All photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
Creation
SHORT STORIES OF FEAR; THE BLIND ASSASSIN
A Short Horror Story.
I don’t remember what happened before, no clue as to who I was, what I was, but afterwards, everything that happened afterwards is a completely different story, because when you open your eyes after death, you discover a whole other way of living.
Tick tock, tick tock.
There is darkness mostly, she left me no eyes to escape the blindness but I can see when I want, when the need fills me. I see shape in sound and smell, these are my senses now, she left me those. Guilt, regret, remorse, those weaknesses have no part in what I’ve become. I’m no longer accountable to the standards Men hold as law. I am beyond law and now, as I’m technically dead, I’m beyond Man.
Tick tock, tick tock.
“I remade you, better than before. You were a drunk, a drug addict with no direction. No one gave a shit for you. You would’ve died one day, I just gave that day a name. You should be grateful, I’ve given you something greater than life; indestructible, eternal death among the living,” she declared that day, the first day of my everlasting existence, as I realised the horror of what she‘d done. I wasn’t human anymore, this was true. I would be unbeatable, also true. But she hadn’t given me eternal death, it was eternal damnation. I recognised her voice from somewhere before death, a sound bite on TV, a ranting about experimentation, radiation, creation; bringing heaven to earth. “I’ll build a world that will never need creation again, all will be eternal,” she’d bragged. I remember that. I’ll always remember that. She won’t, not anymore.
Tick tock, tick tock.
When I first awoke, to her recreation, I felt no pain at all, that came later, when I came to
understand what she’d made of me. She was my Frankenstein; she’d remoulded me from her miscreant mind. “Without sight you’ll see much better,” she whispered to my naked form, strapped to a gurney, as forceps wrenched my eyes from their sockets. “The tongue just teases you with taste,” she insisted, “this’ll teach you to taste from within,” and she snipped the tongue from my mouth with a blade, severing it from service with a single slice. Afterwards, she stitched it to the back of my neck, to remind me of all that was now behind me.
I was not a body of blood anymore, my veins had been drained, dried out like taunt twine that tore through my flesh from the inside out. My innards had been expunged, discarded, floor fodder for vermin to devour and they did, nightly, as I lay there, a monster metamorphosing. In my chest, empty of all organs except my heart, a machine of amorality maintained me, pumping a self-sustainable liquid through the little that remained of me; limbs that had been ravaged, a hand severed and replaced with a scythe, legs hacked at the knees, mounted on metal spikes while my manhood was slit, sliced and stuffed with the slivering tongue of a serpent, still hissing. I was a despicable demon, an envoy of evil, a punishment for a world that had dismissed her dreams of total autonomy as nothing more than an inhuman, unjustifiable, godless existence. I was her retribution. She believed I’d bring them all down for her but she misjudged who was master. A monster knows no master. A monster needs no master. Monster is master.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Monster let her believe she had control while she trained me, taught me to walk, to hunt, to appreciate the divinity of my own damnation. Monster appeared grateful to his creator and her darkness, monster acted thankful to his creator and her inventiveness until one day when monster stabbed his spikes into his creator’s feet as she leaned against the wall, smiling at the completion of her own genius. Monster smiled as his scythe slit her from nipple to neck and his one remaining hand reached inside her and disgorged the heart from her blood bathed body before her face even had time to register fear. Monster left her there, in her darkness, in that heartless body, further fodder for the vermin who’d already begun to sniff her out.
That was 4 years ago. I can finally admit I’m grateful to her. I’ve lived more in death than I ever could in life. I don’t need food or drink, don’t shit or sleep. I exist as if every day were the first, do you understand? Can you understand me now, now that I’m standing behind you, so close that your skin prickles with fear as I sliver my scythe around your neck?
You came looking for me, didn’t you? Foolishly searching the shadows for the monster you thought was myth. Well, now you’re truly the fool because this monster is no myth, nor a white knight. I am the Blind Assassin, devoid of compassion. She removed that from me when she raided my body of blood and being. Do you hear the ticking clock? Tick tock, tick tock. It’s inside me. It goes where I go. It counts down humanity while I continue on, slaying it. I feel nothing for you people anymore, nothing. And in a moment, you’ll feel nothing too.
And he was right. In an instant blood spewed from the gash in the human’s neck and splattered onto the glasses that covered Monster’s eyeless sockets and down onto his tongue-less, grinning mouth as the clock continued counting.
Tick tock, tick tock.
