Philhandria’s Follower

A girl named Philhandria

with hair black and blue,

and pretty eyes sparkling in the darkened sky’s hue,

walked down a dirty road last night at quarter past ten,

when a thing stumbled up and watched where she’d been.

It sat by the roadside and leaned on a sign,

rasping and gasping with a protruding spine.

The thing had no name, as it told her with its eyes,

when she felt pity for its circumstance and hoped she could advise.

The thing was pale, emaciated and gray;

it must’ve been starving for several weeks or days.

“Are you alright?” the girl asked, concerned,

but it didn’t trust her, at least from what it had learned,

so it chased her down the road, and down the road she ran,

but her path was cut off by a knife-wielding man.

A girl named Philhandria,

with face black and blue,

was crying by her window when a small thing stepped through.

it knew she’d been hurt, it told her with its eyes;

it felt pity for her circumstance, and hoped it could advise.

But with its pale skin and bulging eyes and gangly walking pattern

she reasoned it could not stay here now, or ever for the matter,

she said she did not dislike it, she knew it wasn’t evil;

but it was something almost human, and that’s what bothered people.

A girl named Philhandria,

with flowers black and blue,

walked down a woodland path beneath the darkened sky’s hue.

A pale thing stepped out, with eyes shining and black,

and told her with its blackness of an evil man it had just tracked.

But with a splitting scream she jumped to flee,

for she saw on its skin that it had made something bleed.

She scrambled up the nearest tree with flowers raining down,

petals turning, tossing over, shredding in red and turning brown,

and the thing sat with bloody pelt and glared at Philhandria’s feet,

as it was the man who made the flowers’ color who for her it did defeat.

A girl named Philhandria

with folders black and maroon,

sat in a courthouse one sunny afternoon,

as she was asked about a killer’s death, as he had died a little too soon

after attacking her on a dirty road the other night, probably half past ten,

and he would have killed her, too, if several seconds behind she had not been.

A girl named Philhandria,

with scars as dark as the moon,

walked to a New Year’s party through the woods north of Boone

when she saw in the grasses a black eye and pale face

stalking, breathing, watching, carefully timing her pace.

“Come out,” she spoke, “come out so I can see.

I went to court, I realize now, I can’t believe you chose to save me.

Come out, I’ll help you, just come out and talk.

I’m not afraid that you’re different, you don’t have to hide and stalk.”

But the thing said nothing, not even with its eyes;

it just sat there far away and watched the hazy skies.

Philhandria felt nervous, out there all alone,

with this thing she didn’t know too well out there on the roam.

So she walked at a hurried pace, and more and more confused she got

as the mossy trees and pretty leaves turned to brownish filth and rot.

It was twelve-oh-one, and lost she was, and she knew she should’ve taken the car

She thought these woods were half a mile across but somehow she’d gone too far.

Three figures in the distance, and she jumped as the fog set in,

and she heard them talking, drunken and slurring, their maliciousness shown therein

And she froze in place and dared not face the thick woods or the men ahead.

A man caught sight of her, and pointed and laughed, and he and his friends stumbled forward

and she panicked and ran and tripped on a log and oh God, now she was cornered

And she pulled leaves over herself and crouched by a rock and fumbled for her cellular phone

but minutes went by with silence so dry that she attempted to peek over the stone.

And there she saw, closer than she thought, a man’s face smiling down on her in awe

with a sickly grin, and clearly bad intentions, but suddenly a pale hand on his chin.

And he shrieked and yelled and to the ground the thing fell as he backed toward the path and towards Hell

And his friends cried and screamed and ran from the thing as it lunged at his neck like a spring.

A flower named Philhandria,

with petals shining and new,

sat with her friends in the cold morning dew.

“A murderer was caught – the fourth one this month,” said her sister named Rose,

“but what worries me,” she said with a frown as she spoke in a hushed and scared tone,

“is this creature they saw with a huge gaping maw and pale skin that’s been creeping around.

I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t sound right, and I certainly don’t want it in town.”

Philhandria thought, and after a while she spoke, for her friend said this thing can’t be good

And Philhandria nodded, with her hair black and blue, and she said they had misunderstood:

“I have been chased and beaten nearly to death and everything in between;

but what I wonder about people is whether they know that the line between good and evil is not clean,

and that maybe normal and calm is what we really should fear

as I have seen evil and I have seen good,

and their appearance is not always clear.”

Credit: Americium241