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presenters.
for a lifetime achievement of nothing
Dark-lined eyes sunken into the stretched leather faces, scrolled upon them in harshly scrubbed lines are the withers of fifty summers,
Atop them sits medically attached fake lashes, ones they'll claim are of course their naturals with just a little mascara,
The scars left from the plastic surgeries are the most authentic and honest thing in the entire room as it's descended on by it's pompous and beloved, with more plasticine adorning them than they have blood within the vapid jackals,
So of course they're sure to hide it all, to remind themselves: don't smile too bright, you'll get a laugh line if you cackle!
Oh, and then, what else would you be, if not held in a designer dress, enveloped by it's tight bodyshaping caress?
If you didn't get a place at this show? To stand alongside ones who might as well be your clones, as for each other you all clap in empty awe, follow routines, bow and bellow,
All stood haughty on your dagger heels with coffin-shaped nails,
Doing all you can to turn back time and celebrate what little you've done with it so far,
Oh yes, darling, I'm 84 and the coffin's mine, but I've got a real great surgeon,
Could you believe I'm a day over 64 and my doctor said even now I'll still feel like a virgin?
About the Creator
Tommy Ballard
I'm a professional writer, a poet, a digital artist and an amateur musician. In my free time, I can often be found pondering magnets, breaking and entering random homes to steal locks of human hair and throwing car batteries into the ocean.
Reader insights
Outstanding
Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!
Top insights
Compelling and original writing
Creative use of language & vocab
Easy to read and follow
Well-structured & engaging content
Excellent storytelling
Original narrative & well developed characters
On-point and relevant
Writing reflected the title & theme
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More stories from Tommy Ballard and writers in Poets and other communities.
At the Sheltering Doors
The doors, they always scrambled for the doors first. When they arrive and always by night it was a race to desperately bar the creatures entry to the house in the slow crawl of numb feet that the dream would impose upon him. He never seemed fast enough and the creatures uninhibited by the same constraints always made the doors first. The houses in his dream-scapes vary night to night - Some are mansions, others shacks and some are distorted contortions of his childhood home which burned down when he was ten. But the doors are always the same – frail, loose hinged and never could be fully shut. The creatures too vary – twisted and corrupted forms of animals and people familiar to him: family dogs preternaturally swollen to twice their size with rotting coats of mange and slicked damp with dark liquids of decay. The people too were bloated vestiges of ones vaguely familiar to him but whose names escape him. Their eyes gorged wide with dark blood which streaked their mottled faces in crusted trails like lost rivers which hung from their chins swinging in ropy columns beneath paling yellowed teeth. To let them break through would mean death. This he knew with grave certainty. At the door was desperation and panic as their stench emanated forth, sickly and pungent like vomit and mold and ending in a gruesome exhalation like cancer, the stench sticky and clinging invading his nostrils and lungs never to be expunged. Then in the sudden waking he never knew if he repelled them or not.
By Kevin Rolly4 days ago in Horror
Comments (1)
Tommy, this is an absolute masterpiece. I am astounded as always by the flow of your words. WOW!