The Fire Lakes - Part I

A collaboration: Alexander Case and Atakti



She rains trepidation in a hail of spells;
clawed bones flux from the earth and
foreboding stars hang her midnight gaze.
Black ice suspended in space
is guarded by infinite words
framed in white flames.

Blue wisps draw the trapdoor seal:
immovable, fixed eyes of the death owl
beckon my soul.
Dry wrenching heaves fill my mouth,
the light ripped out of my core.
The night pulses once and I can't breathe.

Vapor fuses my lungs closed, the pain
entombed, tears of mortar streams…
mud-fire constricts my ghostly skin.
Life’s skin chokes, in a strangle-hold,
I’m trapped in a wormhole, a dead end
in space and time

This horror pushes me against my destiny.
My fingers grasp for the pendant,
but time slips free.
A fractured wall of stone and vines
crumbles into yesterday.

The weight of her pending strike
destroys my will. I fail
to hold the pieces together,
blood thins to rust
and my heart shrinks.

I scramble from rotting mulch;
the scent of the earth
pulls my mind back into the grave.
With the sound of dripping blood
the beetles awaken to claim my flesh.

Voodoo princess, filthy demon child,
she looms over my body.
White veins pulse in her throat, triumphant,
she exhales an earth-warm stench.
Like the rasp and buzz of flies,
fear flows from me like a violent tide.

My skin crawls as creatures feed — she mewls
her delight claws reaching for my ribs,
straddling my corpse.
My body pounds to the beat of her witchery.

Black nails prize my bones from strings of meat,
her snake-fed skin cracked and silver.
I smell the sharp sulfur as her split tongue
drips black acid on my body. The reek
of burning hair and skin traces

the poison seeping beyond muscle
and bloody forest floor beneath.
I raise my eyes to hers,
the last of this world I will see,

and there, soars the death owl
clutching my soul in its talons;
drifting through space
towards the red sun,
where I plunge into my prison,
the depths of the fire lakes.