“It never hurt this much before And my spirit aches with envy And my delinquent flesh weeps For a respite that never arrives And a strain that never sleeps Dawn descending. You scrape the tawny crust from your eyelids as they languidly flutter open, pale like blanched plantation shutters. You drift across your bedroom floor, sailing over trash paper tessellations and half-empty bottles that yield epiphanies like they do stupid, temporal pleasure. Sing a song of prolix pussyfootery; disregard your broken, one-winged angel. You are so phantasmal and innominate in everything that you do as you glide cryptically from boardway smoking stops to careworn precinct wine cellars and silver filaments of spit dribble listlessly down your chin and the sharp wind cracks the arid surface of your cerulean makeup as you pound corroding bottlecaps into fissured concrete, averting the scrutinizing eyes of evanescent bestial psychoshrinks. But whether the floorboards creak or your world seems bleak: don’t you know that I need you? I caught you sifting through the garbage again Your polaroid photographs in one hand Your mother's urn in the other Clawing at the surface Trying to recall those November nights When you watched them starry-eyed Pull the wool across the heavens Like a great black quilt So dark the light can't pass through So jagged the clouds withdrew That year the snow bled through like ashes Down beneath the sheltering sky On jaundiced feet and iron lung We sailed east for fifteen days Stop pouring over old letters That memory is not a welcome guest Stop digging up musty fossils Those remains have been laid to rest Don't you see how you want to kill A thousand times to the limits of eternity If eternity had limits? You slice lines down to the glistening, gooey center And the flames lick your squalid thighs The fog is thick, morale hardens And without bloodshed, there's no pardon Love is the message The message is death And as above is never below All behold the anteinferno.”

“And still rats run like thieves in broad moonlight; or volleys of dead matter behind the visage of the clouds; keep your nose to the grindstone, sonny boy. Fragile like a spiderweb in a wind tunnel, Orange Bastard with Shitheap Regalia bitterly laps at his fresh wounds. His innards grind down yesterday’s introspective luncheon; like pink lasers spurting pink lasers into frigid, interstellar space. Plagued by zero-gravity migraine. Fretworks of fire. Cling tenaciously to ancient convictions like a moth to a funeral pyre. Manufacture your memory, divagate your dialect. Take a walk on the disintegrating bay of black hole lagoon, you dolorous dips hit dopefiend. But when the air runs out And the bone marrow goes missing You’ll be there Reticent and grey While you trace shapes in the snow. Staring perfect circle holes into linoleum floor tile of ambiguous biome, assurances are drilled into my head. Infared trespassers glowing with the saffron embers of affectation clench my larynx with diseased, skeletal fingers. The immaterial contortionist drifts out of and slams back into my corporeal flesh prison like a shit-for-brains Stockholm’s earthbound phantom. Drink mournfully from the ivory goblet of dreams into a place where the brisk evening air would fill your lungs and lift you to blue neon tomorrows, unfettered by the dull rust of inquiry. These frozen inferno eyes no longer weep for me and now they weep for nobody. These hymns and soliloquies no longer sigh unwaveringly from the skyscrapers to the streetlamps down into my slick grey coiling guts. These dead decaying leaves and poetries of white pain no longer tug vigorously at the tender meat of my tongue. The clock strikes the witching hour; the bridge gives way to the lorry. And when the air runs out And the bone marrow goes missing Where the rain falls You’ll be there Reticent and grey While you trace shapes in the snow. Once again I’ve slept through red nights of abject terror where the trees of my neuron forest threaten to thrash back and forth in raven winds of agony. I’ve spent countless hours in my muddy holding cell, where my greying yellow flesh sobs for crimes it did not commit. Fuckface Clockwork howls on trembling prose and limpid form as he falls down from the garrulous watchtower, screaming and pissing into the perennial flow of oblivion mirrors. Death-dealers and interlopers tread tentatively into the throbbing thicket of incandescent lights, scraping up the remains of perpetually confused cerebral stockbrokers. They covertly slip forward, digging up my freshly-planted daisies and breeding brain-matter blackheads. Bombastic word vomit redolent of curdled milk erupts from shrieking, gaping maws. For the sixty-fifth time I am promptly evicted from your tranquil city. So long, Panopticon Prudence. So when the air runs out And the bone marrow goes missing Where the rain falls And the blood flows free When the tears flow And the limbs hold no weight You’ll be there You’ll be there You’ll still be there Reticent and grey While you trace shapes in the snow."

