Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Where the Road Ends

Do you doubt my ability to recall every detail, exactly as it was,

that night at the end of the road?

Perhaps if you know more about me:

I was raised in squalor by neglectful parents.

I taught myself by watching.

So, as a good student of life, I etched in my brain what occurred that night,

down where the road ends.

Past the grass and broken windows,

they showed me things I’d never seen or heard of.

I was transformed.

Impaling her between her thighs,

the hook cracked out through her sternum—but that came later.

I imagine those who will read what I’m telling you now

will be anxious to know whose body that was.

The same curiosity brought the others there, though, and brought me. 

We wanted to know who would be chosen.

Grandfather called us,

guided us to meet him at the place where he would choose among us. 

And we came.

He’d whispered to us each of the ordeals we must complete before coming,

bringing severed bits to show.

Carrying my box of proof, I set out on the road. 

In the woods along the way were skeletons of wrecked cars.

People in the dark shacks on either side peeking at me

would’ve seen a stumbling, gray-skinned beanpole.

Once, I was shapely, vivacious, before the addiction. 

I’d be dead if not for Grandfather’s guidance.

Coming to the end of the road, beyond,

I heard the ugliest grandchild singing, strumming out an old ballad.

There, we all looked in one others’ stricken faces, boxes at our feet. 

We puzzled over who’d be chosen.

To become his grandchildren,

we’d each murdered our birth parents and anointed ourselves in their blood.

When he freed me,

his unearthly shadow had bent to whisper how my murders made me his.

As did I, so did the others, all with the same withered looks: 

we opened our boxes and looked into them.

That’s when I recognized her, standing across from me: an old lover. 

I’d not known she was one of us.

She saw me too, and the fear was in her eyes. 

Carnal knowledge between grandchildren is forbidden.

We laid out our offerings: pieces of our parents. 

We looked up. 

Grandfather was there. 

He asked us to choose.

Believe me: my former lover, she chose herself,

out of fear I’d let slip the truth—it wasn’t me.


concept art