The Zombie Within

See her for the squirming leech she is! Lay’n in the dirt where she belongs. Beg’n for mercy. Hopin’ and prayin’ her writhing soul will be withheld from my burning revenge.

Don’t you be fooled; she’s lay’n in the filth for a reason, …an’ it’s a damn good one!

As I look down upon her, I feel slow-burning fury swell up in my unhurried heart. “Stop those tears, witch!”

Reaching down, I can’t help but hold her bruised face tightly between the dead flesh of my gripping fingers, forcing her eyes to look into my own milky-white orbs.

I desire to crush her.

I desire… for her to feel so much overwhelming pain that she might beg me to end her.

As I whisper my spite, it saddens me that my voice, although now finally released from her inflicted silence, has suffered through decay and lack of use and now sounds like the gasping of a man on his deathbed. “Where was my mercy, witch? When did YOU ever let MY pain sway YOUR mind?”

Closing her eyes and released from my grip, she does nothing but weep into the dirt. Balling herself up amongst the clumping wet reeds, I hope this bride of Satan is pray’n my heart ain’t as salted as she’s made it be.

“Phft.” Disgusting beast, pay her and her whimpering no heed; she’s the devil in a dress.

Lookin’ at her through my milky vision, I realise how far I have come in such a short time.

Never thought I’d be able to set myself free from her corruption.

Never supposed I might.

And she never dreamed I could!

Like all power-hungry fools in the world, her dark control lulled her into a false belief that no one could harm her. No one would dare, for she would set me upon them. Her creation of darkness.

Her le mort vivant.

Dead doll-man.

Maybe I ought to thank her for overlooking me for so long!

I guess now, hav’n been dragged from her bed in the middle of this cold night, she lives to regret underestimating me… but not for long!

You may think me heartless for the coming violence. And I apologise; this is not of my nature. But heartless, well, a few days ago, you would have been very right. I had no heart. I had no life. I had nothing, and she had it all. All of my everything, my heart, my life, my soul, was kept in a small wooden box filled with salt and buried under an old cypress tree deep in the forgotten swamp.

It's funny what slow dead feet can kick up from the rising and rejecting Mother Earth.

Now come see.

Look at what freedom has created!

Look at what I have made with my own free will!

Such sculpted beauty from mud and twigs. From stolen and forgotten things.

Never on their own did they have any worth. Just like I, these mislaid matters were previously nothing but dust an’ pain held together with mud and dried blood.

But when connected and coupled, joined and attached, my sculpted autonomous man breathes with swamp magic.

With old magic!

My doll-man!

My desire!

We two are monstrous and unnatural, heeding only to the control of another.

Their bidding, our will.

Their wants, our only need to fulfil.

Their vengeance… our lifeblood.

But not for long. Soon, with the help of the other, one of us will be free from their owner.

“Here, witch, look at my earthen man before you! Look at his arms of twisted branches and vines. See all the stolen moments of your life woven into his limbs.

Just like the way you stole my moments of life.

Does seeing the essence of your being, your cast-away belongings embedded in my creature’s dead arms, fill you with dread?”

I watch as she takes in my sculpture; her falsehood of tears has stopped and dried under the heat of her fear and growing anger.

With a voice full of spite and vicious words honed through practice into razor spikes, she speaks whilst smiling that smile, which I hate with every dead cell in my body. I cannot bear to see her arrogance, so I turn and seek comfort in the beauty of my man.

“What, you think your swirls and twirls of dried cracking mud can control me? That your ugly, rough, dirt-covered stick man has more clout than I? You… think you have more power than I? A dark witch, dead man! That’s what I am. HA! You, like your mud and twigs, is nothing but refuse!”

“You here, ain’t you, witch?” The face of my sculptured craving was caressed gently with dried fingertips.

Behind me, a cold cackle escaped from her bruised throat, “In you dirty, putrid little swamp, where you has lived your entire existence with the frogs and toads. Where the catfish glide through your empty gut. And the worms wriggle through your brain. Oh, yes! Yes… dead man, you has power over me.” She laughs to herself, kicking out at me and my beautiful monument with her bare, dirt-covered feet. “Don’t forget who put you here… who’s kept you here in this stinking and rotting place all these long years.”

A gentle breeze flitters through the trees, rustling their branches, leaves and draping moss. How long has it been since I could pay attention to the wind?

The thought of its deprivation fuels my hatred. Snarling like an angry caged dog turning on its master, I bite. “I know EXACTLY who put me here, witch! That’s something I’ve NEVER forgotten.”

She sniggers again.

Lightening strikes through my movement as a slap to her face rings an echo through my body.

This is what it is to feel… rage!

Once more blessed by her pain, I turn and fuss over my creation, waiting for the witch to scrap herself off the wet ground. My gently woven sculpture gives me the ‘power’ I need. One more step, and I claim back all that was ripped from me.

