The leaves were crisp along the ground,
Leading to where her head was found.
No body, no soul, no scream, no sound,
Poor Anna Grace fell all the way down.
"My head!"
She sat up in bed, an airy whisper waking her.
Not a finger moves as she looks around.
There's a body here, a body there, and a limb hanging on the wall,
but none of this seems to scare her at all.
Her fingerprints lie in the blood on the wall,
yet every last drop has been washed off.
There's a pleasant silence between the stars,
but it's time to wake to release prisoners.
The door creaks with the slightest of sound,
but she's grown used to it, having nothing around.
Yet there's something out here this fall,
something watching her, watching her stall.
Could it be a fox, a wolf, a coyote?
A lost wanderer trying to return home?
Perhaps its a beast in which she cannot slay,
perhaps she should hide; she should run away.
But it isn't like her to flee in fear.
Fear is not in her bones, her lineage knows it not.
The wind picks up and a twig snaps near--
it is certain there is someone here.
"Come out, whatever you are," she calls,
her voice swept away in the wind.
The overcast sky this autumn encroaches
and she feels a presence as something approaches.
"My head!"
The words are a howl that whips by her ears;
the cry of a banshee, perhaps in the mind.
Paranoia lurks deep inside her brain;
all it's ever done is cause her pain.
She grits her teeth and steps back inside,
the stench coming from where the bodies reside.
There's something unsettling, something unnerved--
she walks into the room to check on them first.
"There must be five, always be five," she says aloud,
counting the bodies to make sure they're there.
"I removed your thoughts so you'd never leave,
I removed your thoughts to give a reprieve."
She shuts the door behind her and thinks an awful lot,
when she decides that she's had her fill of rot.
She strides to the sink and her skin turns to chicken's,
prickling under the watchful eyes of someone else's in the kitchen.
Paranoia sweeps through her as she reveals a knife,
the blade small enough to hide in her hand.
The dark shadows give nothing away,
but cautious is how she always stays.
"I'll wait to release them," she says to herself,
her eyes doing another sweep of the shelves.
"The fall morning will dawn and things will be new,
and I can look for the remains anew."
"No one will miss her, not for a day.
She always came out in the woods.
She should be nice to strangers when they speak,
offer them food and shelter for a week."
"My head!"
The scream stops her short, too close for comfort.
She narrows her eyes and peers out the windows.
Nothing has changed, not a sign of life;
she is the only one alive.
There's a boom in her room, in which she turns to investigate.
She opens the door as rot fills her senses again.
Counting aloud, the paranoia rises even more
because now she counts only four.
The window is open and hangs on its hinges, and fury grows like a wildfire.
Someone is in her house and taking her things.
She shuts her mouth and clutches her knife
because she is the only one alive.
The body that is missing is a man's,
someone who had fallen into a river.
His body was still and waterlogged, freezing cold,
but she isn't picky; just glad it rolled.
"Have I lost your head, River Man?" she mumbles,
turning to the second room. "I hope not."
Before she can turn the door's knob,
it moves on its own.
She grits her teeth and takes a step back.
Whatever lurks in her house is silent.
She never prepared for someone to come inside--
after all, she is the only one alive.
"Raggedy rags," she hears from behind the door.
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags.
My dress has been torn to tatters and threads,
what did you ever do with my head?"
The voice is a whisper, a chilling melody in the silence.
That deep paranoia is dislodging itself from her sternum
and melting like ice in her veins.
After that, what shall remain?
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags,
in a world of corpses, you've remained standing,
but your heart and mind have sagged--
sagged to raggedy rags."
The door jerks with motion at the last words,
the volume of the words increasing.
Coming from behind the door, it seems
that they've only turned to feral screams.
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags!
My head, my head, you've taken my head!
My dress has been torn to tatters and threads,
what did you ever do with my poor dead head?"
The knob breaks apart from the force, thudding against the ground.
She hears the boom of a body falling down.
Using the distraction, she pushes open the door
to see nothing short of a nightmare of horror.
"We should have never touched the darkness!"
Her shout reaches through the air as she screams at the monster.
"If you had, I wouldn't have to pluck you one by one.
One day, all of this madness will be undone!"
The blade plunges into the beast and it screams aloud,
the owner of this house moving back into the hall.
In the other room, there are not four but two--
it's becoming clear now that she will only lose.
She hears the beast break out of the room and into the hall
just as she exits the house and enters the woods.
Before her stands two more of the figures,
two more girls that she found, the both of them sisters.
They're headless and twitching, a side effect from the darkness,
a darkness the owner never touched and stayed far from.
