I went back in time to the house I built, and the house he built.  He said we built it together.  I knew we built it separately.  I went back in time to find reason and validity.  I searched for slugs in the cracks of it’s foundation.  I found nothing but salt in these wounds, still open and bleeding with the desire to know, “why?”

The house crooned and split and breathed a heavy fog into my lungs.  This pressure keeps me here.  This energy is dark and hateful.  It birthed a monster with ten lives and two heads.  One was a jackal.  The other, a rawhide.  The jackal had teeth that were sharp, but it’s tongue was much sharper.  He used it to pierce holes in my back when I had no eyes to see.  I still feel the pain.  Not as if it was yesterday, but now.  The rawhide was weak and had no power.  The Jackal fed on it slowly, one lick at a time.  The rawhide was once a good man but he was never really good.  So his flesh dried up and consumed his bones and made itself a shell for the jackal to live in.  I fought the beast daily.  I even fought it when it was asleep.  I made a mess of this house on purpose for camouflage to disappear in when the fight overwhelmed me.  I remember all these things.  I remember it all from the whispers in the walls that bind me.

This house is empty now.  The beast is gone and I am gone, but the air is still toxic and dense.  Breathing it is like breathing air from some distant planet burning up space.  I know there is no reason here, no reason to be here.  This place is haunted.  We died here.  The three of us.