Hey girl, open your walls,
Play with your dolls.
We’ll be a perfect family.
The sun had risen so beautifully that day. I felt the warm tingling sensation of heat marinating my back. There was nothing different about that day, about how the clouds set or the trees woke. There was no difference in humidity or any extremities in the temperature; but I knew there was something I had to do.
I had stalked her, perhaps a little too diligently. My focus on the Jungle had wavered and my mind was dead set on her all too familiar grey carcass. She had the same intense blue eyes and an overwhelmingly dark charcoal frame. Her body was so dainty, so incredibly petite it made me aggravated I wasn’t a little more like her.
I was given the broadness of my father.
She, is my mother. Her soft blue eyes that seem to put an eerie cool on the surroundings, and her elegance that makes my throat feel dry and heart begin to sink. Smolder, so close to my own name yet so unfairly far from it. I would always see her in this way; almost alike, but yet just not good enough.
Are you hungry, dear Turkish?
I might be.
Care for a snack, Turkish?
If you are offering.
You don’t hear me when I say,
Mom,
Please wake up, dads with a slut.
And your son is smoking cannabis
I had envisioned this for so long; this moment right here. The moment where the haunting stopped, where I put an end to her taunting voice and shameful presence. The day where I could finally silence the haunted house, put the nightmare to death.
It had attacked me so viciously for so long, and here it was wavering on a fishing line waiting to be cut.
I didn’t stop at her, no, she led me to a whole other generation I never thought to see.
Unlike my mother, this mare had intoxicating brown eyes and a thick scar running along her lower belly line. She was a paled grey, once mesmerizing and now flea bit. Grandma was what I should call her.
The devil, more or less.
She was the reason for my mother, and my mother’s negligence was the reason for me.
Satan.
Or is that me?
Don’t let them see what goes down in the kitchen..
So this brings me to today. And today, the sun doesn’t rise, it sets. It sets with a disgusting amount of reds and oranges, thickly painted with heavy strokes. There isn’t a cloud, only the soft haze of a forming moon beginning to clock in for the night shift.
Lucky duck will get to witness everything.
My mother and grandmother are nestled together discussing something. I have been watching them from a distance for over five hours, watching their protesting and debating. They are speaking of something so heavy that part of me wishes to dissolve into my reptile form to get a better ear of the situation from a better vantage point, but I will be useless at that size.
Turkish tightens around my neck, I feel his excitement waft into my skin.
So hungry.
I don’t really think, I am more of an actor. I meander patiently, subtly, until I am within viewing distance. I see my mother, she turns her face. Her blue eyes catch my throat and tighten my wind pipe. A cool temperature dissolves around me and my legs feel numb.
She tortured you with hatred, and now with nightmares..
Yes.
She deserves this..
Yes.
“Smother,” is what she whispers quiet enough that if it hadn’t been for the soft breeze her words wouldn’t have been carried to my ears.
I don’t listen to her, I loath her. I am fuming with such anger even at the sound of my name. I am boiling anger, intoxicated on pungent rage that I have no senses left. They have all been shot and replaced with something I have never felt before.
Turkish slinks from my neck.
Places, places
Get in your places.
Put on your dress and put on your doll faces.
She doesn’t expect it, neither did grandmother. They both practically stood their like rag dolls spinning on strings. I let out a kick with my front legs, rearing up without really analysing my movement and coming down hard on her withers. A crack rumbles aloud and I watch her body fall like logs rolling down a hill.
Everyone thinks that we’re perfect,
Please don’t let them look through the curtain.“
She lies on her side with a heavy cut sinking down her back. It is then I see our alikeness, there that I see what I got from her; our lack of fear. Our bravery.
She is quivering, not from fright but from pain. I see her jaw clenched and her breathing shift.
“I will not hurt my daughter,” her voice is shaking.
“You already did.”
I never knew blood would taste so good.
I shift down to my smaller size, ignoring the struggling grunts of Kindling wafting into the air. One can only assume Turkish has circled himself around her neck and held her steady.
Picture, picture.
Smile for the picture.
Pose with your brother, won’t you be a good sister?
“Do not kill her.”
I know
I am wrapping my soft brown scaled body around my mothers throat. I let the leftover length of my body swirl her stomach and entrap her legs.
Everyone thinks that we are perfect.
Please don’t let them look through the curtains.
It is an odd feeling, suffocating a living creature. At first, you feel the tightness of their body contract as you begin to shrink. You feel their resistance. And then you feel their heart beat, and their stomach move. Suddenly you feel their change of pace, their racing blood and their panicking breath. And then nothing.
Nothing.
Engulfing a body of such size, is a completely other task.
When you turn your back, she pulls out a flask,
And forgets my infidelity.
I slink myself over to Kindling, rising back into equine form with talent and grace.
“I never knew you.”
“Clearly you are the disappointment of the family,” her tongue is sharp, and dignified.
“Maybe I am the hero.”
Can I?
Please, by all means.
D, O, L, L, H, O, U, S, E
He is agile in his kill, far better than I could ever dream to be. I am an equine made snake, he is a snake period. His style is so much more savage than I could remember, forceful and tough with a slight bit of smugness dancing across his face. Oh, my Turkish, my other half.
I will never forget the sight of her. First her legs, followed by her stomach and lastly her head to follow. I will never forget the sight of her head being sucked into the hole of a reptile.
Being eaten like a field mouse in a play pen.
I see things that nobody else sees.
It took a week for our meals to break down. It was quite the vacation, laying in the shade and waiting for my family to dissolve.
I am still full.
Hey girl, open your walls,
Play with your dolls.
We’ll be a perfect family.
RIP Kindling, and Smolder