Fine Dining And Façade, a short gothic horror story by J.M.Burrowes
VOLUME III
That is where my old life ended and a much more befitting one began.
Miles upon miles of grey unchanging road lay ahead of me, for me it has become my confidant, in my case it’s my never ending track list of hits. Who? Where? What? Why? They are all monotonous ramblings, pondering worn questions. I strike a match, clipping the side of my motor bike, igniting the flame needed to tame my insatiable addiction for a few more hours. Not the kind you find in a syringe or in the toilet stall in the back of a decrepit nightclub, but the kind you find staring down the barrel of a gun, eyes fixated on impending death.
“Your last words?”
The stage directions queue me,
“You’re out of time”.
I, cackle to myself, reminiscent of past events.
“I never give them time”.
A Swiss army knife is adjacent to my heart, like its touch the night is glacial. It hangs over us, mysterious as it shrouds our eyes from the fantastical dream we call reality. It’s cold tonight, the night is unforgiving, the moon restless as it lights the way for the wayward few that walk the night, estranged to the daylight.
Everyone has a hobby be it cycling, knitting or paragliding, mine, is a little on the morose side. The movie flickers on the screen as the film reel is awakened, fatigued from time. The not so distant images of cerebral fluid leaking from the neck on to the shoulder almost glisten in the light as the shattering of vertebra can be gazed upon with blissful warmth. The skin becomes taught as it is filleted from the ligaments attaching thought to feeling. You feel the last scream of the larynx vibrate your fingertips as the sound disappears into a gurgle of blood as the mouth floods with its own life. Poetry.
Still engulfed by my memory, my conscious eyes widened as the back wheel of my bike falls victim to a gaping hole in my path. I’m pulled from my subconscious whilst gliding through the air as my bike falls to its side skidding on the path, trailing ever closer to a hedge. In my few seconds of weightlessness I attempt to tuck my head into my chest and roll in an inverted practising of the notion self-preservation. Now lying on my back cheek to cheek with the smooth concrete, I felt the cold clawing at my sleeve as I examined my arm for battle wounds. The fall hadn’t been disastrous; however my bike seemed to have suffered a worse fate than I. Dragging it limply to stand I could see the paint work had been scrapped completely off the petrol tank and one of the headlights seemed to of taken a savage beating. I knelt to its side and whispered “You’ve had worse, is this the way you want it to end.” In what seemed to be lightning speed I snapped into an upright position and cautiously turn the key in the ignition. My bike roared to life in its memorable malicious tone. That roar was laden with the words “there’s more blood to be spilt yet.”
I swung my leg over in momentous speed, the wind whipped past my face tearing the water from my eyes. I sped off leaving behind battle wounds of my own in the form of tire tracks scorched upon the road.
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