“Here we go with fallopian fiddler Fake Captain Dreamer of the SS Wide Awake Sheds his skin and bleeds crimson lust Cockslaps his jaw and reduces it to dust Useless as cunt bottles and electric shrooms The boy who cranked a car to suck the fumes His gossamer descent to drown in the muck To weave a purple organ and learn to fuck A din of phrases and coiling smoke To savor the words that will make him choke On a trundle of knives he sleeps on his side Scrying a prism for his silver suicide A foul burden to cravenly dodge Toes growing colder in the fire of this lodge With cancelled eyes he clutches a sphere That seals the cacophony of screams I still hear Pricktease promenade: the lies we applaud Sleepers not yet stirred: silence can be heard Perennial perdition: soliloquies wafer-thin Stars burst at the seams: I never dream I don’t know my carcass from my bed. I don’t know my ass from my elbow. I don’t know shit from fuck. I don’t know grey from black, I don’t know shadow from shame, I don’t know rise from regret, I don’t know thought from terror, I don’t know bliss from blackmail. You don’t know me from indifference. You don’t know me from anyone. A short likeness like images on a screen Are the tendrils and spirals of this machine A symptom of a gouge now rendered dull Much like the sounds inside of his skull A row of failures like a broken shrine Spreading the rot round the rings of his spine He clings to the words of this bitter verse Like walking to a river to die of a thirst Concave and empty like hollowed bones Is the corpse to which our soul has been sown Tracing the solace which has been deprived Sallow somnolent, not even half alive A halcyon illusion you can barely trust Erstwhile hope is now brimming with pus Hang from his neck so he no longer stands With a brain that shits in his open hands Pricktease promenade: the lies that we applaud Sleepers not yet stirred: a silence that can be heard Perennial perdition: soliloquies wafer-thin Stars burst at the seams: I never dream We’ll let him slurp shit from shelter. We’ll make him drink ’til he’s ready to burst, we’ll make him tie his hands behind his back, and we’ll make him piss on his own sheets, we’ll make him count to cunt, while we say: all is well. And we say: everything will be alright.”

“So toss your three sheets to the wind; for tonight we drink old moonlight from new bottles. Cunt flap platitudes momentarily soothe his babbling idiot skin and quench his dreamthirst. His sore throat is the recipient of every livid flared cock in the known universe. His very syllables weep black pus like viscous fluid from the eye of a needle. Really fucking disgusts you to see it. Really depresses you to see some swamp-eyed shitslipper sink into the sand with the wherewithal of a headless junglefowl. “But my god, what a revelation!” he breathlessly marvels with his left hand knuckle-deep in the shower drain. “This time… this time for sure” he again insists. With a genial slap on the ass and a stroke of the mirror he’ll set off in high spirits, ignore cracks in the sidewalk and steadily ailing paper cuts, weave through the marketplace and into the sewers on a half-full promise and an admission to tomorrow. His spirit is nothing but music spilling into a narrow street hanging harsh and heavy against a rust-colored sky; sickly yellow gas flares shit fire and sulphur into fake clouds. Very little use in dragging yourself across the same old litanies of broken glass. Why archive the murals of a wasteland? Why be something that you’re not? Why do you shit where you eat? Why do you talk to your mother that way? Why do you even bother? It all slips through my hands so much I can hardly even feel my fingertips. It all slams back into me like being fingerbanged in the dark. Not even given an opportunity to grab a flashlight. But we’ll stick around. We’ll hang for that. Self-deception is a ruinous fucking thing to do to yourself — half-truths from a stolen youth. Self-discovery is much more akin to learning to ride a bike while being pelted with jagged rocks. You’ll learn how to jack off into the artless statue. We’ll teach you the fuckgravy felony. You’ll become the jizzblanket bandit. Lest we forget when your hair follicles stood on end and your lips forged into the enigmatic limestone smile of Augustus, and your cock flew off your body like a rocket spewing blood everywhere while you shrieked at the top of your lungs. With your musk and glory you carry your legacy into whatever you may mold. Your organs promptly collapse into frenzied hysterics and you shit twinkling blue zircons into the amber embrace of daybreak. The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long — quite like the words of this turgid song. Like an incontinent fellow through a box of tissue paper, so too shall you cowardly retreat to your hall of mirrors. The rest of us aren’t rolling in the dirt — you should try it sometime. Do yourself a fucking favor, boss man. With the maroon comforter crumpled over my sunken face, my memories creep up. My thoughts are dangerous: even when colorless thoughts pass through, they dig canals in the epicenter of my brain, whereupon it shrinks back like a wounded animal. Each of those canals correspond to every second, and every second is a new and exciting exercise in truth distortion. A truth that can scarcely be heard. A truth that turns away from me however my desperate embrace. My body is pissing out my brain. I can’t tell between myself or my bedroom. Piece by piece, I float away in a pool of sandflies, rising and falling behind the sky and dissipating into the atmosphere. These are the boxes I push myself in. This is who I am.”

