Tristan Robert Lange

Skeleton Key

My abode—

A victorian vacuum—

Is a voracious vampire.

Its fangs, pillars of pain, sink into the synaptic mesh—

Forming an dreadful, damnable, dooming doorway.

Within, the foyer gorily greets

With autophagic consciousness.

A grand staircase winds upward; the attic—

Cobwebbed and dust-blanketed, filled with

Repression’s ruin,

Each box, draped painting,

A portal to perpetual punishing pain.

Below, the bedrooms of bedlam

Bring tormented dreams—

Restlessness remains.

Windowless, wind creaks each board—

Destruction is this spire’s shaky sound.

The main floor—only foyer and stairs—

Leave little option for movement—

Vertical valet is the only way—

The ascent leads harrowed hope,

The descent—

A fall into a

cylindrical cellar—

Delivers with

dramatic drop

Into a populated

Prison where

Cannibals eat from

The inside out.

An abode of

Abomination,

Constructed

Without hope

Of any real

Deconstruction.

Death comes slowly

Down in drips

Of dew, moisture,

To tenderize flesh

And to preserve parched pain.

Escape is elusive—nay—it never comes.

Once locked away, the cold chamber

Changes fast into a furnace of fury,

Where hell’s damnation delivers

Dreadful, dastardly, dominating

Torment only killed by definite

Encephalon expiration and

The dealings of death.

Originally published on tristanrobertlange.com, August 25, 2025.

Tittu