The curse had limitations, as immortality would,
they thought they were gods and that this was good.
With a bite of an apple and the blinding of a curse,
this world suddenly belonged to the underworld.
As the sisters flinch and stagger forward on broken ankles,
no escape from the owner's angle.
The monster reanimates inside the house,
and she can hear the man moving about.
He comes into view from behind a tree,
his head stitched back onto his neck and he's trying to breathe.
"My head!"
The monster inside cries out, her voice rattling the walls.
The owner can hear her breaking down the doors.
The sisters keep walking toward her slowly,
for she is alive, and she is the only.
She grits her teeth but doesn't panic,
breathing in the smell of the forest.
Hers is the only house for miles,
and between here and the cities are body piles.
The owner sprints close to the left sister as the man approaches,
and she kicks in the kneecap, the sister tumbling forward.
Without eyes or a brain, the body is useless;
just an empty shell, a vessel for unholiness.
She darts into the woods, head level and thinking quick,
watching for others who have been mutilated.
Behind her, the sounds of feet echo without reprieve;
they are what demolish the dead leaves.
Far enough away, the owner clambers into a tree,
climbing as high as she can reach.
The soggy man with a missing arm and only half his teeth
staggers quickly underneath.
She holds her breath as the sisters join in the hunt,
several minutes later as she stays in the tree.
Up high is the best place to be for her, you see,
for these are her woods--and no evil can she let be.
"Raggedy... raggedy rags..."
the voice drifts upward, the monster getting close.
She palms her blade and stays still on her perch,
staying as quiet as an empty church.
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags..."
The monster stops, dropping what she drags.
The body of a girl, not more than twelve, dressed in rags,
with a sewn-on head of a woman, the woman whose body she drags.
She stops her muttering, glassy eyes looking around,
patchy black hair dusting her shoulders.
"Come out, come out, wherever you've hid.
I have another body to take from your list."
The house owner feels no pity.
She used to, it's true, but she has become numb.
But seeing a little girl at that age with no soul;
of course, she's seen worse, darkness blacker than coal.
The monster's eyes meet the girl's, void and cruel,
but the girl doesn't startle, doesn't crumble.
Irises white and the whites bloodshot red,
the blood vessels that popped while taking her head.
"I've heard of people like you, those who try to bring us to death.
But century-old people like me, we don't fear you.
Even if you skin us and beat us and cut off our heads,
the joke is on you, because we'll never be truly dead."
The homeowner grits her teeth and readies herself;
the glint of her knife in the sternum of the child.
"Then leave or be mutilated," she warns the girl,
"I only need five to break the world."
The girl grimaces and takes a step forward.
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags," she whispers.
"I don't believe you in the slightest.
You'll save those five at best."
"You can't save everyone, my child."
The owner of the house's father comes back to her mind.
"But trying is all you can do,
and remember to never consume."
He held up the jar, the water that would extend their lives.
The fountain of youth was found and dried out.
"This is all that's left, nothing but a jar.
It cannot be burned, cannot be harmed."
"They will smell it from miles away,"
he went on, warning her over the years.
"They will come and search for it
until they their body bathed in it."
She looks down at her clinched fist,
gritting her teeth and biting her tongue.
The jar has been passed down for generations,
None of her family joining with the world's evil fun.
They used to be scientists and searched for a cure,
but the world shunned them and exiled her blood.
Her family believed immortality was evil,
and the little girl before her proves that point.
"Raggedy rags! Raggedy rags!"
The girl suddenly screams.
"You sit there and, in your eyes, you brag,
tell me I'm wrong and face my wrath!"
The girl leaves the body behind her and she reaches for the tree.
The homeowner pulls her body a few branches higher.
She judges where the girl clambers
and a smile reignites the fire's embers.
Reaching upward, the child screams,
"Rags! Rags! You are nothing but a rag! My rag!
Let me use your limbs to replace my own;
Lend me your clothes—"
The owner kicks her face and she tumbles down,
the quick stitching in her neck popping.
The head rolls to the ground
as the homeowner climbs down.
She gathers the corpses one by one,
pulling their heads off and dragging them by their hair.
She puts them back where they belong,
the jaws snapping as she triggers her gun.
One bullet to each skull will knock them out
she has about thirty minutes before they wake.
Their bodies lay still on the ground, spiritless,
as she drags them back to the room, restless.
The little girl is nowhere to be seen,
but she has twenty minutes to find her.
One head is missing, but she can find it;
she just has to retrace her steps to do it.
Five minutes to spare, she finds the head,
eyes lolling in their sockets and she smiles.
"I found your head!" Her need is simple
as she listens for sounds with her gun to the temple.
