CW: Disturbing bodily images<\/p>\n
Down in the gut of my soul, I\u2019ve felt a stirring. It buzzed and churned and burned for years. Ignoring it made it turn to lava, but at least I only burned from the inside.<\/p>\n
Everything would burn if I let it out.<\/p>\n
Consciously, I kept my ailments buried. There was once, twice, I spoke of the pain I was in. There was once, twice, where my concerns were dismissed.<\/p>\n
Only in the silence of my home, nestled upon the couch I built by hand, the couch I bled on due to slipping nails and spinning drills–only there could I stick my hand down my throat and pull out the corruption that threatened to consume me.<\/p>\n
Nothing was like those moments.<\/p>\n
Stirring in my hand like a monster, like a snake, like some twisted beast of hell, I saw the insides of my soul squirming like intestines made alive. Red and smoking, searing my hands just to hold, the coils oozed a darkness I dared not peer too deep into.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, before I go back into the world, I will need to stuff them down inside me once more. But for now, I place them in a jar, close the lid, and hope they don\u2019t break out before dawn.<\/p>\n
Running from them has never worked – they are as quick as they are vile. I have never outpaced them, have never made it somewhere without them following. The jars always break by morning, and it is a wonder they do not break me.<\/p>\n
Unless my shaking hands, my cracking ribs, the way my bones ache – perhaps they are breaking me. Perhaps they already have.<\/p>\n
Continue on my day. Do not think of what I have discovered, of the ailments I now see riddling my body. Thinking on them will do me no good. I must keep the maggots from spilling out. I must keep them from showing the wickedness inside.<\/p>\n
Tremors spread and with them, come the cracks. Sickly crimson ooze begins to bubble from the lacerations. I seek gauze, I seek tape. I wrap myself up before anyone can see, before anyone can know. But someone notices. Someone smiles.<\/p>\n
Initially, their extended hand brought fear, but I saw the patience and understanding in their eyes. I took their hand and the skin that held me fell apart.<\/p>\n
Overwhelming pain. Through my skull and through my nerves as it sloughed off in sections, in clumps. A greasy mess lay at my feet. The twisting intestines, the curling maggots, the darkness I had hidden – it was for the world to see.<\/p>\n
Nothing was more beautiful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CW: Disturbing bodily images Down in the gut of my soul, I\u2019ve felt a stirring. It buzzed and churned and burned for years. Ignoring it made it turn to lava, but at least I only burned from the inside. Everything would burn if I let it out. Consciously, I kept…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[283],"tags":[554,158,556,157,553,376,238,335,92,555,334,114,97],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27tjX-q7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1620,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/1620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}