We Are I
We are one. We are the same. We are I.
We move with the same ligaments, the same joints, the same muscle strings.
We ooze of acid. We erode. We exude a putrid odour.
We are a walking culmination of demons.
Barbatos’ head, sticking out of our body’s hip, screams for help.
His shoulders aches from the angle it’s stuck in.
Yet when people go near him to lift the pressure off his melted body,
He bites their hands off and leaves them with a mark of the necrotic.
Morax is at the top, craning his long, spindly neck.
He, like Barbatos, snaps at anyone who dares go near me. Us. Them.
He harms himself, sometimes. Calls it punishment. I - we - they - think they are addicted to the pain.
It’s all he has to forget the ongoing war between all the demons struggling to take control over our body.
Beelzebub calls out my name. Our name. Theirs.
He, they, it - it whispers. It ignites the oil that covers our body.
I weep tears of tar — bitter and sticky. It only contributes to the roaring wildfire.
I, cages inside it all, can only watch as everything I love turns to ash.
Everything we touch melts from our acidic hands.
Hands, we have several. Some fall off and skitter away, rippling our effect on the land.
Our footsteps turn the ground beneath us to mush. Our movements are slow and sluggish.
It is only when we ignite, we begin to run. We, I, They - light each tree top, each wooden wall, each patch of grass - until our lungs blacken from the smoke.
We are choking. All four of our windpipes stretch, and stretch, and stretch
Until it stops
The monster of my town is dead.
Everyone is safe, again.
Copyright © Viktor Katsumie Bautista | Year Posted 2022
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