Famished

I am afraid.

I cannot believe the size of the fangs.The claws, likewise, are outsized, immensely outsized. They are as long as scythesand dripping with ... fluid. I cannot say that it is blood. I don't want it to beanything but blood but then again I do not want it to be blood, either.I know it is not my blood because I cannot feel a pulse in my veins except onthose ever-more-rare occasions when I can eat. I crave, more and more, the fleshthat has protected me and sustained me these many years but it is harder andharder to get it because the more time that passes the more people can see me.The more, too, the minions can see me, like this one that is moving down thealley now towards me, all fangs and claws. You would not see it if you looked, would not see it if it did not want you to see it, because you are not almost in Hell.I am.I am almost there and I am struggling now every second of every day to not gothere. It is harder and harder because the minions are now searching for meactively, I am sure of it.This thing before me has 7 legs. What kind of creature has 7 legs?This thing before me had no arms, but has two mouths slavering with fangs and atongue that appears to be spiked with thorns.This things before me has no eyes. It has no ears. It has no nose. It is legs andmouths, fangs and tongues and claws.It is finding its way, disgustingly enough, by

licking

the ground,

licking

the wall,

licking the very air

. Finding its way to me.Like it, you know me.Unlike it, you fear me.I am Temporary Anne.

I am afraid.

It has been many years since that missive I wrote, many years since I tried to tell you, all of you, what I am and why I am, many years since I tried to convince youeither to be so evil that you would distract the minions from me, or so good that when the minions were near me, and I near you, that I could then takesustenance, and escape from you.The years have not been kind.I remember my skin, and I remember the last time I had skin of any sort, really.I used to at least have skin, drawn tight and patchy and there were holes in it hereand there, skin like the canvas of an old sail on a ship, skin that barely served itspurpose. But I had skin.Now, I am mostly bone and sinew. The few ragged flaps of skin that cling to medo so out of a spite, a malice, that is perhaps greater than my own, or that fuelsmy own. It should be no surprise to me that the parts of my own body, at last,exist to torment me the way I torment the world and the way the minionstorment me. But there it is: my body taunts me with flecks and scrapes andpieces of skin, clinging here and there to me the way I cling to this life.

Life!

This is not a life.It has not been a life for a long time.I have not eaten in a long time, either.Because I was

forbidden

to eat,

forbidden

to eat by Mephistopheles.I was told to call It Mephistopheles. I am reasonably sure that the Being I referto as Mephistopheles chose that name because of the era in which my first life,the life I had before nearly going to Hell, occurred. I am also reasonably sure that