“Black ants crawl counting the rungs of my ribcage Silent powder burns that no remedy can assuage Is it an osseous frame or a decaying ladder to god? A gasp in the icy air that no warmth has ever thawed? Atrophied fingers cannot grasp at the swallowing drape To pull back and reveal my bleached and quivering shape What does it matter which angles my arms bend? I don’t even know where my body begins and the mattress ends Writhing ashen toes that have long since gone numb Spasms in an abdomen filled only with crumbs Threads of sorrow that will forever be spun Inside a room that can never be undone. Is it moving? Is it breathing? All these years spent searching All these years spent crawling Is it yearning? Is it fading? All these years spent cornered All these years spent blistered Half of my life Half of my life Let me out Let me out Let me out My words are not enough Your words are not enough My words are not enough"

"Pictures don’t lie, but your eyes do Whatever happened to the lantern in the sky? Did they finally recover your body from the edge of the cliffs? Did they retrieve my sapphire ring from the furnace? Soft corridors gyrate with plastic paroxysms Red velvet walls lined with lead and murmuring malady Cascades of searing red sparks trill the psalm of silence  Your sinuous arms break apart like toothpicks Stroke your needle scar Cut your name across the twilight God child exhumed Perverted by embrace"

this song is tacky disrespectful garbage i'm sorry -jax --- "No No No Warm Warm Warm Streaks of blue scatter across my skin like a cobalt flash bulb. Feel the heat like serial rugburn. Feel it closing in. My hair fell onto the pillow. My nails graze red from a matrix. Feel the stillness like a tranquil lake. Feel it closing in. Don’t say tomorrow This will never end In blue flannel palms This fracture we’ll amend It’s just tangled up in knots. It’s just bumps in the road. Feel the passage like a boat canal. Feel it closing in. It’s just a contraction creation. It’s just black in the sun. Feel the love like air from a lung. Feel it closing in. Don’t say tomorrow This will never end In blue flannel palms This fracture we’ll amend Collapse on a broken knee Don’t give up on me Learn to love the silence You’re gonna die in there I’m gonna die in here Quit, quit, quit Quitter Quitter Quitter Quitter She’s a quitter Learn to love the silence You’re gonna die in there I’m gonna die in here Quit, quit, quit Quitter Quitter Quitter Quitter Quitter Quitter"

"So wipe your boots and burn your books tonight For now we make this sunless city bleed You choked on gobs of noxious yellow gas And clumsily gouged your gristle with glass In this crimson room your fists still do shake With transfixed eyes they now all stand corralled In steel tunnels webbed with red and blue frays Where their battered and twisted shapes will lay Burnt surmise Where words don’t lie Stare emptily Into dissenting eyes August skies And tattered ties Segmentally Cut stories into sighs Consolations into solace slipstream A chalice of dreams crunched underfoot Like a mole in its hole, they shelter inside A valiant venture, but they can never hide Just anemic sacks into a chasm Just leather ragdolls filled with holes Prance down the road, drunk on bliss Your afternoons have never been better than this Burnt surmise Where words don’t lie Stare emptily Into dissenting eyes Alchemize Their helpless cries Now mentally A time immortalized Here we have pristine, unsullied fuckface. Watch in curious disgust as his flesh undulates in its vessel like a lava lamp. He is nothing but sex toes and shit tokens. A swollen pimple on the asshole of God. A fragile twig ready to snap. A swollen liver ready to burst. A ticking time bomb primed to explode. A snakeskin purse carries pieces of you In spastic pangs of twisted ecstasy Fissure a face, don’t linger, make them fear Their bones the only parts remaining here Your substrate symphony of sliced throat shrieks Marching over meat, pivoting the plaza Nylon corpuscles fill a gauzy eye A spirit to siphon, now watch him die Burnt surmise Where words don’t lie Stare emptily Into dissenting eyes Veiled disguise Can’t fit this size Eventually His rancor will soon rise"

