That starved Land

It’s an ugly place. Where only ugly people go. Where broken glass and rusty tins lie on the floor. It’s a terrible mess. There’s blood on the floorboards. And bones from long-dead birds. There’s rusty tangled chimes in the rafters. They make strange noises. There’s dust from small things and big things and parts of broken stones and parts of machinery and from inside thoughts that are broken out of skulls.

You don’t want to go there, my friend.

It’s an old place full of dangers. You don’t know when that half starved shadow can rise up to strangle you until you’re choking and screaming silently.

Please. Don’t go there. It’s desolate and lonely. The sun is an obscure vague hazy thing and everything is grey. The earth is dead. There’s other things there too, big fat bloated thoughts that cloud the sky and threaten to shower the land with a toxic sludge. The sky heaves and heaves but nothing comes out, except a dribble of oil that clings to the clouds and falls to the earth like dry spittle from old men with wrinkled eyes.  Wounds here quickly becomes infected with a disease that rots the heart. Soon you will roll on the floor in fevers. Deep inside there’s a swamp, where much more terrible things await. Fat, wet creatures who hold their long fingers close to their faces. They slither in the water and make small slurping sounds as they go underwater. They grab ankles and wrists and wrap their bodies around you and pull you down. Their scales are as hard as steel and they scream quickly as they pull you under. The sound echoes sharply over the marshes. The mist creeps quietly into dead trees to ponder.

This is place where people die. Where brave men learn that courage is nothing. This is the place where the half-starved shadow lurks.