A castle creeps along a barren desert,
Slithering on it’s marble tendrils,
Writhing in irritation,
and Reforming architecturally in gelatinous fashion.
It dares entry.
Was that my name I heard,
Drinking me towards the drawbridge’s empty gullet,
Or does the wind siren an oncoming storm?
It bears no weight,
Without a step I am already trapped,
Steel teeth snap and guard their wooden gates.
A gangly creature in manicured garb
Captures my hand in six (or was it seven) digits
And leads me through a hall of pinned butterflies
Growing larger and more vibrant the deeper we venture.
Shadowed under a Morpho’s wings
I am blinded.
We descend downwards,
Stairs disintegrating in my wake.
Without word or gesture, without sight,
I know the creature beckons me to our terminus.
I am granted a distorted afterimage
Of a leviathan corpse curled around me,
And so I crawl beneath it’s sternum and lay.
“We are children of rot.” calls the creature.
“We are children of rot.” calls the leviathan.
“We are children of rot.” calls the castle.
“I am a child of rot.” I concede.