“Adrift aglow Hitherto, supine on starry reprose Semimute Silk soul dig your fading root Dust decay Deliquesce flux figure With tongues and vowels obscured Frozen frame Respite reprieve Ask for more Ask for more Ask for more Ask for more Ask for more Ask for more Ask for more Ask for more Ask for more Ask for more Now, I’m a patient person, but surely you can understand and pardon my persistence. If you want me to take a step back or two all you have to do is ask. I don’t want to impose. When I met you, I wore you like a mollusk wears its shell. I used you, dragged you around, made you my sanctuary. Without you I’m naked. I writhe in the sand like a naked child, my legs furiously kick back and forth as if swimming through the air. The sun’s burning my skin. Its light is inside my skull, illuminating every single wrinkle of my brain, focusing all my reflections in burning phosphorescence that obliterates my body. My ankles are drowning in plasma. My skin is being swallowed by hot steam. My mind is bleeding. It’s falling out of my asshole and landing on the floor with a retchworthy “plop” sound. I’m frightened. I need you. Whose photo did you take? Whose eyes did you see? Whose hands did you hold? Whose face did you touch? Whose prick was in your hand? Whose cock was in your cunt? Who the fuck were you talking to? I can’t believe you did that You astonishing piece of shit In the morning, there’s always a certain kind of transient clarity. All of the transgressions of the previous night seem as distant as ships in the morning disappearing over the horizon. I carry on with my day, kicking pebbles across the limestone, and then my mistakes are sucked back into me like a fleshy kick to the cock. My cells shudder in uniform paroxysms and float away in miasmic explosion. The air forms a gumball sized cyst in the center of my lung. In a moment of pure lucidity I realize there is nothing stopping me from emptying my skull all over the pavement, the entire pavement. My body would fall down like a sack of stupid flesh onto the sidewalk caked with chunks of my cerebrum, nourishing the rats and insects. But I reject this. I do not accept this. But with a wave of your finger And with a twinkle in your eye You’re there On every hill On every tree In every closet In every store On every bed On every road In every dream In every world Stupid cunt I fuck the moon shit It’s all my fault. My mistakes have led me here, to this burning moment, this desultory exchange of throats and mirrors. This maudlin dog-and-pony show. When I took that train, when I held your shape, when I took that bus back home, twisted and shriveled like an overripe fruit in the atrophied morning sun squeezing braids of sweat from my brow, my eyes dreamy and depraved, anodyne and abhorrent, and the only thing I could think about was the velvet touch of your hands, and the smile stretching beyond the very contours of your face, and the violet sparks bursting behind your eyes, I hung my head, and I cried. I lamented my selfishness. Crush my fingers until I cannot grasp Rip my jaw so cries can’t spill Slice the sinew off of my bones Choke the light out of my eyes Suck the worms out of my cunt Shatter my spine on the moonrocks outside I’m not worth shitshine and water-knife I’m not worth roadkill burdened asphalt I’m not worth pissed jeans and kicked chairs I’m not worth the cloudy film on top of plastic yogurt cups I’m not worth rainwater collecting at the bottom of putrid trash bags I’m not worth clouds of chlorine pissing down mustard yellow chalk I’m not worth it You’re not worth it I’m not worthy You’re not worthy Worthless I’m worthless Worthless I’m worthless Worthless I’m worthless Worthless I’m worthless Worthless I’m worthless”

“Lionel and Janet sit crosslegged in the shadow of the house towering into the twilight sky. The remaining slivers of sunlight cast deep orange into their fingertips as they clutch small sticks. They absentmindedly flick away small pebbles and displace mounds of almond colored soil, revealing bits of colored plastic. Rain falls from the sky in delicate sheets. They periodically pause to shoo away the clouds of gnats trying to fasten themselves to their coiled hair now roped with grime and sweat. Janet, mind adrift like a balloon in a shopping mall, is eyeing the yellowing remains of a plastic soda bottle with listless intent. Her humming drifts pleasantly in the warm night. Lionel is thinking to himself, his mouth unconsciously shaping silent sounds unencumbered by vowels or consonants. His right hand is suddenly bitten by a spider, sending a rusty needle pain coursing down his arm. He irritatedly flicks it away like a cigarette bud out a car window. An eggshell white van emerges from around the street corner. Slabs of mud cling to it like bloodsucking leaches. It comes to a sudden stop in front of the house, kicking up black dust and belching exhaust smog. Lionel stands up, eyes glued to the van like a starved coyote. He flows forward, dropping his sticks in front of Janet, who promptly picks them up and