Word Experiment

Blood there was, and plenty.

She drank her drink and sat to think. Around her, revelry. Deviltry, she thought, and sought succour in her glass.

Sucker, she thought. Foolish head, foolish heart. Sucker.

A draft she took, a sip and more, her lip stinging, sore. A tooth loose, she thought and probed it lightly with a fingernail. Slightly loose.

She had fought like a demon, like a warrior in such a fight to put the mightiest foe to flight.

But so much blood was there. And not a little death. Brittle life to be so quickly quenched.

"Mummu," the child had said. "Mummu, don't kill, don't kill all."

The blood was warm as it splashed her face, she felt it now a living place on her cheek.

"Bestill yourself, I've havoc to wreak," she'd said and so it was.

"Mummu," the child had dashed to the door and flung it wide. "Leave us leave! Together, now. Forever, now."

The child had flung aside its pretense.

The dank surrounds and dancing buffoonery impaled her wearisome soul as she recalled the fight, appalled by what sooner she knew before she knew the thing she knew.

"Together, child? Forever, child?" she had said.

Beyond the door she had seen them come. Dream-demons in their hoardes approached. The child's dream-demons she had seen before and known. The child asleep presents them for his entertainment, for her task. Where was the child asleep?

The warmth of the blood as it touched her tongue, she spat it, spit! She heard it snore.

The child asleep and so much blood from it as she dispatched the demons in their prime, forever now. This time.

Blood there was, and plenty. And ale to wash it down ....