I will bind the witch’s magic and flesh to my own dried carcass and her life essence to my creation. This will give the balance that Mother Swamp desires. Take a life, an’ give a life.

Murmuring, “An eye for an eye” to my man. My own smile begins to crack dead, dried, and mummified skin. “A tooth for a tooth.” Gently, I stroke my monument to desire as its branches and twigs crack under the promise of life. I look at the witch, who watches wide-eyed as I stroke every mud-covered vine-twisted limb. And then I whisper just loud enough for her to hear, “A life for a life.”

“You has no life ‘dead man’. Or had you forgotten?” The witch pulls at her hand’s tight bindings.

“I have not forgotten. Not in all these twenty years.”

She laughs once more with sulphured tones.

“Aww, you poor babe. At least your heart can’t break, kept safe in my box of salt. Did it hurt you, zombie, watching your lover take another man on? Do you ever sit in your swamp, dead man and long for her caress, her children to be your own? His happiness of her flesh to be yours?”

Calmly, I utter, “My heart is not in a salted box, witch!”

That shut her mouth.

“Now, now dead man, it never did anyone no good to lie. Remember, that’s what I told you when you said you didn’t love me.”

It’s my turn to snigger. “I’m not lying, witch. My heart is here.” With stiff fingers, I pull back my ragged shirt and peel the grey and bloodless skin from my ribs, showing her my heart once more back where it should be.

Her look of fear was nothing in comparison to the one she gave when my dead, dried heart took a slow, rotten beat.

“What magic is this?” her feet scrambled at the wet dirt, trying desperately in vain to get herself into a position of safety.

“This is old magic. Eye-for-an-eye magic. This is, witch, ‘Swamp Magic’!”

Realising what I’m about to do, the dark witch begins to struggle as she attempts to shield her face from me.

It’s to no avail; what will be will be.

Brushing her hands out of the way, I turn her face once more in my rough, bony hands; as she scrapes at my fingers, I run my thumb up her cheek to her watering eyes. “You know nothing of love, witch. I have watched her, that much is true. But no pain was derived from seeing her bare children and embrace love. Why would I desire her to be alone? I loved her! Loved in a way you would never understand.” Satan’s whore calmed as I brushed her skin with my own remnants. “She was my soul mate and very best friend. My sister-heart.”

My smile grew, cracking my chin’s dried flesh, as the witch looked up at me, her blue eyes wide with the hope of last-minute mercy.

“Maybe, witch, you should have used your eyes more wisely while you still had them both because then you would have understood why she was my sister-love and why I could never, ever love you!”

And then I dug my thumb deeply into her eye socket.

Scream’n and kick’n, lashin’ out with her heels to my shins as I took from her head the precious and desired bauble, ignoring her clawing fingers in the process.

To my delight, her pain echoed out through the dark and swaying trees.

I heed not to her bellows.

Why should I?

She never heeded my screamin’!

As gently as I could …with dead fingers, I placed her eye into my sculptured man, giving him a tender kiss on the cheek as I did. I feel happy knowing each moment brings me closer to my full release.

Another feeling had now been reintroduced to my empty corpse.

If I had lungs, I would have been breathless with anticipation!

I wait, watching the mud eyelid of my fashioned creature. A flicker, a moment of possibility passes and then, to my great delight, the lid opens, and I am face to face with my… equal.

A breathing sculpture of enslaved desire.

“Witch,” I cast my gaze to her crumpled form, “You murdered me and enslaved my soul into rotting flesh because you wanted my love. You wanted me so badly you couldn’t see you were the last thing I would ever want.”

My fingers traced the beauty of my creature's glorious, strong body, and as I did so, I continued to voice everything that had been brutally silenced for so long.

“You were blinded, witch. So blinded by your selfish obsession, you couldn’t see my friend was the only living being who accepted me for who I was. Just how I was. You deprived me of her and she of me. No longer could I speak to the only person in the entire world who would listen to me with no judgment. I loved her because she loved me. The real me!”

Another slow beat of my heart wracked through my body as I turned once more to the shuddering woman.

“So now, witch… a tooth for a tooth!”

Sobbing, she looked up and spat at me. Blood from her blackened eye socket drives in rivulets down her cheek to her wet, quivering lips, now stained with little bubble rubies.

I laugh as she repeats her mantra of refusal over and over.

As if that would ever stop my revenge.

“Ha!” So, this is what jubilation feels like. I had forgotten so much.

“Come now, witch, you have a mouth full; surely you can spare one?”

Once more, like a god, I brush aside her refuting hands and squeeze her jaw till I hear a bone crack. Her sweet agony douses my heart in jubilation. Grabbing her front teeth, I pull and pull till her gum and teeth part with bone.

“Yes, witch, Yes!”

A wild animal buried deep within her reaches the surface, screaming out her agony, joining my laughter in a cacophony of despair and joy.

I begin to hum a long-forgotten tune whilst into my sculpted man’s mouth above the twigged tongue, the tooth shards go. Then, they are quickly smearing over with more mud till I form handsome lips.