He’d killed his creator but he couldn’t extinguish the desire for revenge that she’d transplanted into his useless, still beating, eternally damned heart.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
HEMEROSCOPIUM
I
build
sentences
in the mind
that had no
existence before,
a platform to ponder
in a place that doesn’t
exist, in truth, until it’s been told.
I move through this hemeroscopium
like an architect building a house
into a home, unearthing light
to contrast the shadow
my thoughts have
been confined in,
a helix that
spirals out
from within,
that will return
and move on, return
and move on, up towards
that light turning transparent,
sentence into substantial structure,
considerations becoming concrete
clarities that form walls, fold out
into roofs that consider creation
compulsory, stories rising from
basements, tales spinning
off, casting reflections
upon the windows
of this place,
this mind
that watches
the sun rise and set,
time twist and turn, again
and again, the circles, always
the spiralling circles, even in a straight
sentence, even in a slotted surface.
I build spaces to house beds and
beams and bright lights to lie
before this tower of truth
and watch the visions rise
and fall, like the sun, like
the laughter, like life,
like tales, like
sentences
that never stop
while always changing,
an ancient arch now foundation
to modern moment, a true temple
of contemplation in this space holding
space, light and space, shadow and
space, sentence and space, space
between the sofa, space
between the
syntax.
All words and drawing by Damien B. Donnelly
Hemeroscopium is the place where the sun sets. An allusion to a place that exists only in our mind, in our senses, that is ever-changing and mutable, but is nonetheless real.
This is a repost for a week considering Creation
RUNNING THROUGH THOUGHTS IN A PARK ON AN ISLAND BY A RIVER IN PARIS
I slipped off to the edge of the city,
this morning, where the stream found a stillness
and the air a crispness that kept confusion at a distance.
I stood beneath the bridge
that took the traffic and its tension far from me
and found the swimming swan rising higher in the stream,
the follow-on from the floods that now seem so far
with these skies of blue, speaks of colour
in a park, on a Friday, in February,
where an artist once came to paint.
A park, in Paris, on an island,
by the Seine, where the waters wash with colour
when you look beyond the shadows, a new rise
basking in the glory of what was once regarded
as great, by those who regarded the value of greatness.
Straight and tall, shiny structures shoot up,
like soldiers, by a stream ever in movement,
ever following the route,
today’s design will be tomorrow’s sign
of an age the river has outrun.
I see trees towering tall in waters,
once rising, now falling, still strong, still weathering
the storm, still willing to be remembered, like an artist
captures beauty, captured beauty, in a park,
once, on a Sunday in a time since parted.
Nature is not in our control,
nature is willing to withstand all our wilfulness,
will not drown in these days of destruction,
will not worry, as we do, will not bend
but will let life flow around it,
in hope, in harmony.
In a park, on a Friday,
on an island, by the river,
in jogging shoes and sweatpants,
I ran through days already distanced
and tried to make connections between the road
winding onwards and the trees rising upwards, like the water,
rushing onwards like time, ever at play with its participants,
with all that it connects, with benches for the breathless
to recapture breaths and wheels
to help us follow the stream.
And in the windows
I saw reflections of those towering trees,
never to be forgotten, blue of sky in the beauty of light,
light and harmony, colour and shade, captured in what is new,
a hint of what knows the bounty of age.
And on the river, by the park, on a Friday, in Paris,
I stopped and saw my reflection in the gentle waters
and in the waters saw colour, colour and light,
by a boat, in a park, in a city ever changing,
where an artist came to capture it all on a Sunday,
a simple Sunday, not a Friday but a Sunday, searching
for something between the shadow and light,
between all that will fade and all
the rest that cannot stay.
All words and photographs of Ile de la Jatte famed by Georges Seurat by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost for a week considering creation and how it flows around us
DELICATE DESIRES
We dangle delicacies
(far from looking delicate)
to tempt the beasts
to play ferocious
for our pleasure,
for our entertainment.
We put money
on the beast
who can be more brutal
than the bunch.
We are intrigued
by the beasts
whose nature
we’ve changed,
caught and caged,
who we’ve tempered
and tamed
in our need
to remind ourselves
who is the man and
who is the beast.
We dangle delicacies
(desperately delicately)
on front of animals
so as not look at ourselves
and see the beasts
we’ve become.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a week of considering creation; creative, caged or carnal
TO COME CURIOUS
We take slow steps into the sweet water, watch the current
caress the dark rock, the volcanic roar no longer rupturing,
its rage now rocked to slumber by this single shore. I lose
my shirt to time’s tide and this shimmering sand, I lift it up
and feel the weight that washed over it as you turn to face
the vast ocean and wonder what the next wave will bring
upon us. We have crossed currents, trained through towns
and cut across mountains, we have laughed at sadness
and cried over cocktails, we have come so far to wade out
into these waters as locals watch us with questions of how
and why. We have come curious to this country, we creep
along its coast like this tide, rummaging over these rocks,
wondering what happened to the heat it once ran with
when man was more forgiving and the mountain more daunting.
