There's something about living here that makes me think about werewolves. I had thought that driving through Mississippi was the first time it had struck me. The way the mist blocked the moonlight. No... it didn't block the light, it absorbed it. It captured the light, strangling it into the fog, diffused as if the mist were the light. And God knows what sort of things lay hidden within it.
But I didn't need God to tell me, I knew what was hidden. I could feel it.
But to say that Mississippi were the first time would be my accepting the lie of my subconscious I've been thinking it ever since we got to Houston. Hell, maybe even as far back as Arizona. Maybe even further (don't think about that). Even now as I look at the way this glowing monitor casts shadows on my hands; filling the cracks of my fingers with prosthetic age, making my knuckles look like a crocodile's, I can't help but think...
Its not my home. I don't think I've ever lived anywhere that's felt safer than this. No, 'safe' isn't the word... mundane, yeah that's it.. This place is the first place I've been that I haven't felt the reach of some haunting. I sleep without fits. I don't wake up in the middle of the night with the wild (imaginings?) of dark figures looking down at me from my footrest. I could watch 'The Ring' twenty-two times on repeat and still be able to tuck myself into bed, contented with the knowledge that nothing like that could happen, not in the house. But then there's the outside. I get the feeling that something's alive out there. Something breathing in the shadows, hidden between the stalks of pines, capturing the moonlight in its dripping white teeth.
I use the word werewolves only as it's the notion that crawls up inside me, scratches at the back of my brain for recognition. But then sometimes (don't think it) the thought reaches deeper than outside, sometimes I stop lying to myself. It's not the dry-drunken air of Arizona, not the seeping humidity of the Gulf, not even the picture-perfect Hollywood set of the Mississippi. It's me. Things feel different at night. I feel different. It's always been that way to an extent, sometimes powerfully. Temperance becomes a difficulty as if the moonlight were needles peeking curiously into my skin. But as more days pass behind me, and with this shadowed environ... it's undeniable.
Maybe this is lunacy defined as its most literal coining. Maybe this is just one more excuse to justify my inner demons or my generally disgusting personal character. But then maybe I'm not the only lunatic. Maybe everyone feels this way in some form or another, they're just too scared shitless to say so. Maybe we're all werewolves, basking in the moonlight and drooling for the feast.
Maybe we're all just damned.