"My head!"
A chilled wind rushes through her, nearly knocking her down.
She sprints in the direction it had come from,
holding the severed child's head by its red hair,
then stops to smile as she stares.
The child's body stands stagnant,
another gust of wind pushing her clothes.
She lifts the gun and pulls the trigger,
the body dropping to the ground.
She drags them both to the house;
her five minutes are up.
But she finally has the matching pieces,
and she can rid of the demons.
"There must be five, always be five," she says aloud,
counting the bodies once more.
I removed your thoughts so you'd never leave,
I removed your thoughts to give you reprieve."
The fingers on the bodies begin to twitch
as she plunges a needle into their still hearts.
They writhe in pain and she takes a step back,
heading over to the heads with a bat.
Five heads, the five she needed to stop it all:
two-of-a-kind, a male with raven hair,
a woman with a scar, an old child;
now her family will get what's desired.
The flames turn green and blue,
exploding and throwing her into the trees.
She sits up to see people walking toward the fire
as the flames dance higher.
They ignore her as they turn to ash,
her house burning before her eyes.
The woman who had told her family what to do long ago,
she was right. She was right and helped save the world--
The people ash even without touching the fire,
screams ringing through the air and making her ears bleed.
Smoke fills the air as the blue fire spreads,
the colors shifting to a deep, crimson red.
"My head!"
The voice explodes through the trees
as the house collapses, people still ashing.
In the rubble, in the midst of the fire,
the little girl stands, smiling as she expires.
"Raggedy rags! My raggedy rags!
You cannot escape the sin that touches man,
and you are not righteous for slaughtering the breathing.
Only the holy will stop the demons from feeding!"
"There are more than the wholes in which you've destroyed--
There are those who have drank the altered waters,
and they are the ones who will be left behind--
and they will slaughter all mortals of mankind!"
The voice stops.
The little girl falls to ash.
The fire's silenced.
The forest quiets.
She is free.
She walks to the cliff where her father died.
Killed by an immortal trying to save its life.
She places the flower down, alone in this life.
For she is the only one alive.
She is free.
Except.
"Your head."
The voice comes before the strike.
A hybrid from tainted youth fountian water,
a new breed of the immortal--
they who call themselves unmortal.
"Anna Grace."
The leaves were crisp along the ground,
Leading to where her head was found.
No body, no soul, no scream, no sound,
Poor Anna Grace fell all the way down.
Leading to where her head was found.
No body, no soul, no scream, no sound,
Poor Anna Grace fell all the way down.
"My head!"
She sat up in bed, an airy whisper waking her.
Not a finger moves as she looks around.
There's a body here, a body there, and a limb hanging on the wall,
but none of this seems to scare her at all.
Her fingerprints lie in the blood on the wall,
yet every last drop has been washed off.
There's a pleasant silence between the stars,
but it's time to wake to release prisoners.
The door creaks with the slightest of sound,
but she's grown used to it, having nothing around.
Yet there's something out here this fall,
something watching her, watching her stall.
Could it be a fox, a wolf, a coyote?
A lost wanderer trying to return home?
Perhaps its a beast in which she cannot slay,
perhaps she should hide; she should run away.
But it isn't like her to flee in fear.
Fear is not in her bones, her lineage knows it not.
The wind picks up and a twig snaps near--
it is certain there is someone here.
"Come out, whatever you are," she calls,
her voice swept away in the wind.
The overcast sky this autumn encroaches
and she feels a presence as something approaches.
"My head!"
The words are a howl that whips by her ears;
the cry of a banshee, perhaps in the mind.
Paranoia lurks deep inside her brain;
all it's ever done is cause her pain.
She grits her teeth and steps back inside,
the stench coming from where the bodies reside.
There's something unsettling, something unnerved--
she walks into the room to check on them first.
"There must be five, always be five," she says aloud,
counting the bodies to make sure they're there.
"I removed your thoughts so you'd never leave,
I removed your thoughts to give a reprieve."
She shuts the door behind her and thinks an awful lot,
when she decides that she's had her fill of rot.
She strides to the sink and her skin turns to chicken's,
prickling under the watchful eyes of someone else's in the kitchen.
Paranoia sweeps through her as she reveals a knife,
the blade small enough to hide in her hand.
The dark shadows give nothing away,
but cautious is how she always stays.
"I'll wait to release them," she says to herself,
her eyes doing another sweep of the shelves.
"The fall morning will dawn and things will be new,
and I can look for the remains anew."
"No one will miss her, not for a day.
She always came out in the woods.
She should be nice to strangers when they speak,
offer them food and shelter for a week."
