fear

CALLING

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Boys came calling after school,
sometime between six and eight,
before the summer- longer days
under the swell of frustration.

Boys came calling after school,
halting homework and hunting,
looking to come closer to a truth
but I held mine firm, in the door-
halfway, me half in, half confused
as to what they wanted, intrigued
as to who they thought I was.

Boys came calling after school,
before the summer- longer days,
stifling nights, sticky like glue-
like adhesive that never stuck
to the right surfaces as I beat
myself into a form I’d never fit.

I wanted to open the door,
to the boys who came calling,
to accept that some could be
sincere after so much shame
but I was afraid, at that time,

of who exactly might come out.

   

All words by Damien B Donnelly

SOMETIMES ITS DANGEROUS TO CONSIDER HOW TO BREATHE

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There are clear patches in the sacred soil
at the far end of the side garden where life
is expected to return. We planted it last week.

There are clear patches in the soft sky
behind clever clouds that carry the condensation
I covet for those bald patches in the tilled soil
where there will be grass. We planted it last week.

There are sometimes clear patches in these caged ribs
that house the lungs that shoot me with shock waves
at irregular intervals when I fall too concerned
with how to breathe. I panicked last week.

Or when I’m too forgetful to distract myself
with painting the panic into poetry at the far end
of the side garden with its selected soil all curious
for the cunning clouds to carry forth its condensation
across that sweet sky. I planned this last week.

There’s a peace when I potter beyond the panic.
I know this. I planted it last week in my head
when I sowed the seeds that will soon be grass.
I planted them both, deep inside.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

WHEN I DREAM OF WHO WE WERE

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We used to hold hands, a quiver
along the skin
at touch,                     do you remember?

You handled me like I was food,
to be prepared pealed back,
to find the taste within.

I was advised not to- but I had hungered,
had grown ill                      without.

A cold cut cannot survive without the fold

of the fridge.

Or were you the oil and I                     the onion?
Having already been cut,

sliced before being found. Remember?

But we’d been spared                     the tears.
We tasted of a thousand nights
that had never known                     any stars

and then we wanted to taste                     it all.

Do you remember? No,
you don’t.                        I forgot.

We only held hands in my head
in that room I shared

with the one                     I shared the tears with.

Still slicing.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THORNS

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I climb trees to forlese the briar and catch the soil
from this bird’s eye view, but my sight is not the same
as sad sparrow so I cannot see if something is stirring
in the rat race below and yet said sparrow can spot
the worm before he enters up into the air
from the earth.

I rub oil, later, over scrapped skin and curse nature
for its thoughtless thorn as I catch a reflection
of Anxious staring out from eyes that cannot see
the thorn of these times. Perception is paramount
to understanding, visible is half the battle, blindness
is not just bound to sight.

I can climb trees and cut thorns but I cannot fly
from this place while erratic dust wiggles like worms
through air I try not to inhale.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Based in a Twitter Poetry Prompt 

FIESTA, EST-CE QUE CE MONDE EST SERIEUX

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Hemingway loved the bull, both the beast and the shit-
the bravado of animal instinct bared on horny streets
in the heat, caught up, breathless, in the chase-
the Aficionado on fire, at the Fiesta, those buen hombres
who always knew how to get a room in a hotel
with nothing left to rent

and that other artist, galloping
for his freedom through the fearless fools
in the sweltering sun, under crowded balconies
but the crowd knew the clause, freedom was not his prize
at the end, after the gallop, inside the ring as the rocket roared
and the costumes and cape commenced.

Hemingway loved the bull…

‘Sentir le sable sous ma tête c’est fou comme ça peut faire du bien,
j’ai prié pour que tout s’arrête, Andalousie je me souviens…’

Lyrics from ‘La Corrida’ by Francis Cabrel

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

ART ISN’T EASY

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Colour
catches on canvas as we lean towards light,
a beam to break the boredom like a breath
above the water after diving up from darkness,
ripples run across the current,
ink spreads out like veins upon this page;

art isn’t easy, breathing isn’t any better-

both come up from down below,
rise through risk into life, into looking lively.
The texture of the wave is as temperamental
as the tone that sets itself out upon the page.
I dab the brush, horse hair taps connections
and colour comes at a gallop. It is clear-

control is not concerned with the creator.