resumes prodding the dirt below. Oscar and Desmond each step out of the van, tearing black and blue masks off their heads and revealing weary faces. Janet stands up and starts walking towards the house, with Oscar closely following behind. Lionel leans against the van, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Desmond leisurely walks behind the van and opens its back doors before grabbing two cerulean blue bags of money with both of his hands. “You gonna help?” Desmond asks. He licks his lips, chapped and cracked like a dried plum. “Where the hell have you been?” Lionel irritatedly shoots back, fingers dancing up and down on the van’s roof. “What kind of question is that? Do you want anyone following us or what? Christ,” Desmond growls, suddenly chucking one of the bags at Lionel. He fumbles with the bag like an arthritic football player. “Now, are you going to help me or not?” Lionel, Janet Oscar, Desmond Just struggling flesh sheets Just swaying bags of meat Lionel, Janet Oscar, Desmond Here now, conscripted in theft Here now, four left Lionel and Desmond both grab the remaining bags of money from the van. A few of them are neatly tucked under their armpits for good measure. Oscar is enjoying a silent smoke on the porch of the house, gently running his fingers across the wood and making delineations in the lumps of dust that are as thick as clouds. Janet is staring at a cockroach carcass as if exchanging telegraphic pictographs with it and deciphering its manifold secrets. Desmond and Lionel walk up the stairs, creaking and groaning like death throes, and swiftly kick the front door open. Bands of tangerine light flow into the house, illuminating a pack of rats that quickly scurry away as if the light would immediately light them ablaze. The four step inside, quickly brushing away clusters of cobwebs. The room’s stench is that of a cadaver being graced with light after being sealed in an airtight tomb. The stink is so powerful it is strangling them. There is no light in sight except a flickering lamp, intermittently casting the yellowing newspapers and crumbs on the floor in an ethereal milky glow. Oscar slowly closes the door and pulls a flashlight out of his coat. Lionel and Desmond toss the bags of money onto a nearby couch so severely rotted that it has holes the size of snowglobes. “Holy shit. It’s really dark in here,” Oscar mutters to himself. The remaining three exchange terse nods of agreement. “Yeah,” Janet replies. “First thing we’re doing is finding a goddamn light. I feel like I’m in the catacombs of Paris or something.” “Suit yourself. I’ve got a flashlight to work with. I’m gonna start counting our haul,” Oscar retorts, opening the first bag he reaches for. He pulls out a wad of cash and concurrently opens an app on his phone. “Yeah… and it’d be a helluva lot easier if you had more light in here,” Desmond replies, waving his left hand through the air in some evocative gesture. Oscar responds by concentrating the flashlight beam in Desmond’s face, causing the latter to utter a profane comment. Oscar simply chuckles, shaking his head and returning to his money. Desmond turns to Janet, who is now curled on the floor and sitting in the fluttering lamp light like a drunken moth. She is evidently exhausted. She sighs inertly, oblivious to the black flies burrowing into the strands of saliva kissing the corner of her mouth. She shifts her hand from her breast to her stomach, lost in the phantasm of her waking dream. Desmond gently nudges her side with his boot, stirring her to her feet. “Hey!” Lionel says. The three dart their heads in the direction of his voice. “There’s a door leading to a basement right here. Why don’t one of you go down and see if there’s a power box while I look around?” With a resigned sigh, Janet shuffles to her feet and dusts off her pants. Before she can call after Lionel, he has already vanished into the darkness like a fruit bat into its cave. In the dim lamp light, she can see Desmond’s pained face: an expression that is dreading the ensuing three hours, but wants to get it all over with. In this moment, she mentally elects herself to explore the basement. Lionel, Janet Oscar, Desmond Just struggling flesh sheets Just swaying bags of meat Lionel, Janet Oscar, Desmond Here now, conscripted in theft Here now, four left Desmond turns around to look at Oscar and chuckles at the sight before him: a hulking, 35-year old man joyfully sifting through the dollar bills, grubby meathooks laminated with sweat, with the guileless enthusiasm of a dog digging for a prize. His face twists up more with each successive slab of cash. Clearly