Two Faces

Two Faces

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window …. seemingly put by an unseen hand, the velvety shadow cut by the humming dream of the flame…casting waves in the distant dark like a demon …. strangely it whispered…lapping against the window pane as the hoard stood transfixed in its eternal dance. The bleeding shape behind it shuddered, the glass shrieked torn upward….and it came. Dropped, the dead rotted eyes rolled up to the falling storm. Shapes without form, a mass of breathing lines, all of them seemed to move, all once belonged together. The hoard shrieked as shadows, frothing and gnawing, gnashing in violence, feeding, and lapping the figure beneath them. Torn from the bone, swallowed and shattered the figure was mangled and mauled into dust as they burrowed inside it screaming for more, begging the flame to find them and give them the same, again, again, and again…. but quiet. They froze. All left before them an entirely rounded piece…almost alone…their dim retreating eyes probed the thing untouched, All yet the same save the two eyes that stared back at them…hurling the light from the flame back in defiance….lolling in death….white as the creaking moon above them….it whispered….”Feed on me.” The hoard of whipping whispered ears crept up above, the bloodied teeth and blank and panting rotted faces grunted deep into the air. A fear, a deep and forgotten fear crept through their ranks. The shape, the idol, the spirit-head lay washed up on the sea of mud and bone. The covered cloak it had worn was torn a dozen times, from where it spoke the bare and bitter ivory broke into a smile. The silent laughter rose from where the shedding eyes crept deeper in its tomb. The tomb of its own dreams. And then the whisper came…. deep inside the mass, the squealing, shrieking mass of blood and bone and frenzied eyes that begged to be rewarded. Feed on me. A rush of jostling bodies in sweat and screaming laughter rushed to eat the gutted face. They stripped the eyes that hid inside the burrowing holes and unmasked the smile braying behind the tomb. All they ate. For they would not be fed on flesh and blood alone, but took all that once had been a flame inside that figures glass….and tore apart the bone to swallow all. The whisper spread and rippled through the shrieks and squeals, again the same, again the ringing laughter in the deep…to feed and eat…. feed on me and nothing more. As the whisper grew each gnawing face began to say it to itself. Chanting the dying words, they began to speak, speak as they fed and snapped the chalked-up pieces of the broken bodies. The order wouldn’t fade, nor could it. But slowly, as every shrieking face screamed out this commandment their dying muddied eyes recoiled….they screeched in flaming fear as the dim and dying faces all around them became the figures face upon the floor….each and every monsters eyes became the same, the face that lay upon the floor….the piggish blood and feeding screams became the whispered laughter of the skull. They tore each other’s faces off, to stop the eyes that flickered with the ending flame that still held its dance above. They dug and latched and gnawed their faces to blind themselves from what they saw. But they could not stop the echoing instruction….it sucked itself inside their heads.

But again, the flame shook, the glass parted, the shadowed figure up above dropped the pieces of the body on their heads. Fear vanished, blood again burrows in their minds, the voice comes back again…. they, feeding, beg to stop. But they can no longer choose what goes inside their jaws, inside their heads their minds are feeding the whispers, the voices, the shrieks of laughter from the flame and figure swirling overhead.