Athings I see when I close my eyes 2
a couple moves into a house
there's a bed in the basement. One of them cannot leave it -- there is a pleasant, numbing tiredness that keeps her there. There is an inexplicable weight. A presence and a draw, crushing gradually more and more tightly. The man feels it too. They lay together, crushed tighter and tighter. The woman has been in there for days. Her bones are crushed by the bodies of those taken by the bed. The man finds it harder and harder to leave each night.
one night the woman wraps her hands around the man's ankles , tight , as he moves to leave the bed. There is a parade of spirits that begins marching towards the bed, in a spiral. They all climb in, they all crush inwards, from the outside, rolling in, and in, and in, and down.
From the centremost folds of the sheets the woman's head and shoulders barely crests, smiling, but so tired. The husband struggles, kicking, pulling, prying, begging
The wife will not come. She cannot.
Her eyes are pale white, pleading, teeth snapping with spittle, breath chattering and manic. There is no give from the spirits as they pile on and in and down on and in and down, shuffling past and thru the husband, dragging him closer, inch by inch as the wife's bones contort and snap and crush into nothing. Her arms stretch, bonelessly. Her hands tighten and weave into the husband's toes.
"Come lay with me. Come lay with me. Come lay with me and all of our children."
the husband has to break all of her fingers to be free, and she is lost to the parade, blissful and crushed, smaller and smaller, soundlessly bound into nothing
I woke up and my feet still tingles from her grasp.