I am a monster in the land of angels, living amongst paradises and
gardens of eden. I am soulless in the land of the blessed,
I am the thing under the bed; I prefer dark closets. And closets are
not for bodies or bones or memories, they're for
me. I like the quiet, tidy smell of your freshly washed clothes, the
way they've been ironed properly. There's neatness here, and I like to touch it; it
corrodes in my hands and slips through my fingers. And it burns and it
feels fine. It burns so much.
In the land of the monsters, there are no angels. Angels don't get to go where I come from, their cards are invalid
and their clothes are too clean. We don't accept clean clothes and we
certainly don't deal in saintly behaviour. We have no gardens and we
have no trees with fruit and we absolutely do not have any heavenly
mornings. Where I come from there are no roads and there are no churches
and there is no faith. But we have closets. I
like closets. But there are no secrets in our closets; no bones and no
bodies. We do not bury our dead, we do not bury anything at all. We keep
everything alive.
The angels kill. A long time ago they used their closets to hide
their dirty, filthy sins; but then we moved in. We're alive and we can't
be killed, so now the angels keep their closets clean and crisp. As
they do not know how to talk to something they can't kill, they can't
ask us to leave. Not that we would, anyway. We like it here. There are
streets and roads full of souls, dying souls, and the angels keep their
churches brimming; keep the blood flowing.
The walls are lined with sorrow, the windows are stained with guilt. It's fascinating and wonderful to
watch them cry, all their tears are
blinding them to the sight of the snakes slithering about. Because
there are snakes everywhere. There are snakes wherever you tread, snakes
in everything you eat and snakes in every mouth that opens to speak.
But we have no mouths, we have no tongues; we are immune to the snakes.
The angels preach and the angels judge and the angels kill; all the
while spreading their beautiful wings, shining bright. Still, we do not
judge. Judgment and sins and forgiveness, all these things are strange
to us, fundamentally wrong and flawed. We live quiet, still lives,
uttering not a sound nor raising a hand as we crawl and stalk about;
hiding away under their beds and in their closets, smelling their
freshly washed clothes. Smelling the scent of blood, the one you can
never wash
out.