Lying behind these lack lustre, whimsical if it so pleases you, eyes of mine; the portal to this my very soul; a hellish black beast stirs.

It is the beast of time. More accurately, the beast of time squandered. A beast for the soul left to rot in the remnants of self. My self.

Raising its foul head, it is the breath of a corpse that reaches forth like a snare. Horrid, pungent, unrelenting. Washing over you, me. Something, as vile as a torrent of midden having broken its banks.

Oh damned malignant thing you are, stirring, awakening…………….beckoning?

It calls to me in the voice of a plague, “tis you that is I, I that is you. You are the movement of my reflection. The silent scream you never make. Your own personal ‘bump’ in the night.“

Perplexity folds me into these very wings saved purely for the damned. My skin crawls at its touch, terror fills me. One of my socks dampens of its own accord.

Ragged clawed hands tear me from my wing wrapped horrors, reefing my screaming being into a foul place, far more terrible than my temporary purgatory had been. With my own eye I note it is my own hand that drew me from that place. My own hand holding me, securing me, dragging me against my might and will.

This ghastly beast, the colour of corrupted souls; my corrupted soul, laughs manically. At me?

“What have I done?!” I scream into its chest, my head bowed.

“Why, you have done nothing. That is the point. Can you, master time waster; squanderer of hours, days, weeks……………….lives? Not see that?”

“tis not the lack of effective circulating blood flow killing you. Killing me. It is spirit, and time. The very same that both you, and of course I, waste. So master time waster, welcome to this my final taunt………”

My whimpering stopped as though a button had been pressed. My neck jerked and lengthened. The dancing made by my treacherous feet was a jig to a reel known only to one, nay, known only to two.

But the dance beneath the beam of mother’s ramshackle garden shed was a dance. My final dance,a dance just for one.