There is a charmingly deceptive, mesmerizing, tantalizingly beautiful creature that glimmers hope to thousands. I found it one day after a devastating tragedy, and this beast offered me a way to cope. It dangled trinkets in front of me, things that I needed to be. I grasped at them, but the interesting monster only scoffed and pulled them away further. It was beckoning me, plodding me to go deeper into the magic spell. I was in a trance of some sort, and everything else seemed to fade away. I was no longer in control of myself, but instead a puppet marionette empty and voiceless being controlled by something bigger than me.
Once I studied and analyzed the charmer, as I peeled back the layers, I found it to be ugly and horrific to the eyes. What seemed to be a refreshing breath of air, became a repugnant odor that encapsulated all space leaving me gasping and grasping for something satisfying. I was in a daze, I walked mummified by the spiders tight knit webbing. I could not break free; the harder I fought the tighter the grip around me became. I thought I was flailing my arms, calling out for help, but in reality I lay motionless barely breathing.
Pains of hunger shot through to my core, until I wanted to become only skin and bones. I starved myself trying to appease the master. But nothing I did was enough; I must become smaller. In the redundant nothingness, I strived to become so quiet and small that I did not take up space. I became so numb that my captor set me free, but it had been so long since I had been without chains that I acted as if they were still around my waist. Like a prima ballerina I tiptoed ever so delicately, not wanting to startle the monster. I was a slave to its ways.
In trembling fear I would dance and distract the beast. All that fell was silence, and my shrinking self became more fragile to the touch. Fragile because of the traumatic turmoil within that left me a haunted ghost. A shell of a body is all that was left. I was now his Pinocchio, the creature’s real, live play toy. The strings that became chains no longer held me bound, but in fear I remained loyal to the deceiver.
The trinkets that echo of years past no longer keep me held captive. Rather, it is the fear of discovering myself and fearing who I have become.