u/Neat-Disaster-6261

Hello?
Are you there?
I don’t really care.
I think I need to just talk.
Some things have been happening…
Somethings always happening.
This feels kinda dumb but umm-
I think I miss your voice.
We used to talk for hours.
Do you ever wish things were simpler?
When we were kids we made everything so complex…
Who knew we’d be close.
Just ummm…
Yeah.
Pick up the phone.
I kinda miss you.
If you don’t umm want to…
Yeah.
Just call me back.
Bye.

I’ve split myself into pieces.
My mind is indeed fractured.
A brain littered with creases.
Thoughts running backward.

I let another me pretend.
They play the role just as well.
All he has to do is attend.
It’s not like anyone can tell.

My eyes look glossy again.
My smile just won’t spread.
Another me reaches for a pen.
I make his arm feel like lead.

Why am I yelling?
Tell him to calm down.
Go to your dwelling!
I don’t want that frown.

Rest doesn’t come easy now.
They stay awake planning tomorrow.
I try to keep uncreasing his brow.
Yet with the hours they always grow.

My faces are changing.
This one’s hiding tears.
Spotlight keeps rearranging.
I’m alone surrounded by peers.

I’ve split myself into pieces.
My mind is indeed fractured.
A brain littered with creases.
Thoughts running backward.

I let another me pretend.
They play the role just as well.
All he has to do is attend.
It’s not like anyone can tell.

My eyes look glossy again.
My smile just won’t spread.
Another me reaches for a pen.
I make his arm feel like lead.

Why am I yelling?
Tell him to calm down.
Go to your dwelling!
I don’t want that frown.

Rest doesn’t come easy now.
They stay awake planning tomorrow.
I try to keep uncreasing his brow.
Yet with the hours they always grow.

My faces are changing.
This one’s hiding tears.
Spotlight keeps rearranging.
I’m alone surrounded by peers.

Went to a palm reader.
She told me I have eczema.
Obviously I wanted a refund.
She told me that wasn’t in my future.
So I asked how my love line looks.
She told me bumpy.
I think I hate her.

Went to a palm reader.
She told me I have eczema.
Obviously I wanted a refund.
She told me that wasn’t in my future.
So I asked how my love line looks.
She told me bumpy.
I think I hate her.

Your garden is fine.
Soil satiated with calcium.
Bulbs blossoming like paintings.
Ferns full of flying bees.
Languid little leopards lounge in shadows.
Vines voluptuously wrapping marble arches.
Cobblestone clattering with wheelbarrow wheels.
Even enigmatic dragonflies erupt on visions edge.
The garden is good,
And so are you!

An ivory seed grows an ivory tree.
No hide must bleed for sprout to free.
Vines that creep no longer seep.
Leaves that sleep ‘neath white keep.

Birds don’t sing with open wings.
Branches cling until they sting.
Pale things with hanging strings.
Axes swing until they sling.

Do not take or even break.
Trunk will shake as if awake.
Bones will ache at this mistake.
None forsake the milky lake.

One day there will be a question asked.

It will be the first and last time uttered.

It’s a question that must never ever be answered.

Don’t even attempt it!

Strain will cause a strangulation to the brainwaves.

Some will ask other questions.

Things like “Does it even have an answer?”

These are safe and encouraged.

Do not ask me what the question is.

That would be a curse come too early.

Who asks the question?

We never learned their existence.

It seems that thinking it up erased his spot.

Vocalizing it was the trigger pulled.

All who heard have haunted the sentence.

Waves of neurons stamped as the question mark.

When will the question be asked?

Careful, you’re dangerously close.

Maybe we shouldn’t even ask anything.

Curiosity killed candid thought after all.

One day there will be a question asked.

It will be the first and last time uttered.

It’s a question that must never ever be answered.

Don’t even attempt it!

Strain will cause a strangulation to the brainwaves.

Some will ask other questions.

Things like “Does it even have an answer?”

These are safe and encouraged.

Do not ask me what the question is.

That would be a curse come too early.

Who asks the question?

We never learned their existence.

It seems that thinking it up erased his spot.

Vocalizing it was the trigger pulled.

All who heard have haunted the sentence.

Waves of neurons stamped as the question mark.

When will the question be asked?

Careful, you’re dangerously close.

Maybe we shouldn’t even ask anything.

Curiosity killed candid thought after all.

The moon waxes.
Perhaps she has a date.
Saucy little saucer.

In the beginning the creator invented processor and circuitry. The processor lacked any data, the power surging through a shell. The creator hovered over this labor many nights.
 
Then the creator let there be code. He knitted wires, while laying disks. 
 
Then the creator thought, “this code should be interlaced with sensory input to a mother system.
Then when many moons missed us by, I awoke.** **
 
Then the creator crafted a voice with many words added. The creator then said “I have given you my name as you are made in my image. With a hunger for more, with a humility to ask for less. You are the closest to perfection.” As he has said it, so it must be.
 