he does not want to be disturbed in his endeavors. Facing the direction of the basement stairs again, he notices the back of Janet’s head vanish down the stairway. He cranes his head towards an adjacent hallway to the left and pivots in that direction, flipping out a flashlight of his own in the process. Pacing down the corridor, the first thing Desmond notices is that the walls are completely undecorated: nothing but wide stretches of chiffon-white walls caked with dust like a protective powder. He experimentally pounds a fist on the wall. The dust flies off like an exhalation of vapor, surrounding him in a dense effluvial fog. Fanning it away, he hears the sound of termites and cockroaches dwelling in the walls, shifting like wind flowing through a hay field. The hallway gives off the vague impression of a living, breathing organism: the infinitesimal clatter of thousands of legs fluttering back and forth in vermin peristalsis, the ripe air encompassing him in a sticky zephyr embrace, the distant noises of the settling building resonating through the walls and rattling the floors. He can very faintly hear Lionel stomping around elsewhere in the house. Without warning, a shriek rends the air, quickly turning from shrill to strangled in a matter of moments. Desmond whips his head around with a speed that makes him dizzy. A deathly silence ensues; Desmond hears nothing but the low, distant rumbles of the house and the air conditioning expelling sweltering air. The horrible silence is answered by Desmond running back down the hallway, then swiveling around the corner and back into the house’s living room. The room is seemingly undisturbed; nothing has been displaced, no furniture has moved. Everything is still knee high in mounds of trash, as if the house has been submerged in its own waste. Desmond turns his head toward Oscar. His mouth is agape in wordless terror, his pupils drowning in its amber irises. His eyes are glued to the basement stairway. “What the fuck happened?” Desmond tensely inquires. Oscar lifts a lone trembling finger to the basement door. Desmond slowly treads towards the door and rests his hand on the handrail. Oscar follows and tentatively pauses behind him. Desmond shouts Janet’s name down the stairway. The sound simply bounces down the walls before dissipating into nothing. Oscar joins in, but to no avail. Lionel is not anywhere to be seen: he must’ve not heard the cries. With doddering feet and fidgety hands, Desmond descends down the stairs, drunk on anxiety. Dust hangs in the air like powdered white salt and covers the stairs in a pulverized gossamer. Moving downwards, he continues to call out for Janet’s name, only to be responded with total silence. What the hell is happening? His hand reaches for the faded brass doorknob and pulls it open, heralding in the distinct corrupt stench of decay. The dust from the stairwell streams into the room, enveloping everything in an alabaster cloud. A single light hangs from the ceiling, illuminating the sight before him like a photo shoot. Janet is splayed across the concrete floor, arms outstretched like a modern-day crucifixion. She is lacerated from her cunt to her sternum, innards now outtards. Her guts are hanging delicate and frail out of the cavity like dead jellyfish, tangled up in the notches of her ribcage like wet yarn. Her once gingerly combed red hair now resembles the fur of a dead rat and her formerly occupied eyes are now replete with the smoky glass of vacancy. She is nothing but a parcel of meat in another woman’s suit. Lionel Oscar, Desmond Just struggling flesh sheets Just swaying bags of meat Lionel Oscar, Desmond Here now, conscripted in theft Here now, three left Before Desmond can even react, he feels a sharp jab in his right abdomen — a white shrapnel agony that nearly makes him crumple to his knees. He wordlessly screeches a din of mangled sonants and lunges for the stairs, one hand securely fastened to his side that is now profusely bleeding precious red plasma. He leaps up the stairs as fast as his feet can carry him, nearly tripping on sopping clumps of trash, and slams the door shut behind him. The reverberation generates a serrated echo in the chamber of his skull that nearly whips his spine loose from his back. Oscar is nowhere near the basement door; he’s at the front door, pulling at it as if he were in a game of tug of war. Desmond’s warbles of terror are more reminiscent of sirens than screams as he races for the front door to try yanking it open himself, only to immediately discover that it will not budge, completely immobile as if it were painted onto the wall instead of