a Poem about Fear

I can feel him hiding where the least light lies
I can feel him staring with his lidless eyes
I can feel him smiling through his blood-soaked teeth
I can feel him coming over to eat me.

I pull the sheets up to my chin and pray
I squeeze my eyes shut to keep him away
I curl into a ball and hope I can't be seen
I feel something trickle from my groin to my knee

His laugh echoes across the dark room
He leaps from his hiding-place and lands with a boom.
He scrapes the floor with his nails, making them sharp.
His eyes are red with hunger, his teeth like those of sharks.

Time for dinner, he says with glee.
I whimper, Please don't kill me...
I won't kill you, he says softly.
Then he adds, Immediately.

In womb of shadow I can just make out
His twisted shape, all turned about.
The snake-like neck, the bobbing head.
I'll see him soon, soon I'll be dead.

I lick my lips. You're not really here.
He replied, Then you've nothing to fear.
I feel him bite down on my cheek.
I swing my fists and growl and shriek.

He pulls away, tears off face-flesh.
Pain fills me up until I retch.
Everything is white and black stars.
I'm just as real as you are.

I roll out of bed, coccooned in sheets.
I wait to see horned hoofs, thorned feet.
Instead fast thoughts, faster heartbeat.
I look up into the eyes of: me.

My reflection is six feet tall.
I stand up slowly, nearly fall.
I touch my cheek--not a mark.
Maybe this was just some lark.

A cruel joke of my own making.
I laugh a bit, though I'm still shaking.
Then I slowly recall I'd recently sold
That man-sized mirror, it was too old.

I blink, I nod, it all sinks in.
I look up into His Wide Grin.

Munch

The doorbell rang and the four of us grinned through smokefumes and thought, Finally, the food's here. Tom was closest so he ran out, we could hear him swinging the door open. We all drooled on the carpet waiting, heard a bit of natter, then the door slammed shut. The excitement was too much. Pizza was going to sort out our munchies.

No sign of Tom.

“Tom?”

Nothing.

He was a prankster so i jumped up and ran out to give him a slap but he wasn't there. The door was shut. I opened it in time to see the really tall---I mean REALLY---tall man standing about five feet away, dressed all in black like some Halloween freak. Black cloak, he was even wearing a skull mask.

“Looking for your friend?” he asked.

I'd lost my smile and my appetite. “Uh. Yeah?”

“Thomas.” The masked man turned his head. I didn't recognise the voice. Why was he dressed up? Why did his voice sound like that? “Thomas?” Real sing-song voice. “Oh Thooomaaas...” The head turned even more,and I could see the neck twisting like a rubber hose, and I couldn't see where the skull-mask ended and the skin began.

A little voice said: Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's really a skull.

Ridonkulous! shrieked my inner Mr Sensible.

The skullface was looking right at me, and the eye sockets were glowing now.

“Cool LEDs,” I told him, gulping down bile.

“They're not LEDs,” he said as he creeped up to me one step at a time. “And you know I ate your FUCKING FRIEND!”

He lashed out and I screamed and swing the door shut, fell on my ass and all the lads started laughing. Til they saw my face, and they laughed even harder.

“Jesus,” someone said, picking me up off the floor, “I really had you going there!”

There was Thomas, standing over me, smiling down at me with his pearly whites. I shook my head. “You...you...”

“Me me me.” He shook his head and slapped my shoulder. “What've you been smoking buddy?” He laughed out loud, and as I watched him approach the lads, I thought two things:

Where did the mask end and the skin begin?

and

Didn't Tom have braces?

Daddy Issues

Thinking bout my daddy makes me ill. He did bad things when I was young so he died in a chair, hair smoking, eyes like jelly. I didn't see it but I seen films and I've a vivid imagination. That's what Uncle Joe said: "You've a vivid imagination. Don't waste it. Don't waste your life." He died days after, peacefully. Mom said he was smiling in his sleep, so he must've died happy. I liked that. Maybe he stayed in the dream.

I grew up in a small town where people pretended to mind their business, while peering over fences and sticking their nose up their neighbours' asses. Everyone gasped when I knocked up Anna. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when that business ended before it started. She was upset. I was just numb. Shit like that does that. To me, anyway. I felt relief, not that it was gone, but that we didn't get a chance to decide to let it live. It must've known, all small and mindless, it must've sensed it, and popped out into death.