This body needs air, runs broken, breathless-
breath and then less and less and less
and sometimes, sometimes I need to turn back

and teach the lungs how to draw. In.

Ink dries and petals stand, enchanting time
with their dismission of the word wilt.
Colour catches on canvas, clear and captured
and I lean in with the hope of drawing fresh
breath before the dive recalls me to paint
panic.

   

All words and paintings by Damien B. Donnelly

SHORT STORIES OF FEAR; THE BLIND ASSASSIN

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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

SHORT STORIES OF FEAR; STILL ACHING

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A Short story of Horror

I’d been back a month, the city of light they called it, Paris and all its lovers, everyone hand in hand, lips locked like they were lynching the breath from each other and there I was, alone. It had become my city of shadows; dark, devious and doomed.
Why did I come back here, of all places, the one city that had ripped us apart, literally? It had found us, cracked us open and drained the beat of life that bound us, blood seeping onto sidewalks, terrorising terraces, drowning the river in crimson currents, from your veins to its bed.
I was back in our home, on our balcony, waiting, wondering if I’d catch sight of you. I lost nights chain smoking, drinking, hurting all over again. Everything inside still aching from that night, even the dust felt your absence and clung to your chair, your brushes, your side of the bed, your box of sharp, sadistic tricks.

It was the end of October when it happened, when the shadows gradually began to find their shape in the darker tones of the season. Breath hung in the crisp air when you exhaled, like an entity all of its own. It was almost midnight on that most hallowed of all eves, I was wearing your scarf, wrapped tightly around my neck. I had the feeling it was your hands wrapped around me, almost to the point of choking me, when I saw the shadow approaching. An icy shiver cut through my veins like I’d swallowed blades, large and hole. I froze to the spot. I recognised the shadow as it came closer and, as the form found its shape, I knew it to be true. I held my breath as it came to the gate, flipped the latch and entered the garden of dying flowers beneath the spell of the moon. The door downstairs groaned opened, followed by footsteps creaking their way up along those old steps, the ones you always demanded me to fix, I wish that had been your only demand. Keys rattled next in the hallway until one twisted in the slot of my door, which used to be our door. The lock clicked just as I stepped in from the balcony. My pulse was beating so hard it felt like the veins of my body were being strangled.
The form stepped into the dimly lit room and I recognised the scent immediately as tears burnt down my face. I opened my mouth to scream but your hand caressed my cheek, wiped my tears before you put your lips against mine and I was captive once again in your dangerous embrace, after so many years of being without, being lost, being broken, regretting it all. I thought I was dead. I didn’t think I could move until you whispered to me to hold you and, without knowing it, without controlling them, my arms wrapped themselves around you and held us together so tightly that I thought we’d break.
This is death, I told myself, I exist now among the dead and yet I could smell you, feel you; your cold lips, that putrid perfume I’d always hated and your body bolt against mine.
I didn’t know how it could be, how you were standing in front of me, touching me, your tongue piercing its way into my mouth. And then the doorbell rang and shook the silence of the entire moment, the entire building and maybe even the entire world that had flipped on its axis in a matter of moments, in the encounter of a kiss, a kiss from death itself.
“Those kids,” I said, as if everything was normal, unsure of what else to say, “it’s
Halloween… you always hated when they found their way into the building, begging for candy.”

You turned and somehow you were instantly out of my grip, standing by the door, turning the handle, but I hadn’t seen you move. You stood in silence regarding the children outside, dressed as ghouls, monsters and one peculiar child hidden from head to toe in a princess costume, perfectly in character except for the gaping wound on her neck. She held a knife in her tiny hand, as real and as sharp as a butcher’s pride and joy.
“You shouldn’t be playing with this, my sweet, you’ll get blood all over your costume,” you said to her before you took the knife from her tiny fingers and instantly you were back again, standing before me, looking right inside me.
The children were still standing in the doorway as you raised the blade, cutting through the thin breath of air that separated us, as if that was all that separated us.
“I don’t understand,” I said to you, knowing time had deserted me, realising I’d wasted my freedom, watching the shadows, terrified of what would one day arise from them, “you were dead,” I said, “I saw you bleed out on front of me.”
“I know, my love and I still am. The dead don’t come back to life, not after their lover has killed them, they just come back for what they left behind,” she said as she slashed the blade across my neck, just below her scarf and the warm blood gushed from the inside out. She grabbed me and pulled me close to her as the life drained from my body, bringing her lips down on my neck and savagely sucking what was left from my veins.
“You killed me because you discovered my desire for slicing up life, so I’ve returned to show you that very desire, first-hand,” she whispered to my fading life-force.
“Happy Halloween,” were the last words I heard her utter as I dropped to the floor while she took the hands of the children who watched from the shadow of the doorway and lead them off with a vengefully demonic laugh.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This short story was published as a tale in the ‘Body Horror Anthology’ from Gehenna and Hinnom Books.

