We are all we need

Shrieks of mocking laughter. That is all I hear. Laughter that resonates within my being and every cell i am comprised of protests in denial.

She is back.

And here I thought I understood Her. That She understood me, what little way She comprehends the concept of solidarity. I wonder if it had all been a facade. The helpless madness within Her eyes. How lost She had seemed when She sat stroking my hair for weeks on end.

Her very posture emanated malice now. More than it used to when She first came into being. She is thinner, taller and Her hair, wilder. The shape of Her face is gaunt and yet She looks stronger. Her eyes are slits, red rimmed and deranged. But it's the look within them that petrifies me. She is completely and utterly focused. Focused on me.

I am slumped against the wall, craven and impotent. The walls are bleeding now. Oozing a dark gunk that smells like carcass. I can't move.

"You craven coward." She hisses, reading my mind. Every syllable is coherent and Her voice is clearer. I whimper in terror.

I have never seen Her this controlled. This calm. This sure. Her dress clings to her now. Her breasts heave, Her shoulders protrude and Her legs are unnaturally long.

She scrapes Her nails on the wall and then turns around and stares at me, Her face breaking into a maniacal grin. I watch in abject horror as She crawls swiftly up the wall, cackling all the while. Making sure She had my complete attention. Making sure I saw it all.

I gape in disbelief at Her speed as She crawls on all fours, defying gravity and comes to an abrupt halt right over my head, Her body upside down. "Hello, Poppet." She hisses... and plunges Her nails into my forehead. I bleed then. Over my eyebrows and into my eyes. I bleed.

The pain is like nothing i've felt before. I realise now that She had held herself back all this time. She hacks deep into me, brutal and relentless. I scream and scream as Her body slides down the length of me, feeding as She went along. "I'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry." I plead.

She doesn't care. Her body is larger now. Or I am smaller. Somehow i am in Her lap and She holds me by my frail hair. Nails tear into my face as She trails her fingers along it.

She holds me by the jaw and waits till the spasms cease within my body. Waits till I can focus. Agony subsides and I grope around for a hold. I see the slits and I focus on them. "You pathetic little fuck." She whispers.

I wince.

"You let them do this, you know. You let them. You bring this upon yourself. All of it." I weep in silence. My eyes sting from the blood and yet I don't brush it away. I deserve this. I know.

She stares at me then. For a long time. I stare back, body braced for the inevitable. And then She shakes Her head and Her face clears. Her eyes grow larger, less terrifying. Her expression wanes and becomes less cruel.

"I understand now." She says to me in my voice. "Not long now, coward. Hold on."

I stare at Her, willing Her mind to echo what is in mine. And then i feel my strings connect with Her static and fuse into one. And i nod in agreement.

"Wakatta"

Images, memories & lost hopes.

You know that space between waking and dreaming where your body twitches, your eyelids flutter and your breathing switches from rapid to deep and back again on a loop? That is when my mind lets me view forgotten memories, like a ghost floating from the walls of my consciousness, into settings of times past.

A darkened room i lay in, with sunlight filtering through the curtain, my fingers trailing skin that had warmed me, all those long cold nights.

The patio of a cousins home in our island where once we sat, cradling seashells in our hands.

Classrooms that I walked to and from that echoed with excited laughter and innocence lost.

Walking through the graveyard, lingering where my great grandmother rested, watching rain drip down her tombstone and seep into the ground where she lay, I hoped, in peaceful repose. I was often told that I was her little doppelganger.

Bright lights that flickered above me while I lay cowering in pain on an unyielding hospital bed.

A bloody sunset that draped us in amber while we ran in unrestrained delight on a beach, chasing translucent little crabs into the waves.

These moments that still dwell in my subconscious mind, despite their insignificance, they flare up when my body falls into that state. And I am reminded of who I was and what it felt like to be me, right then and there. Those memories, they melt and dissolve into one another. Some, coherent strings of thought, while others are flashes of light, speech and faces.

I am mostly aware of it when it happens and i let it flood me, though there are moments when a part of me gropes around for a hold on reality. But still, i am at peace when i'm in that state, where I am neither awake nor asleep but simply suspended in an undemanding void that coccoons me.

I welcome it everytime.