Beneath My Skin

Liquid courses through veins of glass.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Memories cascade past my vision, a collage of past sensations. I was dead. Something has given me life again, brought me back into this throbbing world.

My senses revive. I hear. Oh, what I hear! It is the race of something vibrant, something essential. It pounds through arteries and organs. These things I hear are not my own.

I feel the presence. A stirring, inescapable impulse slithers beneath my skin. An invisible whisper. That sound, that entrancing sloshing, will provide the taste. The taste: rich, sweet, and sensual.

My husband is standing there. Surrounded by veins of glass and scattered notes scrawled in haste and grief. I lie upon a flattened surface, cold, like me. The bottle in his hand smells of stagnation and sharpness. My memories of him are clouded.

He speaks. I did it. I brought you back. He shakes with emotion and spreads his arms, reaching towards me, smiling.

But I must feed. Tearing. Gouging. Gnawing.

The man is everywhere now. His words extinguished. The sound is coming from the next room now. Revulsion manifests itself with the horror at my actions. I am not life but life’s mockery. My mind is corrupted. I must satisfy the hunger that slithers beneath my skin.

My husband is everywhere now.

Through a fog I see what our life was. We were happy once. We had a child. Is that her in the other room? Small. Young.

Fresh.

Drip. Drip.

Drip.