Bait

I am unable to surface. The tension is palpable, it is inherently visible in the air. The atmosphere constricts my breath and my lungs are on a mill, running out of oxygen, into carbon monoxide, into all that is dear and fear. I stand there on the edge and I inch ever so slowly towards the end. The abyss bores into me, into my eyes and straight through, permeating the cranium, unravelling the already frail mind. It is undeniably inevitable that the hunter, never long to become the monster. The very thing he hunted, once so long ago. Too long, if memory serves him well. Too long that the first instance had vanished from his thoughts like smoke. Too long that the details slipped and only a vague notion remained.

I draw the bow, as he once used to and the arrow sings into the pitch black night sky. My fingers are bloodied and numb. My eyes sharp, my mind unfocused. In a daze, I hear the rip, the tearing into sweet juicy flesh. The splutter of soft, salty iron clad blood. I trudge up, noises reverberating in the far too quiet, far too perfect night. My eyes trail the soft crimson stains on the white ice, my mind immediately understanding the reason for sacrificial virgins clad in white. For something so pure can only be beautiful in pain, in tragedy and nothing else.

The allure is unbearable, disturbingly so. I look up and see a reflection. A refraction, more like, I chuckle insidiously. Such a disturbing sight, I turn on my heels and run. I run as if the fiery hounds of Hell were on my coat tails. For they were, were they not? My bare feet soaks up the thorns and stays firm on ice, hardened by lack of care, lack of feeling. The familiar feeling tugged at my stomach, inching its way towards my oesophagus. Bile rushed into the ridge. The ridge I almost slipped into. This odd sensation provokes me, engages me, and once again, I feel something. Something I had not felt in so long, To be human, weak and mortal. Passionate and ignorant. Soft and hard, all at once.

Silence, it appears, is loud, so very loud. So loud it pounds in my eardrums.

Goosebumps ripple through my skin and the cold sweat has started dripping off my bare back. I am disgusting, in my very own right. To own something, anything is the greatest accomplishment. That is why we look at serial killers with such utter disdainful fascination. That is why the rich are rich and the poor are poor. That is why the everyday man can amount to anything and nothing in his entire life. That is why the grass is everlasting green, because do you not always want that which you cannot have. Do I not want all these? No, perhaps I am flawed here. I want everything and nothing all at once.

Give me the world and I will hold it is my palm. Exile me from the riches of life and the soft nuances, and I will harden into rock. Impenetrable and in my own right. For, this is the only life I have known and that which I choose to live. All or nothing. I scrape my lips on thorns and barely feel it, my body filled with gashes. Gashes that no longer heal. Gashes that have been subject to so much that they do not feel. Gashes that are black, crusted and hardened. I wince, for effect, to appear more human than I am. I turn around and it is gone. The reflection, it has disappeared, far from my sight and my mind. I did not have to see it to know that it was there. It was in me, it was me.

Without even realising it, or perhaps without wanting to, I have turned into something else, an entirely different one.

And I can change, for we all can. But the real question is, why would I ever want that?