8th Circle, 4th Pouch

                 Pain unimaginable to the human psyche consumed her body.  An invisible cocoon had formed around her, holding the pain close, unwilling to share with the outside world.  Each minute a new pain added to the collection as a part of her body twisted against its natural design.  The popping sound made by bones repositioning resounded in her head in slow-motion time with the new body arrangement.    The darkness of overwhelming oblivion refused to welcome her into its numbing embrace.  Instead she continued to suffer the tortures of this impious place.

                Around her, screams rent the air.  She was sure many of the cries originated from within her.  (Long ago she gave up trying to bite back the involuntary outbursts, seeing it as speeding her journey down the path toward insanity.)  How many others inhabited this place she hadn't yet worked out.  Her field of vision was limited to the small area slightly to her left—POP—now a little more to the left.  OW.  It's quite terrifying to realize you have no control over your head.  In life a normal person has, while not quite up to owl standards, quite a range of neck motion.  In this particular afterlife only the eyes' range of movement grant the view. 

                Also, her balance wasn't yet at a level she could rely on for safely turning in circles in order to take a head count.  Quite frankly she was amazed at the bodies she saw walking around.  She tried not to notice them because the terrifying vision they presented only made her aware of how she would look when this metamorphosis was complete.  Her wildest nightmares couldn't have prepared her for this. 

                Speaking of nightmares, she almost missed them.  Since arriving here the chance to break from existence into a deep slumber, or even a light one, was nonexistent.  What she wouldn't give for the chance to—POP—run from a killer only to fall from a cliff and end up standing naked in front of a classroom full of really hot looking guys.  OW!  Unfortunately this lack of sleep allowed her the chance to try to remember how she ended up here—wherever here was.

               

In Darkness

Wicked walks in darkness

Man's soul he seeks to leech.

With temptation thick as spiders' nests

He traps the innocents' speech.

In place he plants the lies

And torments of the cursed.

The nesting creatures tear and shred

Evil, at last, breaks forth.

You

such beauty and radiance                an eyeless face can't see
outside the green rolling hills            verdant, drowning depths, stumbled over
the smell of yeasty, beefy brown      overwhelmed by excremental leavings
orderly trills and chirps float            drowned by the screaming cacophony
grasping, gasping the new                staying the discontented winter
tastes of rebirth, spring                    can't quite die
filling hopes                                     to pass this moment
                                  with you

Bite Me Greeting Cards

I love you more...
the farther away you are

Distance...
makes the heart grow fonder

I wrote poetry about your face.
I wrote prose about your mind.
The line formed itself,
the sequence was sublime...


For you,
beauty alone was found in rhyme.

Research Links and such

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199801153380305

http://www.katewerk.com/chimera.html

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2013&q=chimera+twin&hl=en&as_sdt=1,45

www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1826423/chimera

http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask75 

http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/dual_identities.htm 

Anyone have access to scholarly journals they wouldn't mind sharing? There's a lot more out there I want to read but it's getting expensive...

Thanks so much to all the ladies who welcomed me into the last meeting of their book club!  I enjoyed the writing exercise of taking a list of random words and creating something in 20 minutes or so that incorporated every word.  Here is my first attempt at this:

Words
velvet recliner
OPI Skyfall nail polish
phallus
grandfather clock
angst
rug
shot glass
tentacles
mashed potatoes
hair net

     He was old.  Worn down.  Decrepit.  The meaning of his life had been reduced to the monotonous ticking of the grandfather clock, the relentless groans of the velvet recliner, the patchwork of stains on the faded rug.  Deep lines of shame, and sadness, and faded glory, spread like tentacles across his weathered face.  A shot glass, empty and cracked, lay loosely within his gnarled hands.  Alongside was a plate - remnants of a final meal - beef, mashed potatoes, a roll.

     The angst which he felt in those final hours had faded away, diffused into his hide, hidden forever.

     His wife lay nearby.  The suddenness, the ferocity, of his final fury on display in the trinkets surrounding her battered frame.  Broken glasses, a bloody hair net, a torn dress.  And the incongruent reminders of a happier time - Revlon eyeliner, OPI Skyfall nail polish, Maybeline lip liner - faded remnants of a feminine life.

     The bodies lay motionless, drained, with a settling phallus-like stiffness providing a waxy countenance to this scene of grieving love.