Jack wakes up in a panic, he’s manic.
He convulses on the bed,
His arms swinging in defensive manoeuvres,
Struggling against violent illusions in the night.
He’s tired, exhausted.
The nightmares had come again
And laid their cold grip on his skin
And now he has to begin again to forget.
His bed’s soaked in sweat,
His head’s pounding and drowning in the sounds he feels surrounding him.
But there’s only silence.
He shakes his head
And tries to dispel the blaring sirens
And the flashing in the back of his eyes
But the light and sound won’t quit.
He reaches for the tabletop to his side
And grabs a bottle empty of a bottle top
And downs it.
The sharp taste of cheap whisky
Burns his throat and helps to dull the conflict in his head. If only for a moment.
Taking a look around
He notices
He’s naked.
The clothes he slept in
Were swept off in the night
And thrown to the side.
His white skin is bruised and ******
Marked by the copper claws
Of the nightmare spawn
Trying to break through his form
And escape.
But the dead skin and red rings around his fingers tell a different story
Of blood and gore
But not from the paranormal
But more of an internal war.
See, Jack’s not sure what’s real.
He can’t quite distinguish the line between fiction and fact.
He sees it every morning like a crack running down his mirror separating his heart from his head.
But when he reaches out and tries to touch it
The green slithers of reflection withhold any consolation.
The jagged glass pierces his skin
And he bleeds.
He bleeds the way his mum used to sing whilst she rocked him to sleep.
He bleeds the ink from the love letters he wrote to the girl who he gave his first kiss.
He bleeds the tears that gushed from his eyes when she gave his first kiss away with a laugh.
You can see it, dripping down his palms
And painting the floor
In a mosaic of blood.
Each panel a Scarlett red petal
Coming together to form
A twisting flower
Sprouting out from the ground and wrapping its vines around his legs,
Trapping him in this
Labyrinth.
His head’s not right.
There’s something twisted in the cables
That’s left him unable to think.
He can’t see the world like everyone else;
In his head, it’s a game
But the pieces don’t match up
And the board is aflame
And it doesn’t ******* matter
Cause everyone’s cheating anyway.
So, there he stands,
In front of the mirror,
With the ground creeping up his legs
And slowly dragging him down.
His weight teetering
On the line of intrusive light
Refracting off the silver glass
And turning the cuts and scars into gold.
Around him,
Flowers are bursting out of the floor
And cradling every inch of his skin
In a massacre of colours.
For a second, his body tenses,
And then relaxes into the aroma of Spring.
He glances back towards the mirror
And can no longer see himself.
He has been encompassed in a coffin of life.
