This was inspired by a piece of drama I did recently. I wanted to try to write in a different style than I usually do, I'm not sure how well it's worked though. Anyway have a read and tell me what you think.
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My village is different than I remember.
I don't remember bodies, or stink, or strange men.
They hold their noses and recoil from me, as though they do not smell their own selves, the blood. Some have guns and machetes.
One man talks to me, in Arab. He looks like me, enough to be my brother, but my brother is dead. And there is blood on the man's machete.
My friends whisper, always behind my back, in my ears and on my shoulders.
Maybe I came here to kill the villagers. They had put me out, made me eat the raw things my friends could catch, made me drink the water on the leaves.
But now everything has changed, and these strange men have killed the village, and my family, because they think we are African and they are Arab.
One thing, I think, has not changed.
I still come here to kill.
And my friends are still hungry.
I give them bodies, then, my friends, I open doors in the air. I give them gleaming, new black bodies, with teeth and claws and horns and fangs. I give them flesh and scales and fur and feathers.
And they give me blood. After a while, I cannot hold my friends, and they unravel themselves, back into the shadow behind me. Some men have fled, but one remains, bleeding black in the dust from his leg. I don't mind that some have left, they will tell my story, spread my fear for me.
I see the man's machete, gleaming on the ground where it was dropped. I pick it up, seeing my face reflected in silver and red. The shadow flows down my arm and up the blade, soaking up the blood, making the blade clean, and hungry. I am exhausted, for my friends do nothing without cost, and the man on the ground will live for no longer. Today, he will pay my toll.
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