He walks down the corridor, breathing heavily. Hands shaking, the echo of blood dripping down onto the floor is like putting an ear next to a dripping faucet. He stumbles to the floor in a coughing fit, choking on the dead air, or the dead in the air.
He stands up and picks up the axe handle...... must return, quick...... He shivers, and stops, cold. Someone walked over my grave- but before he can he can react, in front of him stands his mother, in her wedding gown, only it really isn't her is it Robert?... Come close, let me see your face with my hands around your neck.... let me see how those beautiful veins God made pop out your wicked face like the roaches in my hands.
This fucking house, he thinks and runs his free hand over his face. He looks down finally, rushing his pace. His feet are all but gone, but that can't be... illusions caused by hallucinations due to insomnia is all. Try saying that five times fast, chuckling to himself, walking, looking still.... but in the beyond, the shadows perhaps, behind him in the corridor, eyes of another man who is bleating his last, truly ridiculous wish silently while following young Robert. This wish is of a nasty accord made with a looming terror.
The woman in the wedding gown, Robert's mother perhaps, wraps an intrusive hand around The Bleating Man's throat and bares her teeth in a truly barbaric, yet, somehow ritualistic way. Take the blood, The Bleating Man hears in his head; full of gibberish, no full thoughts coming, just words, hither and thither... Blood, Orgasm, Robert, Rape, Kiss, Murder, Euphoria. All the things that The Bleating Man wished he could be whenever he was human.
Human? I must take this human, another full thought approaches...But how? ...
Robert is finally at the door. But he can't just leave, yet. The axe isn't whole. The man he sliced gave specific directions to put the axe back together in order to leave. But what if I just try the- before he even reaches the bloody door handle, a thick red cloud of smoke, blood tasting, engulfs Robert and he freezes, dropping the axe handle... he wakes up some time later on the steps of the house, outside... with a complete and bloody axe in his hands... reporters are standing beyond a police line, shouting, waving to him... but he doesn't know why... he drops the axe in (Orgasm?) disgust, and the police rush toward him and shove him to the ground, yelling frantically about miranda or whoever, something about a lawyer, and he has the right to remain silent.... silence about now sounds good... after all that noise... the axe was so loud.
How did he complete the axe? What was the sound he heard in the corridor? And why are they asking me why I have my wife's scalp in his hands? All these questions, just leave me alone he shouts, but not to the officers, to the door, and The Bleating Man stands, smirking, looking childishly inviting.
