Black Wings and Dirty Seams

You can call me paranoid but there is a conspiracy against me in
this town. There is a murky presence; a highwayman and a professional
thief of joy. He is blackened and goes unseen, or else transparent and
made of pure light. He forms a boundary, a blockade separating my
otherwise chosen soul from breaking through unmarred, to a fulfilling,
happy life. I have felt him shoot icy holes into my chest, employing a
fantastic firearm with a barrel the diameter of a small canon.

There is an intense numbness in my chest, radiating out from the point
two fingers from the base of my ribcage. An icy numbness tinged with a
warm brandy-like comfort. I can feel these icy bullets move through the
chest in teasingly slow motion.

I can almost see the wedged projectiles that have successfully hit
their target and with even greater pain I feel the stray bullets that
veer off course, with almost imperceptible screams, angry at their
missed target; desperate kamikaze villains searching for release.

No one can stop these bullets. No one can see them. If they could they
would still not find the source. As I breathe, this brandy-laced drug
of dry ice moves to fill every available cavity within me. Rivers of
warmth are sent up to my shoulders, streaking down through my arms like
needles, fizzling out completely by the time they reach my
wrists.

This sensation is no enemy of mine. Like all effective parasites, its
main survival tactic is to make the host, in this case my very soul, no
longer register its presence. I have long since stopped attempting to
dodge these icy bullets. I have for a long time stopped registering
much pain or surprise at their arrival. At best I notice a mild
discomfort, or sometimes a pang of a longing to be disinfected and have
my gigantic wound be healed. I know he is always here with me, playing
the sniper, lying in wait. I know he senses my every move, forever on
the lookout for me to expose a clean flank for a clean aim.

Whoomm! Another bullet hits. This one is the size of a tennis ball, but
it expands upon contact, like a sponge cake hitting the water. It only
spreads its black wings once it is inside of me, reaching out with its
hungry bastard tentacles. Searching lustfully for a healthy artery,
pulling and scratching at my dirty seams. Who is this lone man
eternally conspiring to push me backwards into pain, to break my
resolve, to weaken me into apathy. To keep me in his constant aim, to
hit me with laced bullets full of greedy tentacles and dirty black
wings unfolding and squirming in the dark of my chest. To keep me so
full of his poison I fear it daily and sweat it out nightly. This
poison that makes me dream of the snapped necks of newborn puppies and
remember previously forgotten betrayals.

What is this conspiracy! Who else will share this curse? Would a
problem shared be a problem halved, or will these black wings
eventually unfold inside us all.

(c) 2002 Vincent Pollard