Their faces didn’t fit right
chins too extended
forehead too wide
Lower teeth protruding
In amongst us
bone muscle sinew
solid to touch
ephemeral
“They’re not real”
he thinks
“they can’t be
not when they…”
But he doesn’t
want to think
about that
right now
He remembers
the parking lot
the pub
painted dark
No punters left
to carouse
midnight
silence only
Flags hung
flaccid on high
cords tapping
slight breeze
He remembers
the roaring
the sheath
pulled around
Glistening canopy
dragonfly wing
wrapped over
them both
Blood teeming
against its inner surface
steam rising
the roar
That ill-fitting face
emerging
the sheath
pulling back
chin dripping blood
exultant
roaring
midnight black
He remembers
the car
and how it
shook
A new fare taps
he comes back
from the moment
to the moment
From the prompt “A taxi idled at the curb, its driver lost in thought.”
There’s a little back story to this one.
In the early 90s, while still writing horror fiction, I had a very, very vivid dream. Think David Lynch meets Clive Barker meets Alien and you get somewhere close.
Now, 30-some-odd years later, I can still recall that dream – shot like a movie
(fun fact: I often dream in camera angles)
of a murder in a pub parking lot, witnessed by a taxi driver – the murderer a supernatural creature, carrying out its crime beneath a glistening membrane called “the sheath”.
I wrote the first 60 pages of a novel, which set the stage for the fictionalization of the dream sequence. And – spoiler alert – of course, the set-up was that the taxi driver would turn out to be the monster all along.
To be fair, it’s not a great story overall – but that visceral dream is captured as clearly as I was able at the time; I still enjoy
(if that’s the right word)
reading it.
When I got this prompt this morning, my mind immediately went back to that story – and you have the poem above.
Leave me a prompt and I’ll write you a little something 🙂
