He was staring at me. The eyes were hollow, smiling low as if I owed him. Wending up alongside me, across me, he whispered soft russet gibberish. As time went on I tried to ignore it. It continued. Minutes piled upon one another, tiny corpses like a staircase. He climbed up to my left ear and cupped the outer rim. The elongated fingers were eerily straight distended bears, smelling me. I turned my head away but his cold skin kept reminding me, his words tensing up my muscles and tendons.

I wanted to lash out, my hands curling into rigid shaking claws. The sound kept coming, gathering, sniffing and whispering hypnotically. I was enthralled. His words made sense. All of the voices poured in, ballrooms of waltzing knives outside and inside of me. My teeth clenched as they cut around me, faint ashy breezes against my hot skin.

I shook my head and growled, the tiny man jumping away from my ear as he then reluctantly crawled back inside my mouth. The anger subsides and the room is too hot. The cold outside feels better, brushing past the now empty ballrooms. I can almost see the early morning fog by the windowpanes.

I am left feeling tired again. Too many expectations, too many voices, too many wicked masquerades thrown at my expense. I look at the serene beauty around me and want to see it burn, burn and blindly wail in long red rivulets as thick teardrops consume and blaze across and up, collapsing all around me...

Then, silence.

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