** | Ukiyo

      SKIN AND BONES, SHE BREATH       SKIN AND BONES, SHE PLEADS       SKIN AND BONES, SHE SCREAMS       SKIN AND BONES, SHE BLEEDS  Honey drips of warm hues kissing the peculiar giants, hugging the muddy earth with theirs twisted aged roots. Ancient icicle, no two are the same, anchoring, steady. A soft sparkle within the blues. Birds draped in velveteen raven wings of murk and gluttonous deer musk. And a towering Valuations canopy shielding. The disseminated hues still seep and trickle through the nicks and cranes of the leaves. Every twig and blade of green grows in effigy streaks. The rustle of leaves as still as a bust, the air is no more than gone. Birdsongs come in a mute utterance of a dazed trance. A rhythmless symphony and frightful harmony. Music with no sound, a silent melody. A scenery with no life. Veil of tenebrous gloom drapes the haunting forest in a quiver. Cracking the edges, and in fervor of a hasty drizzle, a dream so brittle it quickly shatters in a freaky dulcet rhapsody.  Swarthy, dingy darkness. Mischievous sombreness is what made her reality. The honey drips of a sunny hues no more than distant cascading sounds of a river. Alluring but far from reach. It swallows her whole, pukes and spits her out, where her body once was. as if her eyes were gouged, she swayed. Was she walking on a thread or was she floating? Were her legs even moving or was she rooted in her place? She wouldn't know. All senses and perception gone. No path to see and no sounds to her. Nothing to touch and none to feel. She was lost and she was not ought to be found. The fragments of her mind cluttered but fear was the bitter mugger, with its claws tracing her in a delectable sycophancy. A companion. She should've panicked, kicked, cried and screamed in fear of the void that was swallowing her whole. Eating at her sanity and feeding the demons that resided her mind. She would've ran for the light of the brittle dream only if this wasn't her demise of a home. She couldn't call it a nightmare. Even though it picked and nicked at her sanity, it didn't leave her presence when she was awake. She couldn't escape. This was her reality.  the small girl sat still staring into nothingness, as if she's a porcelain doll on a top shelf of a Chinese store. Chilly cold wisps of winds embraced her thin body like a blanket. Then the lurking fear, finally dug its claws into the depth of everything that she once believed in. It gripped her body like icy, liquid metal. At first, she couldn't pinpoint why would a constant companion dig its claws deep into her bones, but then she listened.   The whispers. The eerie silent void that she was accustomed to shifted and changed moulding into what she assumed were the illusions of her mind. Her demons. The tricks and games they loved to play.  first came the sounds. Like a soft brush of the wind and the gentle susurrations of the summer leaves far, far away in the endless, bottomless, obsolete darkness. Then came the long windy howls, like the screams of a banshee echoing, inching closer and closer. The girl's breaths picked up and cold sweat broke on her thin skin. The blood rushed all the way to her ears and for seconds, white noise was ringing through. Then came the crunches, the swooshing took her hair locks dancing in anything but a whiplash blending itself with the blackness surrounding her. Then everything intensified ten folds. The singular sounds, hissing, whining, moaning, grinding, murmuring, gasping, shrieking all moulded together scratching at her brains like steely nails on a chalk board. She clasped her jaw, gritting her teeth and lifted her bony arms to shield her ears from the unnatural, inhumane, unearthly guttural sounds.    Her heart leapt in its cage like a wild animal and fear started to envelope her in its cold dark cape. Eyes shut, hands fisted above the sensitive shells of her ears, and frail body trembling like a leaf in a storm. The fear that was crawling through her insides kept bubbling up, lips wide open in a scream. Blending into the clutters of noise and swallowed by the endless void.  Hot tears burned her eyes as they streamed down her ashy skin. Skin probed by thick but wiry vines. Encroaching around her limbs and piercing through her skin. Lifting her body, moving it like a marionette until she was forced down, lying on her back. Each vine wrapped around her wrests and ankles until they were burning from the friction and making room for blisters and scratches to adorn her otherwise, healed scarred skin, preparing her for her daily routine.  The vins kept snaking around her skin, tightening, preventing her escape. Which was as far fetched as this endless abyss. How could someone escape their own mind and body and soul, the things that made up her cage and trapped her in. Her only escape would be under the hooded veil of death. How it would caress her with its ashen, cold embrace. A touch of a devil that is softer than that of the sinners. Sinners, sinners, sinners, oh how they loved playing the saints and be the winners.  