1. The centipede is talking to you again. As usual all you do is listen, because it ate and replaced your tongue long ago. It explains that the old man back in the tavern that kept looking at you knows what you did. The elder is going to go to the town guards and tell them, unless you stop him. Your hands are bloody. The old man is dead. Your hands are bloody. The old man is dead but you can't stop him from talking. Your hands are bloody. The centipede eats the old, dead man's tongue to help hide the truth. You wake up feeling lonely as if you've lost your closest friend.
2. No one at the party has a face, only masks. Oh, they look like faces that can smile, laugh, even cry. But you can tell they are just masks because the sockets are hollow and the chin is attached to a stick they hold with their sallow-skinned hands. Your mask is broken, though. You see, the stick is missing so you have to hold it directly to your raw, flensed face. It's so embarrassing the way the blood oozes over the sides. They are too polite to mention the faux pas but you know that their empty sockets are full of silent judgement. You are a fool and everyone knows it.
3. The digging never stops. No matter how long you shovel chunks of moist, pungent earth from the hole it never gets any deeper. You can hear their cries from underneath it, garbled and pleading. You can never reach them in time and they will always haunt you for it. Warm rain spits from the sky above. It patters off of muck-slicked stones that watch with glee over your mounting frustration. The cries stop… but you keep shoveling.
4. Undulating through the sheets, the stillborn calf leaves trails of blood that turn into letters you can't quite read. No matter how fast you crawl away the malformation is always close by. It mewls with menace and you know if it ever catches up with you the calf will claim your life for its own. The sea of sheets never ends. The chilled wool scratches at your skin, at your bones. If the misborn thing doesn't get you, the covers will eventually tear you apart like an iron brier.
5. You've always wanted to drown in this pond. Not die, just drown and peacefully rest at the bottom. Lilypads grow out of your skin, winding to the surface. Through their lips you recite poetry. The lyrics tempt the unwary into the waters where you and they have long conversations about how good it is to sleep and never wake. You know if you stay down here eventually you will become something else, something inhuman. Something you were always meant to be. Or just maybe, something you always were.
6. Your teeth crawled out of your mouth Their tiny legs skittering like ants long your gums before the gate that was your lips failed to keep canines and molars contained. How many teeth did you have? Not this many surely for they cover your head in a creeping wave of stained bone. Some plant themselves in your hair, intent on raising families amid those fields of bounty. Others carve out an eye thinking it a better orifice to inhabit. A rare few realize the folly of their flight and dive off your shoulders. They scream all the way down to the floor, clicking as they hit before shaking it off and seeking greener fields.
7. It's nice that your sibling is visiting your dreams even though they are long dead. The setting is idyllic too; the dilapidated porch of your family home. The broken windows remind you of jagged mouths and their whispers of town gossipmongers relaying the sordid details of your sibling passing. You didn't know that their life had ended this way. In fact, you were pretty sure your sibling was still alive. No, they assure you, they've been dead for as long as you have been. After a pause, your sibling recounts the truth facts of your share demise. It all started when a comet fell out of the sky…
8. It is so cold, so gray. Leagues of long-burnt ash covers the ground with the occasional giant's skeleton breached through monochrome landscape. Flakes of cindered flesh drift on the chilled breeze like dandelion fluff. You did this. Deep down, you know there wasn't any other way. Wherever you've gone in life destruction has followed. This is just a natural offshoot of your corrupting nature. The once-human debris sticks to your skin like a second shell. It doesn't shield you from the cold, the guilt, or the loneliness. You deserved this. Remember that.
9. Peeling off your skin shouldn't be this easy. Likewise, you should be able to stop but you every time it rapidly grows back you are compelled to take another handful and peel. It doesn’t hurt either, even though flaying yourself should. The raw flesh beneath has the appearance of slabbed meat with long strands of mucous connecting it to the shed epidermis. As it crawls away, the sheafs of skin leave trails of the much akin to a snail. Hopefully the skin-slugs find greener pastures on someone else.
10. Every time you talk to the moldering skeleton you develop butterflies in your stomach. Though, they might be moths with how viciously they chew their way out. Either way, once the insects pull themselves free, they fill the air with their grayscale wings. The flutterers build a canopy around you and the cadaver, a living snow globe of sorts. It hides the two of you from prying eyes. In you lean, close to the corpse's lips that are not there and listen to its whisper. It spins tales of forgotten treasure, hollowed ruins, and plagues to come. You've never had a better friend than it.
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