Tenures of Terror

by Donte’ Thrasher

Within the first decade of my life I was taught many things

But….

a lot of those lessons came with a violent tenfold lash across my back,

I had an instructor who wielded horror like a knight wields a double-edged sword,

And their class branded my brain with lessons that remain to this very day!

I was a terrible student,

Failing exam after exam,

over and over again

Still my teacher took his time to divulge the content of this class

It didn't matter that I was a frightened little boy,

Or that I was helpless under his gaze,

Or that I was victimized by his piety to false masculinity,

so blinded in what I should be

that he couldn’t even see me

It didn’t matter to teacher

The lessons crept along

like a predator hunting its prey....

All the while,

Existential anxiety rippled through the rivers of my small frame

As the terrifying tales taught to me in class tore and tarnished the tiny twinkling of innocence I had left,

Taken by the teachings of a tortured soul who thought terror turned little boys into titans

But remember I was frightened,

Afraid to be thinking my fate was soon to be not to be

Still the teacher remained relentless!

Regaling me with stories of fresh blood covered claws

that fed the fang filled jaws of fiends with different names

The very same monsters crawled from under my desk,

To spit volumes of pulsing white venom upon my flesh,

And as my skin burned my mind turned

like werewolves under full moons,

My brain was paralyzed by readings on Medusa,

Forced still like the stone casings that store gargoyles on ledges of an abyss,

Fed upon by my own hesitations,

Imprisoned in a sarcophagus of my despair,

And there was never an end

to the lecture,

Never a lunch break

unless I was on the menu,

And if I broke I was battered by my own instructor

left with bite marks and bruises,

Drowned under tears,

Confined in places a ten-year-old should never go,

Trapped in a cage meant for King Kong’s and Godzilla’s,

Held captive behind bars drenched in toxic ink,

As the stench of xylene clouded the room like a cemetery fog,

I sat comatose,

Enraptured by symbols of trepidation,

Bound by a demonic spell

witches brew dripping from my mouth,

And falling on the classroom floor,

The epitome of helpless,

Yet….

Despair often blooms into Contempt,

And as the years stalked by,

anger filled the place of anguish,

The spells that bound me within the tomb of myself became too weak to hold me,

I found a book on Rage and it became my way out,

Then my weakness became my nemesis,

Instead of a titan I became a forge master,

And crafted a weapon from the flames of my hatred,

A blade forged to pierce the heart of every monster,

every horror story,

every nightmare,

and every dark night I laid awake

waiting for a set fangs to leap from the shadows

to rip me into flimsy little pieces,

With wrath-fire forged steel in my hands,

I slew them all!

Soon even Dracula knelt before me bloodied and broken,

I watched Frankenstein draw his last artificial breath,

And the Wolfman’s pelt still adorns the wall above my bed, 

No creature could contend with the volcanic eruption of my malice,

And as I consumed each one in the fires of my animus, I inched closer to the true enemy,

If my teacher could see me today he’d be proud,

Because under his tutelage

I became a bitter mercenary,

Ready to lay waste to all the fragility within myself,

He taught me many things and those things bred aggression,

Animosity was all I knew whenever my nemesis appeared,

You see this class did nothing but graduate me into resentment,

I feel only revulsion when I witness the countenance of Dread,

So when I see it,

I slay it!

Throwing so much force upon it that it could perish ten times over!

Yet it never completely dies.

Regenerating its repulsive form even after being severed into two,

And becoming more sophisticated as I age.

It saw the mangled corpses of ogres, ghouls, witches, and zombies scattered behind me,

So it twisted its bones into deep seated insecurities,

Readjusted its sinew into fears of vulnerability,

And shapeshifted into an unstoppable Two Headed Dragon! 

we continue locked in a never ending battle to the death,

Neither side giving an inch,

I grow numb to the pains of war,

No longer do I care of the smell rotting flesh or

of the casualties cursed enough to be lost to our conflict,

But as I wage this campaign I can’t help to think back,

Back to the lessons,

Back to the class,

Back to teacher,

I’m reminded of where my hatred was born…...

Realizing the error and the flaw in it all

yet for some reason

I still fight,

Hoping to one day carve that two headed dragon five ways into ten pieces,

So that I can scatter its ashes upon the soft, sacred soil of my redemption,

I’ll watch as it fertilizes this ground,

the same ground covering a body that once carried a tortured soul,

The same soul that tortured mine,

In time the soil will grow to bear a thick muddy colored fruit,

dripping gold with the juice

of real courage, of true valor!

Its essence will continue to fall

and drop upon every tribulation from that dark decade

so that it becomes deserving of dignity,

that it becomes more than just a time of miseducation from a misguided man. 

I pray that it washes my hatred over with peace

That it cools down the burning ashes of my nemesis revealing its illusion. 

May it drop upon the fallen body of my teacher

and fall off the skin of my father.

Providing a salve to heal the scarring of his soul,

Maybe then…. those ten years will make sense,

And perhaps at the end of it all, we will both be remembered as men and no longer as monsters

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