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The Burden

by m8ryx

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Reality blurs. Shut in this room, I hear the voices. The howls in the distance become words as I change. I try to write them as they begin to make sense but my hand hurts, aching, stretching, changing.

My mirror is broken, shards of glass strewn red and ineffective across the floor, my blood shed as the innocent killer inside me tracked across the pieces.

And I write as I listen to them calling me, commanding. You don’t know what they say as I do. My hand hurts, my head hurts. I scream make it stop I don’t want to change.

I am naked I know the change happens and my clothing will restrict and strangle and rip and tear.

My thirst overtakes me, I hurt all over. I scream a long, roaring howl. In the distance I hear the dogs call, screaming and impotent. I am the killer. I kill for them.

I open the door. She is in the closet. She shrinks away I feel powerful. I found her yesterday I’m so glad. The killer in me is thrilled.

Bound I remove her gag. Why am I here? she cries, hand raised.

sssh. No more words.

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Comments

Average Reader Rating: 4.0 stars out of 5

  1. The Burden

    THX 0477's Buddy Icon THX 0477

    Posted about 1 year ago

    4.0 out of 5 stars

    Creepy, and well done in the angst the character feels over the situation yet has still gone to the premeditated length of having a snack ready in the closet. Not sure if you were going for this on purpose, but a lot of the sentence are run-ons and would benefit from from some punctuation to break things up. Especially the second bit. Basically, it’s a neat idea and emotions, but the writing is rather rough, different tenses and all.

  2. The Burden

    m8ryx's Buddy Icon m8ryx

    Posted about 1 year ago

    Thanks for the comments, but help me out. I don’t see any inconsistencies in tense (please help if you do), it looks like it’s all in the now. For the run-ons, it’s a first-person narrative which I’ve attempted to stylize a bit to increase the tension. The wording/punctuation were actually deliberate.

  3. The Burden

    m8ryx's Buddy Icon m8ryx

    Posted about 1 year ago

    I’ve updated the mirror paragraph, I think that might improve clarity.

  4. The Burden

    THX 0477's Buddy Icon THX 0477

    Posted about 1 year ago

    4.0 out of 5 stars

    Yep, that actually does help. It’s still a long sentence with a lot in it, but that little bit of punctuation helps me, at least, see where you were going with it. And I think the only problem with tense was actually me misunderstanding that same second paragraph (strewn as adjective versus verb)

  5. The Burden

    m8ryx's Buddy Icon m8ryx

    Posted about 1 year ago

    yeah, I realized the ambiguity of strewn and shed with tracked. I think my teachers would’ve given me a red awk

  6. The Burden

    RunningWithScissors' Buddy Icon RunningWithScissors

    Posted about 1 year ago

    shhh, lovely. im going to eat you now. :DD
    this was greatt.

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