with panic. I climb aboard an aeroplane like no other, a retro-futuristic Concorde of unfathomable origin. My loved ones occupy the seats around me, all share the same painfully disappointed countenance. We depart, with dreams of one day waking up.
Christie-Luke Jones is a poet, fiction writer and actor from Oxfordshire, England. Christie-Luke’s writing is strongly influenced by the Gallic blood that courses through his veins, as well as his interest in the more macabre aspects of the human condition. To see more of his work, visit www.christielukejones.com.
There is a Poet of Poe macabre masks in the artifice
ReplyDeleteof a challenging mature nature.