Worked my time away, all night to day paradox of my life to provide for the little ones I created birthed and held that expelled from my insides.
Seventy five years of my life spent not in stride as I huffed, ached, withered, broke beneath the weight of my mind reeling on easier ways to survive. This husk blood turning to dust lungs puff smoke and out cough choke crimson on napkin white now red rosed. I will not bend to this weak end to tie a bow atop my wretched head so I did something a fool off a cliff blind. Tales rounded towns edges of a place through the twisted vines up the endless stairs stories high atop the mountain past a cherry blossom tree lies a witch within a shrine who trades souls for favors, deals, gaunt belle geste.
I made that pilgrimage, went up old came down beautiful stunning. She granted me five years to run under the sun wild and young full of color and joy but she told me that this day she would deploy her hounds to take me to her and my soul wrenched from my rinds grinned and smoked in her voodoo magic pipe. At the time I didn’t care but here now I hear them barking. Clawing at the door, paws crackle leaves outside, inside everything covered in boards. They want me they will have to work for it that much is in store….
Abruptly creaked open my door shadows ran on the floor but no physical creature dwelled to hit or find purchase, specters, gremlins crowd surfaced me out in the pale moonlit expanse and I struck with fury and blows but air is all I felt on my knuckles and finger tips. This was it, my finale, through the vines up the stairs and past the cherry blossom they tossed me at her feet in the shrine. She look eye to eye asking if I enjoyed her gift. I winked with lips curled as I relinquished a blade from the bowels of the underworld in a holster on my wrist and sliced true that bitches throat, out bellowed black smoke her skin ribboned rolled ash and float away into the night. Though gone still echoed her cacophony shriek off the mountain, I hear it even now. I spent my five years learning how to cut you down.
