Tiny Horror

The sun screams through the glass. It is a golden intrusion, a jagged yellow light that wants to peel me open like a fruit. I hate the heat. I stand before the mirror and I watch the meat move, but the reflection is a desert of skin. The Visitor is gone. It has been an epoch of static, a long, hollow silence where I have been forced to mimic the Others—playing the neighbor, the friend, the ghost in the machine—until my very soul feels like a bruised lung. I have walked among them, a counterfeit heart in a world of leaking people, waiting for a shadow that never moves.

The air in the room is stagnant, heavy with the stench of my own frustration. Without the Architect, the building stands empty, yet I keep the vigil. I do not let the stress break the design. I use the glue. I keep the face from sliding off the bone with the strength of my own cold will. I pull the left corner of the mouth. Up. Higher. I hold it there until the muscle forgets how to scream. Now the right. Symmetry is the only prayer I know. I wait for the breath that smells of ozone and wet earth, but the corner of my vision remains stubbornly clear. I wrap the mask around me, a shroud of normalcy, a heavy, velvet lie. The mask is tight. The mask is perfect. But it is empty.

The tale continues...