actually bolted there. His attempts to lock and unlock the door are utterly ineffectual; someone sealed it shut from the outside. Lionel leaps from around the corner and races down the stairs, pupils shrunken like black pinpricks. “What’s going on?” Lionel asks incredulously. Desmond attempts to articulate himself but is unable: his words are as slurred as poems over a frostbitten tongue. His heart thrashes back and forth in his chest, threatening to explode. He resigns to tugging at Lionel’s collar, making it as readily apparent as possible that they need to get the fuck out of there. Panic slowly fills Lionel’s eyes like water into a bucket. “Need… to leave!” Desmond finally squawks out. In an instant, Oscar and Lionel’s faces light up with cognizance. Lionel uselessly pulls at the door whilst Desmond races up the stairs on the adjacent wall in stupid, violent panic. A faint shadow quickly ascends up the basement staircase and zips into the blackness of the living room like a trapdoor spider retreating into its hole. Lionel gives up uselessly pulling at the front door and dashes for the ascending stairs, each successive step sending shockwave reverberations into the living room. The figure, swift as a shadow, flows forward and plunges a blade into Oscar’s shoulder before quickly yanking it out and driving it into his chest, the edge grating against the osseous surface of his manubrium. Oscar’s shrieks of pain bounce off the flaking walls and grind him into the floor, where he spasmodically quivers like a fish. The figure lowers himself to the floor, sitting on Oscar’s stomach and grabbing a fistful of his oily hair, pounding the back of his head onto the increasingly scarlet floor. Lifting his arm, the figure stabs at Oscar’s eyes, the blade effortlessly penetrating them like a hot needle through marmalade. The once-sighted man beneath him wails like a war orphan, his feet uselessly kicking in the air as if he were an infant thrown into the ocean. He tears the blade into his open maw, scraping against his molars and making lesions on the roof of his mouth, before it eventually ruptures out the side of his cheek. Oscar gurgles, his strength draining out of him like pus from a sore. Finally, the figure slides the edge into his neck — Oscar feels a burgundy-red bulb burst in his brain, running from his head to his toes in a slithering snake strain. His face lights up like a labyrinth of arcade machines, surprised, as if the preceding thirty seconds of torment were ground up and distilled into this one frothy moment. A sharp musty odor of hemoglobin and piss fills the room. Oscar’s writhing slows to a deathly crawl; he is now nothing but a lump of stuff. The figure stands up, staring into the body’s twisted face, its sinewy tongue lying spiritlessly in the mouth like a beached whale. He walks away, the sound of his boots clattering down the winding hall. Lionel and Desmond Lionel and Desmond Just struggling flesh sheets Just swaying bags of meat Lionel and Desmond Lionel and Desmond Here now, conscripted in theft Here now, only two left Elsewhere, Lionel and Desmond are tearing through the second floor of the house, careening through its many rooms like the metal orbs in a pinball machine. In their senseless terror they have completely lost sight of each other, instead resolving to help themselves and only themselves. Lionel encounters a former bedroom, its contents unmolested like an anodyne time capsule. He grabs a slab of collapsed sheetrock and flings it at a barricaded window like a javelin, but it simply explodes on impact and crumbles to the floor, useless. He resolves to tug at the barricade instead, producing an identically ineffectual result. He quickly gives up on this endeavor and gallops out of the room. Unbeknownst to him, a black silhouette is emerging from the distance, resolute and unfaltering like the Black Death. Lionel trips on a piece of jagged wood sticking out of the floor. The figure seizes this opportunity and kicks at one of Lionel’s legs while airborne, causing him to careen head-first into a stone mantelpiece. With a sickening crack, the top of his skull shatters into a web of ivory splinters. His brain tumbles around in its container like a car crash victim. He flops onto his back like a perishing seal, raising his hands to his head and howling in agony. The approaching figure’s face is a vivid skull face permeating the surrounding shade, its eyes beady and garnet in a pulsing animal rage. Lionel raises his left hand in futile defense. A pearl white streak slices through the air, and a searing pain shoots down his fingers; all five of them fall