I was forced to sleep with the lights off, which hasn’t happened in years. I could smell the musk of the mold growing in the crevasses of the barred window despite the wicked cold. It grew in greens and browns, creeping into my room. It contaminated the air and made me nervous to breath.

As the windows began to frost over, they became the dark figures in the corners of the room; they were in the shadows the moon cast from the dried colorless hanging flowers. Roses for beauty, lilac for spirits and stuffed with bloody pin feathers, from the bird that wouldn’t stop plucking. They were peering through the glass but their eyes were darker then dusk, their noses distorted, their tongues split like snakes, too long and abnormal. They were slipping in through the cracks, where you usually find dried spiders and tiny bugs. Finally, I broke the stiffness of my sheets and propelled myself to the light switch. I continued to bolt out the door, to afraid to turn around to see what had possessed my chamber. I broke through the front door, into the wild of their world; I didn’t care that they could now see me. I ran, my feet began to ache, rocks were lodged into the soft parts of my heels, they began to bleed as I tread on.

I was slowed when they followed me, they caught me quickly, pulling at the edges of my clothing, hanging in the edges of my vision, they were wandering across my eye lids as if walking across a tight rope in a dark circus. If I stopped, they wouldn’t. If I turned, they would be waiting. If I went back home they would already be there, standing in my room. They would be peeling paint from their walls with their long black nails; it would curl and get lodged in with the bits of dried blood and flesh. I tried to hide under street lamps, but couldn’t find solitude for long. They would be there as fast as me and so I gave up. I stood in the midst of the road, asphalt clawing at my feet, and as Mother Mary stood next to me, we watched the demons approach. I mumbled, hoping my words crossed into a higher dimension, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take.” The advanced and they were black, they were scarlet, they were colors of bruises and rust and sewage and decomposing organisms. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, see me safely through the night, and bless me with the morning light.” I lay down. They began tracing my body with their nails, their tongues and with their large black eyes. They breathed in the ecstasy of my bones and wretched in satisfaction, they twisted in ways that even Christ could not bear to watch. “May angels watch me through the night, and keep me in their blessed sight, four corners of my bed, four angels over head.” Bite, blood, bones…they made their first incision. “Gabriel, Uriel, Sophia, John, bless this bed I lay upon.” St. Catherine turned in shame as they slipped into my flesh. Their tongues slithered through the abrasions and cuts. “Now I lay my head on our ladies knee, Jesus, come this night and save me.” I could hear the deafening cracks as the mangled their bodies, distorted their bones and writhed in unbearable satisfaction from the exaltation of my being, and St. Teresa cried.
“Heart of Joseph I adore thee.
Heart of Mary, I implore thee.
Heart of Jesus, pure and just,
In those three hearts I place my trust”