Just Another Delusion

The worm-thing leapt and clamped onto my throat. 

Its yard-long body thrashed in the dark.

They’ve said it’s just another of my delusions, but you have to believe me.

The nanny, the one who used to recite her eerie poems, once took me for a walk. 

She led me into a shed.

She told me she wanted to introduce me to a friend

she’d found again after years of searching.

The windows were dark, and the inside smelt of old meat. 

I wondered what kind of friend could live there.

Since that day, I’ve had trouble keeping memory separate from imagination. 

Now they’ve committed me.

But I tell you, that thing took a part of my mind. 

I could feel it laughing at me, at all of us.

The Benefactors

We see through the eyes of the villagers, feel their sentiments,

control their actions.

The pharmacist’s daughter,

straining over a chemistry text, hoping for a scholarship:

we see it all inside her.

And we feel the aging mayor’s lust

as he spies on her from his office across the way, through his blinds.

In other villages, we ended things by inducing blood orgies,

sweeping arson, catastrophic collapses.

But such climaxes left us wanting.

Instead, we’ve decided to weave a beneficial outcome for this village.

Searching through the details of their lives stored in their skulls,

we puzzled over how to help them.

We finally chose to freeze them in an eternal loop of placidity:

the pharmacist’s daughter forever hoping, forever lusted after.

Hide & Shriek: a Board Game