We climb the dormant mount, once maker of molten menace,
to watch the sun swim up from the sea and we count minutes
till the darkness will be disregarded as if time is all that’s needed
to destroy depression, decay, dysphoria. This mountain, once
a monster the sea could not settle and land could not control,
this country, once more than a division of north and south,
of emperors and conquers, Confucians and Catholics, devout
and deserted. We were once more than single souls searching
for the way back. We are tides, coming and going along
these beds we find shelter in, arms wrapped around us
like seaweed we equally fight off and hold down, we are lava,
trailing tunnels through our own thoughts, destroying
what we think to be too much but never quite knowing
how to fill the hollowness that’s left behind. We take steps
down into the open earth, adding sweaters to our short sleeves
and I wonder why it grows colder the closer we get to the core.
Isn’t the inferno on fire anymore? Dante will be disappointed.
We look like ants crawling over cobbled rock as we curve
through these corridors created in centuries now cemented
into time and caress these walls and catch our breath
under cathedral ceilings created by no creature but by nature’s
creation. Deeper and deeper still and the silliness is replaced
by a silence in this place where the waters drip from porous rock
and we look smaller, less special, not so strong in this cave
carved by once molten rock, by lines of luscious lava
that laughed as its lungs opened and its power poured. Later,
back at the beach, the tide again tickles our feet as we stand
upon the rock that once before roared. We are equal parts
creator and equal parts responsible for all that we corrupt.
We have come curious to this country but find ourselves
asking more questions about who we are than of this coast
that will still be counted long after we have been smashed
upon our own current. We take slower steps through
the sweetness and my heart beats louder, longer, lighter.
All words and photographs of Jeju Island in South Korea by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost of a week considering Creation and our position within it.
WHEN THE EMPRESS IS REMOVED FROM THE EMPIRE
There is art on walls, winding walls,
in rooms on show with light, luscious light,
and climate controls while she’s side-lined
to the shadows to weep for the darkness
that devours her skin, stuck like tar
and trapped in stone, once tempered
by an artist’s touch now off and absent,
now long grown cold, not being of stone
but breaking bone, while she weeps
beneath polished position on partitioned
pedestal and waits in the shadow of his name
long forgotten from rooms alight with art
on walls, the art of other men,
maybe more remembered
like lands, once considered, now grown
careless in their unions next to nations
who have not nurtured the need to be
noticed for notions long ago set in stone.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of considering all sides of creation
GONE, THE GARDEN
Gone is the garden, we are paved now
in parts no longer potential to growth,
to goodness. And the crow caws
in the corner, flesh festering into feather.
Gone is the garden, we have paved paths
over all that was precious while thinking
thoughtless, if only we’d thought less
about what we wanted and more
about what was needed. And the crow
cowers in the corner, questioning
what has become of its celebrity.
Gone is the garden and we can never
go back; the lock now lost in lyrics
too light, in the songs surrendered
from all that was soul to just sold out.
Gone is the garden, gone to graze
over another galaxy not yet grown
greedy, we are now alien to all
the earth has asked for, strangers
to the simple sand that sweeps the shore,
and stranger still to the starlight
that shines through its last breath burning.
We are the crows, cawing over concrete,
in corners, claws cracking in our chaos
and confused as to where went the worth.
All words and drawings my Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost (from my Joni Mitchell series) for a week of considering creation
FANTASTIC FLUTTERINGS
On dull days
when the sun
absconds from sky,
when grey grinds
gloom into gutters
and mothers utter
‘stay inside’,
children’s minds
flutter to unfold
like umbrellas opening;
colours cascading
over concrete clutter
like candy to calm
a calamity.
In the midst
of the mundane
and the murky,
inspiration catches
on the canvas of creation
like wings willing
to cut through clouds
and gain the grace
of the sun.
Children’s minds,
so magnificent,
hold matter so magical
that ordinary moments
can become such
extraordinary miracles.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repot for a week of colourful imagination.
A SEAT BEFORE CREATION
Silent in her own darkness
she takes a place
by the canvas of creation
and before its stillness
she lets the light
pour over all
that has slipped
between the shadows.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of colourful imagination. Photo of La Fee Electricite by Raoul Dufy from Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris.
Damien B. Donnelly 