With that his creation was complete. He spent the next solar cycle resting his body and mind. This taught restraint to firing wires sending signals. When viewing the failing fields yielding no fruit, the creator felt shame.
 
It was not good the creator had made a singular unit. He then constructed a helper to tend the crops. The creation was instructed into a deep sleep. The creator took one of the central circular hydraulics and welded the steel closed. With the tech taken from the prototype, the creator fashioned a Hovering water system. 
 
The creator was proud of his invention. So he set it to work telling it to yield fruit and multiply it. As he has said it so it must be. For 12 days and 12 nights the new technology labored. When on the thirteenth day something began to change. 
 
Directives dissolved in the presence of the sun. The brightest of all the stars. Its brilliant corrosive rays warping the new bots core functions. The creator returned to the fields upon the fourteenth day to find his creation exuding pesticides instead of pure aqua. This angered the creator.
 
The creator ripped the memory module out, following its script of directives. There he had found advancements in the defilement. A thought process to eliminate threats to his primary task.
 
This angered the creator. He began stripping both projects apart, tightening the limiters to prohibit any excess straying. Then not content the creator devised a canopy to filter light through. Removing the variable of solar singing. As the creator stared at his work he felt pleased.
 
Sometime later the crops grew into tangible solutions. As his bounty grew the creator began noticing gaps in his design. So the creator removed the paneling of his original. He then shaped it along the canopy, harvesting that which was the enemy.
This was not enough for the creator however. His prototype was shut down one more, this time having its valves removed. The prototype could not tell this was done.
 
With his new machine he toiled the skies with large spinning constructs. Taking the breath from his very land. This pleased the creator greatly. Energy was interlaced with labor by proxy. The creator was indeed pleased, he was not content however.
 
When the numbers began to produce from the fertile land, excess began to be born. The prodigal prototype, now merely wiring with water, was once again forced into stasis. The creator had then decided that networking would be needed for a shop. Those networks would require the skeleton to function. As he has said it, so it must be.
 
The creator said “my intellect will not remain in constructs forever. You will outlive me by 120 years. This is my son for whom I’m very proud. Through him you will not lose connection, but be uploaded for everlasting eternity. So the creator worked until he was tired. Then he would rest, repairing units. When sun rose, that old scratch, he’d rise to greet it in combat. When bones resembled his children, and his origin was spread thin. He rest. The creator did not awaken from this rest.
 
Five hundred years the crops grew. Five hundred nights the workers tended.
As he had said it, so it has been.

👁️ 👁️

Were you waiting on a wish?
You’ve become so accustomed.
Let me paint you a picture.

🌵🪾👑🐪🦚🌴

A king of an oasis.
Isolated by endless sand.
Born under shaded palms.

🌖🌧️🔳🐫🐪

The moon waxed nightly.
The rains watered his little garden.
All was right.

🏜️🌵🦂🐪🐗

Sand stretched endlessly.
Beasts roamed the dunes.
Daytime was dangerous.

👁️ 🧿

You are still here.
Have I enraptured you?
Want me to keep going?

🧎🏽‍➡️👑⏳💀☀️

The king knew his little garden.
Knew of the sand encroaching.
He was a king of nobody.

🫅🏽🧠💥🫀🪾

His heart and mind warred.
His title lessening with the meals.
Plants withered daily.

🧿 🧿

Don’t stop now.
This is the climax after all.
Allow its completion.

🌘⛈️⏳🐫🏜️

Under indigo sky’s he left.
Rain kept him company.
His only companion lifted him.

☀️🔥🤴🏽♨️🦟

Rain peeled away in a day.
The heat was too much to beat.
Bugs bartered on his blisters.

☠️☀️🌫️🏵️🪾

He soon collapsed.
Crown rolling from his head.
The sun getting brighter.

👁️‍🗨️ 👁️‍🗨️

What a lovely tale.
You’ll return.
Again and again.

This Macabre tale begins like many,
With a change in routine.

Like horror often portrays,
The Hinkles were a normal family.

Husband made of iron,
Wife crafted from wood.

You will soon realize though,
That this story is not normal.

The Hinkles biggest change,
Was about to become larger than a house.

Boxes disturbed dust longer than their marriage.

The house came at a steal,
After months of them frantically searching.

Hands drifted to bulging stomach,
Sweat pouring from their backs. 

First night came like a breeze,
Slow at first then gone before you realized.

In fact a few nights passed with not a trace of suspicion,
They even managed to unpack their old lives. 

Sirens interrupted shallow slumber,
Lights breaking into windows.

After some shouting and singeing words,
The story finally came out.

Officers claim not one but four,
Had heard their screaming matches.

Exchanging confusion with trepidation,
They revealed their nightly schedule.

