Moth Soul

Shrunken, tired, dying, this man wheezes, aches, tremors. His youth has drained, his soul has eaten him from the inside out; the two- body and spirit- were never meant to combine. Shaking and hacking, dust fills his lungs and dries his throat, mouth, tongue. He fumbles, his muscles no longer in coordination with his mind, and one leg collides with the other, brings him to his knees, withered, ancient, in horrible pain. 1

His soul flutters about in his chest, feather-drums the ribcage, causes more ashen blood to gum the corners of his parched lips- thin, cracked. Each rise and fall of the air and blood filled cavity intensifies the pain, exhausts his eyes of light, counts the grains of sand falling into the lower portion of his own, personal, hourglass. Individual particles scour the inside of his dried shell, and the clockwork of his biological being begins to weaken, crunch, fall in upon itself. 2

Rattle. 3

Quake. 4

Soul and Body are sent in magnetic force to opposite sides of reality, and the man takes his last breath. He rises, a lifeless puppet, erratic, jerks to attention, gnarled hands grope, scratch, search blindly, dead, for the opening to the body’s chest. Yellowed, calloused hands lock into the center, wrench back ribcage cupboard doors. 5

Debris spews forth a like fungus spreading spore in a dirty, pathetic cloud of dry, dead bones, ground, worn, chewed from the inside out. A single flicker of grey and rust-earth rises above the wreckage floating, ascending. 6

The form of the man sinks and mildews, taken by years of age in an instant; melds into the mud where it was meant to be. The soul tumbles awkwardly onward toward any shimmering point of warmth it can see, lifted, only barely, by dust and mushroom wings. 7

Selected in a room of heat, passion, lust, another form is infected by the parasitic moth for it to nurture, build, destroy. And a new creature, misshapen mixture of body and soul, is born.