degeneration
'Remember me, love?'
She does remember, maybe too well,
This misused lover who kicks down her door.
This boy who was once perfect, whole,
Now little more than a vengeful ghost
Who confronts her with an image of guilt,
Of how he's become everything she hates,
The embodiment of her greatest fear.
She traces track marks with her gaze,
And sickness in every line of his face.
He is no more than sticks and shadows,
Rotting flesh and shattered bone.
Almost matchstick, no, toothpick thin,
His skin pale as if spun from ashes
And cloaked in a two-bit girl's sin.
She quivers under his wounded smile,
And the feral and crazed glint in his eyes,
Shivering as hands lock around her wrist
Like rusty manacles that cannot be broken
But only injure whoever tries to do so.
Struggling against him, she thinks
She can hear a brittle cracking.
She tries to twist from his shaky grip,
Flinching from the cold:
Of his brushwood fingers against her cheek,
Of the body she is trapped against.
'Why are you doing this? Why,' she pleads,
But he stops her, places a finger on her lips.
She wonders if it's
So she can feel the skin flaking;
So she can taste the old blood;
So she can understand why.
'Shh,' he murmurs, stroking her hair
As one might a hysterical child. 'Shh.
I came to teach you... to make you mine.'
Two seconds of silence as it sinks in;
Two seconds of silence before she implodes.
'You wouldn't,' she breathes. 'You won't.'
'I will,' he whispers against her skin,
Gives her a kiss and a hunter's smile.
She pushes against him, lashes out,
Knuckles crashing into his bruised face.
She will not be taken, will not be turned,
Will not be another link in the pandemic chain.
Running in a closed room can't work;
She doesn't get far before he is upon her again.
He circles her, shoulders hunched,
Every inch the predator, in his walk,
His snarl, in the way he pounces on her,
Brutishly bringing his prey down.
He is all bared teeth and razor claws,
Biting and tearing at her without mercy.
He is blind with animalistic rage,
Drunk on her blood and her pain
And the desire, the will to take away
Her pride on being 'normal' and 'safe'.
She screams
And screams
And screams
Her world splintering when he takes her;
He howls once, twice, in victory,
Forces her to open her shuttered eyes.
She can see her reflection in his face,
She can see what she will become.
She can feel herself spiralling away:
Flesh melting,
Bones crumbling,
Metamorphosing
Until she, too, is like him-
Wasted.
Broken down, she can only sob,
Her body already beginning
Its slow self-destruction, its descent
Into everything she's always hated,
Her mind rising in anger and desire,
A longing to unleash her pain
On some other innocent.
And she thinks of the full moon,
And the lunacy of werewolves.
He cradles her, his diseased childe,
And she thinks she sees a flicker
In the hollows of his eyes, a fluttering
Of lids and lashes and lips
That signal accomplishment,
That signal some sort of weary peace.
She understands his hurt now, being of him.
She understands the need for blood,
But more importantly, she understands
The need to hunt. To track down,
To take captive, to curse, to condemn.
To hurt others like they have been hurt,
To breed in pain, to give of themselves
So that none unscathed can remain.