All It Takes

This is poison.

This is lethal poison that can kill. All it takes is one pinprick – one droplet on the tip of a hair-thin needle, scraping the surface of your skin ever so gently. A single droplet staining one cell black, and the potent liquid diffusing into your bloodstream.

This is a cell.

This is a cell that has been poisoned. It is black. It is stretching out tendrils so fine, you cannot see them under a microscope – it is all in your mind. The millions of tendrils pierce one cell each and there is a cluster of black. And it goes on, dark threads weaving slowly, torturously upwards until it reaches an organ.

This is your heart.

This is your heart thumping steadily. It is a mass of muscle, real and alive. Thump. Thump. Thump. The flesh at the edges is turning dark. This is a gradient from jet black to blood red. The blood gushing back to your heart is black; darker than your veins. The beating gets erratic. Thumpthumpthump. Your heart quivers. The pulsating redness is turning purple, turning brown, turning black, turning dark. Your heart gives one last feeble squeeze to release a fountain of black. And it stops.

This is your mouth.

This is your mouth stretching itself to its limits, your vocal chords twisting themselves into knots, your throat tensing and relaxing to form words. The air before your mouth swirls and the particles vibrate vapidly. There should be sound. Invisible writing surrounds you, words that do not appear before your eyes or tickle your ears sprint from your mouth and ricochet off a barrier – clear as crystal, tough as diamond.

This is a dome.

This is a dome that is not a sanctuary, mind you. This is a dome that is a dungeon in a castle. You are locked in, and there are cracks in the dome. You can see what is outside and people can look in, but you can never leave. Never. Not ever. So the words that you speak, or try to speak, multiply at an alarming rate to drown you. You should have stopped but you went right on, and the pressure becomes too much for you to take. You implode. Your skin stretches and your pores, they suck and turn you inside out. You become a twisting, squirming mass.

This is you.

This is you, a squirming mass that melts into a pool of black ink. No, not ink. Poison, that is what it is. And the puddle gets smaller, and smaller, and there is condensation on the underside of the dome – translucent gray droplets that glint under the sunlight. You are ashes. You are dust. You are the miniscule bits of things that people do not care about. You make your way through the cracks in the dome. You have left your dungeon behind.

This is your life.

This is your life that is an empty dome when it ebbed away. You have done nothing, achieved nothing. You are nothing.

All it took, was one pinprick.

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