The Lie Eater
You wake in agony.
Not to peace or sanctuary, but to fire coursing through your veins. Each breath rasps against raw nerves, your body a stranger's now—heavier in some places, hollow in others. The room pulses with the sound of labored breathing, and it takes too long to realize it's coming from you.
You try to call out your name, but your voice cracks into something unrecognizable—guttural and savage. This shell holding your consciousness is not the vessel you once inhabited, but the vessel you've become. The mirror across the room reveals only fragments: elongated shadows, glinting teeth, eyes that reflect light like an animal's in the dark.
What remains is not the man you once were, but the creature you've transformed into. Each sound it makes—you make—sends revulsion crawling across your skin. Yet beneath the disgust lies something worse: recognition. This monster breathing in the darkness isn't some external horror.
It is you.
Your gaze turns outward, but the world retreats—mankind's collective vision unable to bear your reality. When they chance to meet your eyes, they flinch away, terror-struck. You are their deepest dread incarnate, yet paradoxically, their salvation. What terrifies man more: taking that first glance onto reality, or drowning in their comfortable lies in agony and bliss, that is the question
You breathe in falsehood.
It crystallizes in your lungs—delicate structures of frost,
sharp and cold, beautiful in their complexity.
You exhale, but the essence remains, clinging to you.
So you feed.
You devour deceptions that others cannot stomach.
Lies cascade down silver tongues, raw and trembling.
You've perfected the art of swallowing jagged shards without bleeding.
You've mastered the smile that hides how your throat fills with rust.
They never look upon you with gratitude.
They refuse to truly see you.
You are their necessary monster, their shameful salvation.
The dark truth they burn but secretly crave.
You move among them, shoulders heavy with the burden of what they hide.
You know the truths they've buried beneath layers of denial.
You recognize the secrets they won't admit even in their most private moments.
For this forbidden knowledge, they despise you.
Because you know.
And still, your lips remain sealed,
For you've tasted the consequences of broken silence—
Bitter as wormwood, caustic as lye.
In the emptiness of night, a question haunts you:
"What if I am consuming myself, heartbeat by heartbeat?"
The revelation strikes like dawn piercing midnight:
The final deception was never their offered power.
It was the illusion that you ever had a choice.
Even your resistance was written into their narrative.
The ultimate lie wasn't their control, but your perceived freedom.
They allowed you to believe escape was possible.
That was the true prison—you had choked on their greatest deception.
"Monster," they name you, voices trembling.
The label simplifies what they fear to understand.
A figure emerges from shadow, voice like gravel:
"Are you not a hero?" he asks.
No.
You are neither monster nor hero.
You are consequence personified,
retribution in flesh and bone,
A punishment sent to the liars.