Beyond Bad.

A thick, grassy meadow whipped and curled in an oceanic breeze...and I could smell the salt in my nostrils. My hair whipped like the grass, I noticed, sitting on a molded stump and lighting my cigarette, to spit the smoke out into the wind. Things crunched around me; objects chirped above me: where was I? Was I always like this? A hiss across my ear: a sting on my neck: do the mosquitoes always bite people? why?

Slumping further on the stump, I let my lower jaw quiver. When I poked at my cheek, I had a wet finger. I was...crying, wasn't I?

The sky overhead, like a dirty pillow which prepares to stifle my last breath; mountains in the distance, prepared to bowl me over if I made the wrong step; even my beloved stump made me wet and slimy on my coat padding at the rump. When will it end? When will it...I peer ahead of me...remembering where I was going. Beyond Bad.

I get to my feet, inhaling the air at tremendous intervals; my heart thuds against me, wanting to push me ahead; teeth clatter, but my eyesight doesn’t flee me: up ahead is the marsh. I'm stumbling now; I'm tripping now, in my awkward and shuddering walk to wherever I am going. Come! Come to me!

Dropping cigarettes, spilling matches, breaking hidden, secretive bottles in coat pockets, I finally scrambled over to the marsh.

Come...to me.

Saliva.

Saliva drips.

Is it fast? I look up, and the teeth glimmer in the moonlight. The moon? When did I wake up?

A hissing, pulsating grumble of a thousand earthquakes makes my beard tingle and my eyes burst out of their sockets wanting to run away...

I asked it to come, didn't I?

Yes, but it was only in a dream.

What was my dream? Is this it, or is it something else?

AHHHH! it nearly sucked me into its mouth...

I'm scrambling to the barn now, diving through the large, soggy and destroyed twin set of doors, where one is hanging towards the ground, with a big bite out of it.

Come to me!

A large snout pokes through the door.

Saliva.

Saliva drips.

Take that! I've picked up a gardening tool, one used for trimming hedges, and I've stabbed at it, and it recoiled.

In my bravado, I slip because I do not dodge the mess on the swollen, wood planks of the barn.

I'm in the barn, aren't I?

Am I really?

I look outside, holding my head up gladly. I am outside: alive. Smelling....the air, the sea, and bog in the distance: long grass, hissing, hissing in the wind.

My friend comes by again, and nearly impales me with his claws, which grind, and slide out against my flesh, which is chilling, chilling me with fear. Of what? Of what?

What of it.

I'm fine. I'm...alive.

I catch a tail whipping across the grass, grazing with the scales against everything, and I feel the burst of impact upon my chest, where I am forced to let go of my gardening tool.

I'll lie on the grass for a moment or two...

Saliva.

Saliva drips.

Hot on the nape of my neck, yet chilling on my chin, as it digs in the dirt, the pile of feces actually, which I have sprawled into. I wish my friend cleaned up after himself once in awhile: good edacity.

Smelling his breath, I find that I no longer feel for him, my friend who should have been a better fella. Sure enough, he was going to drive me to ruin.

Noisily getting up, I watch his eyes flicker in front of mine, realizing for the first time how animal he was. I will have to ask myself about my life, why I clung onto a friendship that wanted so badly to put me between its teeth.

Friend, you are no friend anymore.

Saliva.

It drips across my face, and I realize it burns my flesh. I have to writhe away, but by that time I already feel the tail hit me away, and on the grass, I bleed, when the claws pierce me to the earth. Here I am in this: I am Beyond Bad.

Smoking the cigarette, I snub it out on the stump and I leave the marsh in a pile of smoke that I leave behind me as my body suddenly turns.