Torment

TORMENT

The girl is walking, walking along the corridor, the tunnel, turning corners, walking, walking over the stone - through the stone - under the stone through the dark, through the dank, walking through the dark to the next small light.  Craving the light, the slight windows of light, but bars, bars, always the bars - on and on,  past the light, past the bars, always the bars.

She is small.  She scrapes her nails across the brutal stone ceiling, when she has the strength, the strength to raise her dirty, dainty, weak-strong arms.  "Hurt me! Hurt me! Break my nails!"  The strength is gone - hands weakly fall - arms release, small hands fall - fall to thighs.  Blood - blood from dainty fingertips, blood from broken nails. Blood courses down thighs - opening channels - channels through the grime - channels of pale white - white flashing through the reflecting burgundy of  blood - channels of white reflecting through the grime.

Walk, walk on, on.  Forward, forward through the stone lined tube.  Tube-like mucoid intestine,  intestine of some slime-mold beast, scale lined gut, on and on, to crawl from the anus of a monster?  No.  The girl doesn't think - she doesn't dare think.  Just walk, walk on, and on, through the foaming, fetid, foul bile - through the gut of the beast, the God with no eyes!  A small girl cries to the God with no eyes.

Some windows look on beauty, walk, walk - beauty behind bars - walk, walk, hurry! - don't wait! - look quickly! - speed!  Walk on, always bars, small beauty framed in stone, beauty concealed by bars.  She stops.  She looks.  She raises her arms.  She holds the bars.  The beauty is green and red - beauty of life - blue and purple - beauty of night - yellow and orange - beauty of sky.  Hands grip bars - cheeks press cold, hard, metallic, bars - white cheeks stained with filth, smeared with cave wall secretions - white cheeks caress cold bars.  A pink tongue twines through the bars - tasting the condensing moisture of life - life outside the bars.  Eyes secrete tears - tears try to cleanse the soiled cheeks.  Cheeks of the small girl - stained with filth.

Walk, walk.  She is so anxious to get there.  "Where do I  go?"  Walk small girl! Hurry! - Don't be late!  "WHERE DO I GO?"  A small girl screams at a God with no tongue.  You go to the next window small girl - on and on - some with light, some with dark - some with paintings of beauty, some of hell - some with sunlight or moonlight or starlight reflecting off the snow - some with rainbows reflecting in dew drops on tropical leaves.  Walk, walk - not to heaven or hell - no - just to the end of the hall - ignore the rough stone - ignore your torn festering feet - ignore the blood and puss - on and on - past the ever-changing windows - past the bars - all the same.  Of course you'll get there - just to the end of the hall.

Can you describe your life small girl?  Can you describe your world?  "My life is a tube - a passage through rock - rock lined with rotting stone.  My world a passage papered with illusions of stone - illusions of rotting rock, decorated with pictures of windows - windows depicting lies - and bars, bars, everywhere bars.  I walk on and on, never slowing - from lie to lie - always longing - never finding - always reaching - never touching - always loving - finding hate.  Always walking, past the bars, always moving, always forward, never backward, can't go backward, the windows behind - already seen - the bars behind - dealt with - the blood behind, already dried - the wounds from there already healed.  I walk and I walk, on and on, into my world, on to my life - against the flow of rats - past the windows - past the lies - past the bars, always the bars."

The walls are moldy, sharp and moldy, dripping slime from fungoid masses, foetid fungi, dripping slime.  These, the walls that see the girl - the slimmed stone walls that see her beauty.  She was pretty.  She is pretty.  In her way she's always pretty.  But to her - to the small girl herself - she's filth.  To her the pale white beauty of her small body stains the dark green putrescence of the slime wall.  Stains the wall white where her small crucified form melts into the rock.  Another would see a small, beautiful white cross on a cavern wall - but there is no other.  The small girl does not see - she thinks of her filth.

The wall sees small white beauty standing at a window.  Small white hands straining high, grasping bars, straining against bars - curve of white hip rubbing sharp wall - curve of pale buttock reflecting white light - small white body scraping stone - tense, with body twisting, writhing - bruising breasts and knees - pure white mind, grasping, groaning, gasping - pale blue eyes sobbing, weeping - ice blue tears dripping, flowing down the face of a small pale girl who opens her sad mouth, parts her sad lips, and screams at a God with no heart.

Sometimes she could think - sometimes she might remember - she remembered on and on, she remembered bars, sometimes she remembered a before.  Before when there was not filth and slime - sometimes she thinks about before and after - before when there was not terror and despair - after when there was filth and slime, terror and despair, windows and walking - always moving - and bars, always bars, forever the bars.  Sometimes she thought she imagined the before.  Sometimes she prayed she imagined the after.

She ate - when she was hungry - usually she wasn't.  The small body didn't need much.  She drank when she was thirsty.  When she could bear the water - when the sweat and slime on her little body dried to a crust - when water was required, she drank.  She got on her hands and knees at a foul pool - to foul to reflect her face - she sipped through the grit and tendrils of muck - she sipped from the puddles between the stones on the floor.  Out the summering windows are plants.  Short pale arms reach through the bars - collect berries and leaves - succulent leaves - juice dripping berries - torn from the wall - pale short arms tearing from the wall through the bars.  The temptation of happiness - momentary sweetness - always bars, always suffering, always terror.  Walk, walk - keep walking - don't be tempted, never crave - she's learned to not be tempted.  Her nails are strong, she can reach the moss and lichen and algae - through the bars, scrapes it off with her nails, sucks it off her fingers.  Always the rats, always walking towards her - no need to hunger - most rats pass on, the way she has come - no need to hunger - always food - out the window or on the floor.

She thinks of sound - often she thinks of sound - sometimes she hears.  She hears  the hisss of muck softened toenails sliding on rock - moldy soft toenails sluffing against stone.  Touch confusing the sensation of sound - hearing/feeling the scrape of calloused feet across the sharp floor - hearing the painful cracks in the souls of her feet - feeling the scrape of toenails like the sound of chattering rat's teeth.  Always the beat, beat, beat - of the drums?  The drums outside the windows?  No - beat, beat, beat of her heart - she feels it - if she tries she hears it.  Beat, beat, beat - the small girls heart - and always the bars.