The cold hands of death she was taught to fear and despise would be warmer to her than the horrendous, abhorrent touches of monsters. And humans they were not. They were nothing but rabid creatures driven only by voracity to live, but living isn't their end purpose nor will it ever be. Every soul is living, suffering, breathing, barely surviving on despair and afraid of the sweet embrace she most desires. But this despair manifests itself deep within their entity feasting on their fears and anxieties shredding and stripping them from any sliver of humanity making them but an empty vessel. Filling them with hunger only to feed them poisonous wants and black traces of ink dark intents. Just like the drop of an ink, merely staining then it trickled and swept. Not an ounce of a conscious soul is left. And if there were some then it was quick to devour and swallow until nothing but darkness filled them in. Black might turn grey, but it never goes back to white it only gets darker. Each one becoming a hollow ghost town of their own frightful, vicious voracities and demands exceeding the simple need of barely surviving. Wishing to escape the hooded figure of death. Trying to defy all sacred laws of earth, heaven and hell, and all that's in between. To cheat death. Trading his scythe for the king's scepter. For the bitter pleasure of ruling and controlling.  The tyranny, the cruelty, the anger, the hatefulness and the total and absolute madness severing all ties to the once merciful, untainted human souls of them. Blood running black. Mortality is what they detest, and immortal longevity is what they desire. And petty worthless lives of innocence are what they step on and break to get a mere lick of it's devilishly tempting, gluttonous taste.  And she was unfortunate enough to witness it all. The invisible curtains that one only get to peel its layers to witness the viciousness of this world, she got it it ripped wide open first hand. A naive and clueless child. But oh what a descendant of death has this child become. A staggering, yet a deadly plague. One none could resist. The white dress of white that once was, draws you in like a beautiful mountain laurel draws it bees. Promises of honey so sweet, a palatable, delectable poison. And if you were blind then she's like the rosy petals of amaryllis, the naked lady, the flower that draws you in with its lovely smell, one breath, two breaths, three breathes, more and more till you drop dead. And fear her cause she's a bloodroot calling upon sweet slumber. And for the bulkiest of men and monsters, they would fall and crumble like an Aconite's venom. Making death the most merciful giver.  But what would death grant her that she hasn't already seen, lived and been through?  What difference would it make for her to leave one pit of darkness just to be thrown into another?  If that's the case. If that is all her life is about. Then why was she born?  When each one is born they are given a reason to live. But her, why was she born?  Was it to be tormented by these creatures that are blinded and driven by greed and lust that dictated her life into mere game of survival, merely existing?   This is nothing but a playground, where the sinners are playing saints. Picking her apart then putting her back all at the wrong places. Losing a piece of herself each time she's spread open and picked apart like a machine then huddled back once again. Skinning her alive and stitching her back with tethering seams.  The familiar fiery burns above her heart begun licking at her whole body spreading like a wildfire. As if she was thrown in a pit of scorching white fire. Her skin burned and sizzled. The tangy smell of her blood mixed with her melting skin suffocated her. Even though the pain was familiar, she never got used to it. Black slimy liquid begun painting her protruding veins seeping through them and out of her dark lips until her insides felt like it would burst if the acidic material didn't find and escape. She felt like she was eating her guts as it pushed itself up through her throat and into her mouth. Like a hot lava she choked and gurgled as she heaved the venomous liquid out of her body. And as the panic override the pain she fell down the pit of darkness. One different than the chaotic void where she was just terrorised and tortured. One that is eerily silent however not less vicious than the previous. A murky darkness, where the demons of her mind lived and welcomed her. They were her only acquaintances. Her only company. Even if they sharpened her razor edged nerves with poisonous thoughts. And fed the loneliness that was eating her heart leaving in it awake a barren, empty ghost town. In a way it was more comforting than this reality, toxic but at least familiar to her.   She screamed at her mind to snap out of its rotten, wicked trance. To wake up and ameliorate the growing wounds. To bandage her scars with oblivion or rather, forgetting every sorrow and ache. Be it happy or sad, nobody forever stays. That's the rule of life. She didn't want forever. She just wanted out. She wanted to escape this eerie odd life, that is nonchalant to longing and nostalgia. Every breathing soul only thinking about their damned selves, tardy to none.  She prayed for her life. She prayed for the scars on her body and soul. For the unshed tears, misery and pain. She prayed for a haven. For the sweet bliss death will grant.  but even that she couldn't chase and be granted the relief of.  The touch of evil in a wicked twisted fate, she cries a hymn of tragedy.  The thick vines rose above her, briars twisting and turning transfiguring into a golden thistle. And even though the earthy twigs weren't supposed to look so evil, vicious and sharp. It morphed into just that. Blooming out of mirth and blasphemy. The woven bramble head swayed in a way as if taunting her. Moving backward to gain momentum before preparing to pierce through her heart. To try and tear her open. As if her chest was one of treasure. A pandora box. And like that, the mass that is their weapon dove right into her. Cutting through the air with a harsh strike. And plunging its toxic bramble where her heart laid.   Mouth opening in an eternal scream.                  SKIN AND BONES, IN THE DARKNESS           SKIN AND BONES, ON HER BACK          SKIN AND BONES, INK IN BLURS          YET ANOTHER ONE