Untitled

Cedric Boudreau

Contributor

It spends its leisure reading old books made of leather rotting green brown

The damp book, heavy with mold, flops on the table with a wet sound

Its gaze meets yours and you see its eyes shooting to every point of your body

The chair it sits on is old and rusted

The floorboards cry out from the weight its cheese-like stumps carries,

Clad with an overworn long skirt, fungus thriving on unwashed fabrics

It clasps the metal bars

“The youth should be in my place!”

Wiping its mouth of drool, it looks away

“I wasn’t always like this ya know,

When I was like you… fresh…

I learnt the right way to be!

The right way, which made me like this…

But it must be!

One must suffer to achieve greatness.”

It looks back at you, a pustule bursts open

The green yolk oozes and spills onto the floor

The creature bends down and coats its finger in the viscous fluid

The wall is painted in the yellow green substance

A shape, a letter, a name on the wall

Grenouille Renaissance

“This is my name!”

It laughs, it snorts, it coughs for a moment stretched in forever

Silence fills the room

A drop of water falls from the damp cobble ceiling

The creature looks back and inspects you like before

Sheer panic fills its face

“You don’t understand this?!

It’s from the…”

The rest you don’t remember, the door closes, a shriek is heard, and learning is lost.