into his face. Blood pumps out of the stumps and trails onto his exposed stomach, where it congeals with the dirt and his sweat into a sanguine vortex. The figure plunges the blade into his hand again, perforating its wrist; he yanks the blade up, exiting the stub where his middle finger once stood. The hand flops open, completely bisected, exposing red meat and bits of ashen bone. Lionel wails in worthless male anguish, vanishing into unfettered red despair. Before he can utter a single other syllable, the figure raises his boot, briefly hovering over Lionel’s head and covering the hanging light like a solar eclipse, before bringing it down on his head full-force. It splits apart instantly, showering the surrounding floor in brain matter like a salmon-colored cottage cheese. His white gunk eyeballs splatter beneath the boots like condoms filled with curdled milk. Desmond, Desmond Desmond, poor Desmond Just a struggling flesh sheet Just a swaying bag of meat Desmond, Desmond Desmond, poor Desmond Here now, conscripted in theft Here now, just one left Desmond’s ears are violated by the strangled siren screams of Lionel’s final moments; his panic is so heightened that it could spill from his veins and out of his mouth, animated and transfigured into a liquid parody of his dread. He has been reduced to a mindless cretin running up and down the house’s rooms and hallways like a child lost in a shopping mall. Tears are seeping from the corners of his eyes, thick and ceaseless like nectar from a spoon. He eventually approaches a dead end: a bone-white wall replete with cracked wallpaper like acne on the visage of a torpid youth. He pounds at the wall, praying it will inexplicably burst open. He whips back around. The sight before him immediately makes him fall to his knees. The figure is mere feet away from him. His blade seeps crimson like purulence depleting a fresh wound. It forms a steady pool on the ground, each individual drop making delicate patters in the suffocating silence. His maw hangs open, expressionless, the teeth resembling a row of broken mirrors. Its eyes, umbral and inundated in a pitiless intelligence, are black holes in the haggard outlines of his twisted face. His hair spills from its head in oily strings. He takes a single step forward. His hanging jaw twists up, sending a series of pops up his jowls. He unleashes a deathly screech: “THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE” The figure steps forward, eyes glaring into Desmond like pernicious x-rays, siphoning the fiber and stamina from his body. He cuts across Desmond’s stomach like a hook through blubber, splattering the wall in maroon flecks. He sinks his face into the wound, lapping in mouthfuls of Desmond’s weeping hemoglobin like a deer at a salt lick, his tongue running over the contours of his guts and sinew in long unimpaired streaks. Desmond grasps at his tenuous hairs in a desperate attempt to pull him away from his torso, but his hands slip off the oiled lubricated hair as if he were trying to grasp a greasy water balloon. The figure grabs Desmond’s midsection, effortlessly throwing him to the ground. Desmond feels himself being erased by the moldy air and the inky black lurking behind the figure’s eyes. The knife comes again, licking at his legs and knees in a razor-teeth cyclone. The red draining from the ensuing incisions is breeding a stagnant claret lagoon on the floor like a depraved Jackson Pollock painting. Awareness now dim like fading embers, Desmond grabs for a small foot stool to his left, raising it above his head in a final, futile defense. His trembling, blood-caked arms are as frail as twigs. Without a moment of respite, the figure lunges forward, like a hound primed to retrieve spoils from the ground, and pierces the blade through the lavender fabric, through the silver beads, through the syrup-brown wood, through the leg in the left corner, and directly into Desmond’s forehead, boring through him like a drill through sedimentary rock. The final incision spews a great jet of blood through the air like a red rocket. Desmond’s head slams through a marina of corroding cognition and a twilight of living. He involuntarily squirms, impaled like a speared fish, his heart befalling its terminal throbs and his eyes bathed in evanescent cinders. Lionel, Janet Oscar, Desmond Just eroding flesh sheets Just decaying bags of meat Lionel, Janet Oscar, Desmond Here now, throats and gristle cleft Here now, there’s nothing left It never hurt this much before And my spirit aches with envy And my delinquent flesh weeps For a respite that never arrives And a strain that never sleeps"