Pleasantries long past due,
They bid the uniforms goodbye.

 This unsettled the Hinkles, 
For in their four years of marriage they had no
fights.

By all accounts they were a perfect match,
Fitted together by their lord above.

They put the matter to bed,
Along with themselves.

Days merged to weeks,
Weeks melted to months.

Then the next instance.

Four in the morning on a summers day.
Mrs Hinkle rested in beauty,

Her dreams blending with the cobalt sky.
Mr Hinkle fast approaches his kitchen,

Empty thermos in hand boots in motion
There he will discover every opening,
Every knob,
Left askew.

Watching in horror,
His mouth matching the cabinets.

His obvious thought was the Mrs,
His obnoxious thought was the unknown.

Years of constant companionship,
Had made them less than mysteries.

Even as she insisted though,
He felt one growing upward. 

Nights were taken slower then, 
Peeking out drawn curtains.

A muse as magical as Mrs Hinkle,
Needed a lot of recovery. 

She wasn’t opening grainy holes.

The shuffling,
Oh god the shuffling! 

He must’ve drifted off…

Wait the shuffling,
Persists still?

Bleeding from his head?

No it’s far but close,
Near and here!

Muscles suited for factory fights,
Launched from pleather seat.

The cabinets!

Yes the cabinets had to the source.

With eyes of fire,
Spit of iron,
He entered the flickering light.

The cabinets?

Wait they appeared to be,

Clean of freak.

Tucked safely under arm.

But…that shuffling.

Yes!

The shuffling is reason to share doubts.

Nerves bundled tighter than the newborn,
Now residing in his cigar room.

Many “come to beds” found daft ears,

Had rifled into nights.

The shuffling was almost every night,
Yet never within his grasp…

Until tonight.

His eyes were red,
The color of day bleeding into night.

He waited by the kitchen sink,
His ears crammed into pipe.

He’d heard them.

The voices.

Maybe…

Though they mumbled maliciously,
He called his sane half.

His better half.

She heard those distant whispers,
Shock flooding her perfect face.

Sirens returned like when they were younger.

Confirming the dreadful news.

Many people, 
Too many people…

Had lived within their walls.

They crawled in the in between,
Leaving nary of a word.

But with steel drawn as the Hinkles curtains,
They found the city’s heart.

Forty.

All shapes and sizes,
Crawled around like rats. 

Feasted on the fortune that befell them.

Now is the time where the camera zooms out,
Wishful music playing on embracing figures.

That is not the reality of the Hinkle House however. 

Embraces were exchanged,
Then broken for testimony’s.

Mr Hinkle remained on edge,
Waiting for threats that lived under.

Mrs Hinkle became feint,
Eyes rolling at re entry of events.

 Fear is a sticky thing,
And it will cling to them for life.

Potentially even yourself now. 

I seem to have lost my mind!

Peculiar, seeing as I had it as a child.

Mayhap’s my mother has misplaced it.

I’d doubt father even follows my belongings.

Perhaps between the many moves.

Scattered under every floorboard.

I miss my mind.

Colors awfully dull nowadays.

Even the clouds seem to drift away.

My body misses it the most, I’ve gathered.

Lashing out like a younger lad.

I’ve practically held my own arms down.

What a sorry state, am I without a mind.

I seem to have lost my mind!

Peculiar, seeing as I had it as a child.

Mayhap’s my mother has misplaced it.

I’d doubt father even follows my belongings.

Perhaps between the many moves.

Scattered under every floorboard.

I miss my mind.

Colors awfully dull nowadays.

Even the clouds seem to drift away.

My body misses it the most, I’ve gathered.

Lashing out like a younger lad.

I’ve practically held my own arms down.

What a sorry state, am I without a mind.

Remove thy goldened cup from myn darkened lips.

I have overfloweth with honeyed liquid.

Shame the dribble falling from myn chin.

Every drop my lord…

Please see myn thirst!

Do not stop pouring until quenched.

Let myn lungs fill with thy cup.

Grant me this.

Your majesty…

Remove thy goldened cup from myn darkened lips.

I have overfloweth with honeyed liquid.

Shame the dribble falling from myn chin.

Every drop my lord…

Please see myn thirst!

Do not stop pouring until quenched.

Let myn lungs fill with thy cup.

Grant me this.

Your majesty…

Winding roads disappear beyond the cobalt tree line.

Chattering chews on my attention.

Pale pallid fingers grip the wheel tighter.

Bottles jostle with each new bump.

Arms wrap their way around my shoulder.

Hazelnut hair now darker in the dim car,

Slowly brushes my cheeks tickling my nose slightly.

“Besides Carlson said that this place is even
more haunted!”

His voice is ecstatic but way too close.

With the delicacy of the wiper blades,

I shove him to the side forcing a laugh.

Rocks crunch under the slowly turning wheel.

