Three Fetches

 

Three Fetches

Three fetches came to the door last night.

I  watched them come pouring,

pale blood from the world’s wounds,

toward the pearlgrey house of self where I live

but do not own.

There where I sat writing

at the convex monocle of the front window

my eyes pushed against them,

hoping to blink them out, away, back

somewhere, anywhere,

yet still they slithered, ternion missiles

faster than white fire consuming a paper leaf,

than the killing icemelt of cataracting waters,

a sepia triad of naked grue and clutch,

bony fingers long as the last mile.

Before I could run, they slid 

crawling on their bellies, inevitable as the tic

of thunder to lightning, three vapid mouths spreading 
in a parody of breath, closer, faster, to the only door 

on that blur of a street that never was.

They had no bones, they had no souls, 

no voices, only infinite need, 

an abyssal void to fill and the means to fill it.

I screamed. I screamed your name.

I screamed: “Three Fetches!”

You laughed,

you told me it was just

Anita, and Raul’s wife and

the soldier’s widow, coming to the dead house

where you let them in.

I looked before we went down

and saw no wives or widows

nothing named

just the cold wet dripping teeth

the black unblinking amphibian eyes.

April 2011

Alternate post for real toads steampunk challenge

(Originally posted for Friday Poetically  at the inimitable OneStopPoetry)

Image: Release the Ghouls,   by ~pixiepoof

courtesy deviantART

fetch2  ~noun
wraith ( def. 1 ) .Origin:
1780–90;  perhaps short for fetch-life  one sent to fetch the soul of a dying person  

dictionary.com