SHORT STORIES OF FEAR; THE STILLNESS IN THE BARN

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A short tale of fancy and fear.

And so he waved back, and, as if brushing back the years, he remembered when they cycled through the lanes together, well, not exactly together, but in their group; he was there and she was there, though, in truth, it was not this particular woman, the woman who had waved to him as the train passed but the tracks and the wave lead him back there somehow, that time when he watched a girl’s hair in front of him as it caught the breeze and the sunlight above them as wisps of leaves leaned from trees overhead as if to touch her and he remembered how much it hurt. How much he resented nature in that moment, on that perfectly ordinary day in the countryside when everything, it seemed, reached out to touch her but him while he peddled to keep up with her scent, with her hair, with her hands that caressed the handlebars, with all that had always alluded him at such a young age. And he wondered, as he cycled, if she knew how he fantasised about her every move?

Falling back to reality, the train upon which he sat in the crowded carriage continued along its tracks, and the crowds continued their innocuous chatter of babies and breakfasts and lunch dates and reunions and mass projections and program malfunctions, and she, a stranger who’d stopped to watch a train pass and wave at him, momentarily, inexplicably, strapped herself, in his mind, to a memory of another, long since lost, before she continued onwards and away on her bicycle, fading in the fields, now but a tiny glimmer of blonde waves brushing above the bushes of blood red berries.

And he recalled that day, after that dance where she had smiled at him across the floor, across the crowded floor of feet shuffling, of socks showing and leather straps cutting into ankles, of teenagers attempting to be attractive, alluring, aloof and yet she had smiled at him or had he smiled at her, was that the truth and the reason she blanked him the following day as if nothing had ever really happened? Which it hadn’t, of course, except in the meandering mind of the boy who wished and waited and met with nothing more than disappointment which grew into embarrassment before it slipped into anger which lingered for a while, just below the fist, until that other extra ordinary day, three months later, beneath the stillness of the barn, when the world stopped rushing past him and he finally realised what it felt like to hold her in his arms, to catch her scent, like butter and pine, in his nostrils, to have her hair against his cheek and feel her blood on his body.

And as the train pulled into the station that had once been his station, he counted 20 years that had past since that day of death, discovery and detainment. A childhood imprisoned by ferocious feelings and a life imprisoned behind unbreakable bars.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

SHORT STORIES OF FEAR; THE MONSTER IN THE MAN

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Was he not tied
and turned on the tide,
was there not light 
and dark by his side,
though the morning’s sun
rose as his bride
twas the black of the moon
at night that found stride.

Was he not washed
and worn on the waves,
was he not cracked
like the sea cuts the caves,
in the morning did he count
the slaughter, the saves,
was he ashamed of how many
he’d laid in their graves?

Was he not just a reed
washed over the sand,
was he not just a vessel
on an ocean unmanned,
controlled in the day
where blood was banned
but unbound in the night
the beast took his hand.

Was he not just a man
who’d from day lost sight?
Was there not to be compassion
for the monster in the night?
But the hunger he managed
to contain before the light
was too much in the darkness
to put up a fight.

The best of a man,
a wolf of a beast
but never the two
could ever find peace,
Helios held famine,
Selene supplied the feast
but not a single God
could offer a release.

A savage surrender
into the sea was swept,
the hair of the hound,
the soul that now wept,
a man and the monster
drowned in the depth
and in their beds, his children,
safely then slept.

And was he not tied
and turned on the tides
like the rise and fall
of a twist that divides
as the nature of man
and monster collides
but when the darkness descends

the light

it subsides.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly