I fit you like a pair of concrete shoes; malis

[sleaze]

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife He’d hoped it would fade. Would hope whatever magic – whatever demon – worked and wiled away inside his head would tire of him, leave him here, free. But it does not. His mind turns to a feral thing, it jumps into bodies. He wakes once in the body of a wolf, crouched over carrion, a coppery warmth on his lips he knows now to be blood. The wolf throws back its head and howls, a primal noise that still echoes in his mind sometimes. He wakes once in the body of an oak, feels nothing and everything, the sun on his leaves, the acorns growing fat and tumbling to the earth. (He doesn’t mind being trees, being grasses. There is a peace to it. It’s the things with thoughts that frighten him. The things he violates.) He tries to ground himself. It even works, sometimes. When he feels his mind loosen, a caged animal rattling the bars, he picks focal points, he breathes. He mutters prayers, or what remains of the ones he once knew. (He’s lost so much of himself. Dear god, he’s lost so much.) One remains, always: yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Easy to say. Hard to believe. Harder still when he wonders sometimes if he is evil, entering their minds in this way, without their consent. He keeps to himself, mostly. Their words and gazes invite him in like a vampire crossing the threshold and before he knows it he’s touched secrets, touched desires that leave a filmy coating on his tongue. He doesn’t want to know them. Not like that. He knows enough. He knew a girl, once. One with an impossible history that echoed his own. (Save for going mad. Save for sinking into their minds like quicksand.) There was a girl. (There were two girls.) There was a girl, colors deep and rich like his own, and she knew a history he never told anyone, not even Etro. There was a girl, and he has not forgotten her name: Malis. sleaze cancer x garbage