Venom [A Poem Written by Matthew Munsey] [Satire] [Horror]

The grating escalation of mania turned and thrust itself back towards him constantly now.

Lunging and chomping and spitting it’s undulating, poisonous bile. It watched as it’s viscous plasmatic refuse began to coagulate into a puddle of sputtering darkness, like the movement of one thousand petulant gadflies, tied to one another each with a string - and left to flounder, and to die - as one.

Empty and disillusioned by its requisite lack of hunger and drive, it sunk its wicked, ephemeral picks sweetly into his sickly, grey flesh - and clung there. dangling and purposeful, determined to demarcate the line in the sand between right and wrong - to show us all where we stood, before we even knew it ourselves.

It writhed and wriggled, the wounds it dug bleeding and washing it’s venom up and out, settling sickeningly into other parts of his body, into old wounds left from attacks before.

Bored and sheepish it dangled, and he left it to its work. Complacent enough to simply allow its presence, to allow it to dictate his next move. Just like they all were.

Until it loosened its’ jaws, and slowly dropped away - its lust satiated - for a time.

Until the hunger returned, and the need for it. The need for the thoughts to change again.

Until then - they’d wait, just like he did - for a reminder, of the pain.

For those clever mandiables to rend their flesh once more, and to spew their miasmatic venom throughout their brittle, but willing veins.

For their relationship was one of symbiosis. And of lust. And of greed.

Their eccentric purpose - like a thousand, pallid, impish whelps toiling away, swinging their short tempered ball peen hammers pinged and tinkering, their reticent sparks flying high into the dead still of the deepest night - was to shape us.

And we let them.

Because it was easier than doing it ourselves.