Trying something totally different here… the open mic night I attend is doing a Spooky Slam tonight, so we’re supposed to have ghost-inspired, supernatural kind of work.

 

This can’t be real. The baby he–

he–can’t be

But there he is, right before her eyes…

Blond hair disappearing into reddening flesh,

horns sprouting from eyebrow ridges

his baby blues turning into deep pools

of blackness that threaten to consume.

Rattling, rasping cries, screeches somewhere

between a raptor and a hound’s bay

echo in her skull.

A chubby-fingered hand reaches toward her

morphing into a pustule-covered mass of flesh

that causes her to shrink away.

A hiss, behind her, stills her rapid heart and

cuts off her breath.

She doesn’t want to turn around.

Her first born stands in the doorway his

tongue forked like a serpent, his eyes blackened.

The devil is in her house.

It all went dark and now

she stands on the lawn and looks back at the flames.

Pain causes her to double over.

Her shoulder blades writhe beneath her skin and

tear through flesh. Wings

sprout, and glisten

in the firelight.

The flames rage. The devil is trapped there.

She runs, leaps, and

She flies.

The next morning, the headline in the paper reads:

Mother of two burns home with children inside

Runs into highway traffic. Killed instantly.