An Old Essay

I found my flashdrive from college back in 08′ and I found this piece.  I wrote it when all my essays and poems and stories began spilling out in college like a damn fever and this, oddly, is before the PTSD hit full-force.  And it describes my current nightmares.  Weird, eh?

Amy Sprague

Eng 360

04-08-08

Meditative

The Nothing Caper

 It came in the night.  We were all sleeping in the creaky house and I woke to it lifting my sheets; it made my nightgown bleed.  My doll saw it all so I ripped out her eyes the next morning before breakfast.  Then it started coming in  my dreams, and I thought a monster was asleep beneath my bed, gathering my things.  On the scratchy carpet where the sun comes in, it branded my skin with its tongue, so I gave it my voice.  Mother and father swallowed it up.

They found me in corners and closets and they didn’t hear their words running from my mouth.  I didn’t know so I swallowed the words whole; they fed me spoonfuls of aches that echoed deep into my belly, burning my insides until it dulled.

I began to sweat them out my pores like a broken fever.  I washed and raked my skin when I saw them in the mirror.  They curdled and clotted the mainstreams of my heart as I took their pieces and ate them.  I choked and spewed out a doll that didn’t have eyes.  Her messy dress had burned away so they stitched her a new one and kept it inside, and I ran away, hungry.