School was a chore and classmates were cunts. Teachers were dartboards. I read the books but it might as well been Latin. It was like static; it filled my head with nothing. I loved movies. Loved them. Space movies with heroes and villains. Comedies with slapstick and slippy floors. Westerns---narrow eyes, no name, fast trigger finger. Better than life. Realer. Wished I could jump in, make a mark, live. Often went home and hid in my room. Walls were palettes, my brain was a paintbrush.

The strange man came to me when I was seventeen. I remember he smelled like cigars. His teeth were yellow. "You're just like your daddy," he said. He was shaking his head, looking me up and down like I was some slab of meat. "Need a job?"

I told him to fuck off and pushed past him to the bar. One big blobby hand stopped me. "Think it over. Lotsa money out there. Wanna spend your life takin orders?"

I can't remember his eyes. I don't think I looked at them. I was too scared, or disgusted, or something. I just put the pint glasses on the bar, thought bout the hair on fire, the screams. Fifty quid a night. It was fuckall, but I was ok. I was ok.

Home

Morning starts like any other. Take the call, get the target's name and location, show up smiling like a salesman, suitcase in right hand, gun inside. Door swings open and a double barrelled shotgun pokes out and rips my chest wide open with a bang. I fall sideways, coughing up last night's dinner; meantime two feet blur past me and then all turns black.

Magic carpet ride over ice mountains. Look Mom I'm flying. The mountainpeaks spout blue flame, ice melts off, red fire everywhere. Oh shit I'm dying. The pain: it's in me, it's fucking me and it's enjoying it, I'm screaming. Get it out. GET IT OUT.

Morning starts like any other. Take the call...

*You fucked it up."

I nod as if he can see me. Cos I know he can. The cameras are all over the hospital. And he's all over the city. I'm a dead man. "Sorry."

"You fucked it up."

My head feels like the business end of a dick at a stag's. I've got more sweat than skin. "He must've ID'd me. Security breach."

"We're unbreachable. You know that. Nothing goes out we don't want going out. You weren't traced. You were tracked. You know what that means."

CLICK. Line's dead. So am I. Footsteps, squeak of a heel. Someone steps in grinning. Tall man, skinny face, very wide mouth, like someone's pulling his cheeks til his lips come close to splitting. He has something small and sharp in his hand. He's spinning it slowly.

"Ah," he gasps, "I see you're awake. Let me take a look."

Slides over to me. Can smell the grease in his slicked-back hair. He leans in til we're eye-to-eye. Only one chance. I give him the thumbs-up, smile, and push my thumb into his left eyesocket. The eyeball pops under the pressure, oozing down my wrist while I push in deeper. Can feel something spongy---must be brain---so I push hard, jab at it a few times. He is screaming throughout all of this. I pull the thumb back out with a comical PLUP, and he vomits and dies right there on my chest. I ignore his quivering lips. Dying neurons are having one last party.

I jump to my feet. My chest is clean, clear. No bullet-holes. "You guys are good," I tell the probably dead man. What's the thing in his hand? Oh. It looks anal.

I rob his doctor's costume---he's not REALLY a doc---and stroll out whistling. faces emerge from behind curtains along the hallway, like a queue of ghosts. I wink at a chesty nurse. I walk out the door into the light.

A car pulls up. "Get in." It's Busby. "I SAID...get in."

One longing glance at the hospital---it's remarkably ornate, with glass everywhere, even a trimmed garden---and hop in.

"You've blood on you." Busby wrinkles his chubby nose, swipes at the remnants of a combover.

I nod, smirk, flick the bit of brain out the window. "They tried to get me. I have to go spectral."

Busby's face goes diagonal. "That's a zero. There's nothing below grid these days. If they want someone, they'll get them. Even if they have to cut through fuckers like me."

Pangs of guilt. "Busby, thanks for this---I owe you."

He nods. I listen to the wheels spin, the road and wind ripple past. All this is the past already. I'm watching it scroll like film strip. When's it over? Soon.

Very fucking soon.

"Here we are." Busby slaps my knee, holds on a little too long. "Best be going." He's given me airline tickets.

I shake his hand--again, cloying. I grimance, then grin. "I'll make it upto you."

Busby goes red. "You already have. Take care."

Out and in. Hundreds of nobodies. Make way, a doctor in the house. I dump the overcoat---no doubt my face is getting widespread. I flex my face-muscles, now I'm Beta-me. Same but different. All in the expressions, see. Like accents for your face. Same but different.

Flight takes off. Free and clear. Stewardess leans in, chest perky, lips red. "Glad you're back, sir."

I wink. "Glad to be back." Curtains. Faces. Phone rings. No place like Home.