My eyes drift to the silver slit above.

Both parties wear masks of curiosity.

Blue eyes accompanying brown bore into mine.

Suddenly my tongue is heavy with expectations.

Forcing air through my throat I let myself continue with the drive.

“Lots of activity. Mostly residual but some are saying there’s an intelligent entity too. Figured we’ve got the gear.”

Time took my words to let them ruminate.

McKenzie’s curly corkscrews jumped with each bump.

Pressed lips took their time to part.

“What kind of intelligence are they saying? Like call and response or full fanfare?”

Lights poured red into our heads as justice flipped the switch.

Daniel lunged like some pecking parrot.

Fingers found the disturbance.

“Guys! I’m driving! What is going on?”

A thought so sharp it sliced from my mouth.

The gangly man in the backseat smiled ever brighter.

Daniel’s fingers uncurled dropping the shiny red tube backseat.

Rocky mounds rose like buildings.

Their ragged peaks hidden by the sparse beam lights.

A sharp click followed by orange light prickling the corners of my vision.

Air rushes into the cramped cage,

With it comes clouds of dust.

“Dude, seriously?”

McKenzie was a hound latching onto my hidden thoughts.

“It’s just one before we get to hell.”

I could feel his smirk radiating behind my seat.

Daniel’s pearly teeth flashed almost as much as his eyes darting.

McKenzie’s eyes rolled with the wheels.

Momentarily they locked with my own and a smile tugged on her cheeks.

“Kenzie baby, who knows what awaits us! I want to be able to go out happy.”

A scoff escaped me before I was able to lasso it.

“There’s only been one death ever associated with the paranormal.”

A small chuckle seemed to move around the
cab.

“Wasn’t that guy like seventy though.”

The chuckle was promoted to full laughter now.

It burst from my own chest in waves.

Skeletal columns suddenly rose like a tsunami.

Vines varnished the onyx windows.

The balcony resided on the front porch,

It lay limp and broken scattered around.

“Looks haunted!”

Daniel dumbly announced causing small trembles.

“Looks doesn’t mean anything though.”

A voice of wisdom in this sea of excitement.

“One way to find out.”

\*Click\*

Winding roads disappear beyond the cobalt tree line.

Chattering chews on my attention.

Pale pallid fingers grip the wheel tighter.

Bottles jostle with each new bump.

Arms wrap their way around my shoulder.

Hazelnut hair now darker in the dim car,

Slowly brushes my cheeks tickling my nose slightly.

“Besides Carlson said that this place is even
more haunted!”

His voice is ecstatic but way too close.

With the delicacy of the wiper blades,

I shove him to the side forcing a laugh.

Rocks crunch under the slowly turning wheel.

My eyes drift to the silver slit above.

Both parties wear masks of curiosity.

Blue eyes accompanying brown bore into mine.

Suddenly my tongue is heavy with expectations.

Forcing air through my throat I let myself continue with the drive.

“Lots of activity. Mostly residual but some are saying there’s an intelligent entity too. Figured we’ve got the gear.”

Time took my words to let them ruminate.

McKenzie’s curly corkscrews jumped with each bump.

Pressed lips took their time to part.

“What kind of intelligence are they saying? Like call and response or full fanfare?”

Lights poured red into our heads as justice flipped the switch.

Daniel lunged like some pecking parrot.

Fingers found the disturbance.

“Guys! I’m driving! What is going on?”

A thought so sharp it sliced from my mouth.

The gangly man in the backseat smiled ever brighter.

Daniel’s fingers uncurled dropping the shiny red tube backseat.

Rocky mounds rose like buildings.

Their ragged peaks hidden by the sparse beam lights.

A sharp click followed by orange light prickling the corners of my vision.

Air rushes into the cramped cage,

With it comes clouds of dust.

“Dude, seriously?”

McKenzie was a hound latching onto my hidden thoughts.

“It’s just one before we get to hell.”

I could feel his smirk radiating behind my seat.

Daniel’s pearly teeth flashed almost as much as his eyes darting.

McKenzie’s eyes rolled with the wheels.

Momentarily they locked with my own and a smile tugged on her cheeks.

“Kenzie baby, who knows what awaits us! I want to be able to go out happy.”

A scoff escaped me before I was able to lasso it.

“There’s only been one death ever associated with the paranormal.”

A small chuckle seemed to move around the
cab.

“Wasn’t that guy like seventy though.”

The chuckle was promoted to full laughter now.

It burst from my own chest in waves.

Skeletal columns suddenly rose like a tsunami.

Vines varnished the onyx windows.

The balcony resided on the front porch,

It lay limp and broken scattered around.

“Looks haunted!”

Daniel dumbly announced causing small trembles.

“Looks doesn’t mean anything though.”

A voice of wisdom in this sea of excitement.

“One way to find out.”

*Click*