His blue eye above, watching my every move.

A gentle kiss is placed on his nubile lips.

Once more, the breathless wait takes hold. Every second, an hour in my mind, giving no relief until his mud mouth moves into a smile, then a grin wide with teeth just poking through the gap between his lips.

Such beauty, I have never beheld before. His graceful earth-shaped features fill my dried heart with a deprived craving.

We are now so close. So very, very close. Once more to the…

She was gone, into the shadowed swamp, runnin’ like a rabbit with a hungry hound on her tail.

A sigh echoed out from my empty rib cage, filling the landscape with frustration as I bellow. “Always make’n it harder than it should be.”

The bone-wearing tiredness of this long life coloured every syllable as I hollered out to her, “What was it you said to me, witch when I begged you for my life? What was it now… Ah, yes. There is no escaping your future. What will be must be!”

It only took a nod, and my sculpted man was off, running with the noise of a gale through the swamp. After her, unrelenting in his task.

I waited as still as stone before barely a minute went by until her desperate, high-pitched screams echoed out over the still waters of the bayou

Nodding, I knew she could not escape the swamp. How could she? My sculptured man was the swamp. All its essences and forgotten things combined into every fibre of his being.

It didn’t take long for her to be dragged back, pulling and kicking at my construction with slashing fingers and cannoning feet.

Standing before me, writhing witch in hand, my handsome creature’s mouth parted as the wind whispered through his body. From him, carried on the gentlest of breeze, was the voice of the Mother Swamp.

“Do now what you wish, child of Damballah, but who do you want to be? A revenge-filled and hateful man brought down by a vicious, unrequited love? A keeper of a trapped soul within a sculpted man of my mud and trees? Would you really do unto another that what has been done to you?”

Rage led a fiery trail through my desiccated veins. With all the agony dealt me, I bellowed, “WHY? Why do you come to me now, Mother? WHY?”

My creature grinned, his beautiful smile creating exquisite pain within my dried heart. Slapping his face, I shrieked as a lifetime full of torture sliced away at my heart’s dried flesh.

“Mother, I have suffered in searing agony these last 20 years, and you never came to me! Not once, whilst she tortured me! NEVER as she danced upon my agony, did you EVER come to me. And I begged for you. I begged to be taken. To be released. To be given the chance to say a last goodbye to my love. So, why, Mother, WHY do you come to me now?”

“Because you are better than the witch and her revenge. Just like your man, you now have me in every fibre of your being. Why would I let you become that which you despise the most?”

If I had but the ability to cry, tears would have streamed from my broken heart to burning eyes, “Because I need REVENGE! I need her to bleed! I need her to know my pain! I need to feel it!”

“Why?”

My voice broke with honest truth, “Because of what she did to me! What she took from me! What she deprived me of.”

“Will revenge give that back to you?” rustled softly from his beautiful mouth.

“Never! NEVER can I have my life back. Never can I speak to my love again. Never can I have what was ripped out of me. But that filthy squirming evil bitch… SHE deserves to know MY agony!”

“Yes! And you deserve to be free of it!”

Pointing an angry finger at the cowering witch, I cried, “HOW? If I do not inflict upon her what she inflicted upon me! How will I be sated when she gets to walk this earth, and I DO NOT!”

“You simply walk away from her. Away from her ways. Away from her control over you.”

My sculpture let the witch’s hand fall down to the ground.

“You were drowned in my waters. Over and over, year after year, submerged into my depths. And as this occurred, dear heart, you became what your doll-man already is. My child, let her pain over you go! You will then forever be free.”

Falling to my knees, I sobbed dust tears into my leathered hands. “And what Mother does she get? What happens to her?”

My adored creation looked down, smiling at the stilled witch and then at me as he caressed my matted hair, “She is deprived of you, unable to own you anymore! Losing what she desires the most – your pain. Knowing you are at peace and in love without her! That Zombie will give her more pain and never-ending agony for the rest of her life than you could ever inflict upon her in one day.”

An angry bellow erupted from the Witch, “You are nothing without my magic, dead man. If you won’t be mine, then you’ll be no more!” Grasping her hands tightly, a burning sensation flowed over my skin, searing every nerve as the witch began to chant her spell of fire.

A quiet and calm “No” was the only word from my Mother Swamp as the witch fell silent, ripping with clawed hands and wide eyes at her stifled throat. “Witch, you had a chance. Now, your magic is returned to me where it rightfully belongs.”

And then she was dead.

A life for a life.

My life!

My freedom.

My sculpted love extended his hand to me, helping me rise from the dark, saturated mud.

“We, the swamp, can give you rest and release. Let me wash the salt from your heart.” His own voice was like the rumbling thunder from an afternoon storm.

My statue of beauty leaned forward, gently placing the only requited kiss I had ever known on my dried, dead lips.

As we sank, together, back into our Mother, I, for the first time, felt...

True Love!