An October night
of 1823 in
a town of England
In the darkness of ev’ning
a man was hit with a pipe.
He was dragged away,
to a shack far from the town
to meet his vermis.
The man laid on a table
with ankles and wrists strangled.
Slowly, he awoke
frightened that the room was not
the one he dozed in.
“Where am I?” he asked confused
by ev’rything around him.
“Somewhere,” came a smooth
voice from the shadows behind
a large contraption.
A trail of gears showed the path
towards the straps on his limbs.
The voice spoke again,
“Do you know Miss Dianna?
Do not lie, Gustav.”
Gustav recognized the voice,
he replied nervously, “No.”
The machine started
pulling slowly on his limbs.
“Ah! Okay, yes, yes!”
The clicking of the gears slowed
but the straps still tugged his limbs.
“What did I tell you?”
the voice mockingly asked him.
“Who is she, to you?”
“I-umm,” The straps pulled again.
“I won’t be patient Gustav.”
“Ok! She was a
beautiful woman, that I
had an affair with.”
The ropes did not stop, the voice
said, “The truth can be painful.”
Gustav’s body ached,
his arms and legs began to
pull from their sockets.
“I believe this is yours,” and
across the floor, slid a watch.
It was pure gold. “ I
found it in my bed, with my
*****, ******, dead wife!"
Before he was torn apart
Gustav uttered, “She liked it.”
This was a collaboration between my friend Max and I for a class assignment. It used the Renga format (I rarely use format, as you probably have noticed) which is haiku (5,7,5) and couplet (7,7).