Time doesn't heal all wounds, it just changes you enough so you can live with them, so you

Can feel his hand on your neck and stay still, feel his palm on your mouth and not bite

Feel him and stay soft, stay still, stay stuck with the love you were given

Since it is the only love you ever will be, the only truth you can truly rely on for longer than

Your wounds have to scab over before he wounds again, a subtle torture

The sandpapering of love until it wears you down like an eraser, until you...

You no longer remember what it felt like to bite him when he tried.

When the memory itself is almost erased

Your body left for the taking, his innocent tools leaving more wounds in his wake.

Whoever claimed time could heal you was lying, or maybe they saw failure to resist as

Acceptance, accepting you deserved whatever you were given, your edges worn down by time.

Maybe you could sleepwalk your way somewhere kinder, if his touch ever lifted enough to let you sleep.

If you could find yourself asleep somewhere other than in his embrace.

12 heads on a clock,as a metal blade moving counter clockwise beheads in sixty seconds.

The numbered heads fall one by one to the floor.

Time stands still on the wooden floor.

I pick up the pieces of the unrecognizable faces of the floor.

I pause for a minute.

I walk to my fireplace and I throw them into the fire.

If I could watch the glitter of glass fall in slow motion, maybe I could catch myself before the dazzling gleam turned to knives that rained down over me, splintering my skin into ribbons as my hands shielded my face and ears.

I could cast my words forth at the beings that attempted to slaughter me, with bullets, knives and more. Like a witch might bind someone up and turn them inside out, because her words are magic.

Wish on bone, on marrow, like teeth that grow larger and stronger until jaws become maws.

Dance on the death, the bodies lying scattered and we might all praise the beauty of things untold, things of legend that I am so bold to wear the skin of. For what are monsters and Gods in a land where religion holds moral bearing?

Not I. Not my flesh. Not any longer.

I am a demon, a monster born of curses and whispers. By witches? By wizards? Casters of ancient magic? I cannot say, but my eyes are sharp, glittering with gold in a way that no human can ever say they've seen. Gifted to me by a man with blue eyes like flame. An innocent mistake, cast out of wanton. Need. All the same.

I do not blame him for my monster. I blame the people who gave the monster reason to eat. For it devours all things in place of the wounds that don't heal, angling for the man who transcends time and believes he is deserving of peace from the long awaited war merriment he's finally uncommitted himself of.

Well, I suppose I am a devil here. Here and now. Tormenting what he seeks, so I might get to watch him squirm. Were I any more moral, I would have been a continuation of the heroine. A strong pivotal figure in a romance where I was true and sane.

But tonight, I do not believe I am such. I am his shadow, his demon. The haunt of a past he gave me I did not want. And we shall converse over it with a splash of flesh and blood to satiate my inner evil for a little while, because wounds that heal sometimes need to be opened again and again until the feeling all but bleeds out. Until the meaning runs as cold as the dead at my feet.

For here we are.

Dancing in the rain of bodies and screams, like it might commit some of the travesty we felt to less memory. And run out the pain like their screams might run out the sound of my own cries in my mind, echoing back the pain of a girl I no longer am.

For I am here.

We are here.

Let us be merry in this old war he once danced to.

And beholden us to our demons until I tire and want him no more.

Because the wounds I felt have festered for too long, and I need to silence them for good. Not once more.