"My head!"
The scream stops her short, too close for comfort.
She narrows her eyes and peers out the windows.
Nothing has changed, not a sign of life;
she is the only one alive.
There's a boom in her room, in which she turns to investigate.
She opens the door as rot fills her senses again.
Counting aloud, the paranoia rises even more
because now she counts only four.
The window is open and hangs on its hinges, and fury grows like a wildfire.
Someone is in her house and taking her things.
She shuts her mouth and clutches her knife
because she is the only one alive.
The body that is missing is a man's,
someone who had fallen into a river.
His body was still and waterlogged, freezing cold,
but she isn't picky; just glad it rolled.
"Have I lost your head, River Man?" she mumbles,
turning to the second room. "I hope not."
Before she can turn the door's knob,
it moves on its own.
She grits her teeth and takes a step back.
Whatever lurks in her house is silent.
She never prepared for someone to come inside--
after all, she is the only one alive.
"Raggedy rags," she hears from behind the door.
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags.
My dress has been torn to tatters and threads,
what did you ever do with my head?"
The voice is a whisper, a chilling melody in the silence.
That deep paranoia is dislodging itself from her sternum
and melting like ice in her veins.
After that, what shall remain?
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags,
in a world of corpses, you've remained standing,
but your heart and mind have sagged--
sagged to raggedy rags."
The door jerks with motion at the last words,
the volume of the words increasing.
Coming from behind the door, it seems
that they've only turned to feral screams.
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags!
My head, my head, you've taken my head!
My dress has been torn to tatters and threads,
what did you ever do with my poor dead head?"
The knob breaks apart from the force, thudding against the ground.
She hears the boom of a body falling down.
Using the distraction, she pushes open the door
to see nothing short of a nightmare of horror.
"We should have never touched the darkness!"
Her shout reaches through the air as she screams at the monster.
"If you had, I wouldn't have to pluck you one by one.
One day, all of this madness will be undone!"
The blade plunges into the beast and it screams aloud,
the owner of this house moving back into the hall.
In the other room, there are not four but two--
it's becoming clear now that she will only lose.
She hears the beast break out of the room and into the hall
just as she exits the house and enters the woods.
Before her stands two more of the figures,
two more girls that she found, the both of them sisters.
They're headless and twitching, a side effect from the darkness,
a darkness the owner never touched and stayed far from.
The curse had limitations, as immortality would,
they thought they were gods and that this was good.
With a bite of an apple and the blinding of a curse,
this world suddenly belonged to the underworld.
As the sisters flinch and stagger forward on broken ankles,
no escape from the owner's angle.
The monster reanimates inside the house,
and she can hear the man moving about.
He comes into view from behind a tree,
his head stitched back onto his neck and he's trying to breathe.
"My head!"
The monster inside cries out, her voice rattling the walls.
The owner can hear her breaking down the doors.
The sisters keep walking toward her slowly,
for she is alive, and she is the only.
She grits her teeth but doesn't panic,
breathing in the smell of the forest.
Hers is the only house for miles,
and between here and the cities are body piles.
The owner sprints close to the left sister as the man approaches,
and she kicks in the kneecap, the sister tumbling forward.
Without eyes or a brain, the body is useless;
just an empty shell, a vessel for unholiness.
She darts into the woods, head level and thinking quick,
watching for others who have been mutilated.
Behind her, the sounds of feet echo without reprieve;
they are what demolish the dead leaves.
Far enough away, the owner clambers into a tree,
climbing as high as she can reach.
The soggy man with a missing arm and only half his teeth
staggers quickly underneath.
She holds her breath as the sisters join in the hunt,
several minutes later as she stays in the tree.
Up high is the best place to be for her, you see,
for these are her woods--and no evil can she let be.
"Raggedy... raggedy rags..."
the voice drifts upward, the monster getting close.
She palms her blade and stays still on her perch,
staying as quiet as an empty church.
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags..."
The monster stops, dropping what she drags.
The body of a girl, not more than twelve, dressed in rags,
with a sewn-on head of a woman, the woman whose body she drags.
She stops her muttering, glassy eyes looking around,
patchy black hair dusting her shoulders.
"Come out, come out, wherever you've hid.
I have another body to take from your list."
The house owner feels no pity.
She used to, it's true, but she has become numb.
But seeing a little girl at that age with no soul;
of course, she's seen worse, darkness blacker than coal.
The monster's eyes meet the girl's, void and cruel,
but the girl doesn't startle, doesn't crumble.
Irises white and the whites bloodshot red,
the blood vessels that popped while taking her head.
"I've heard of people like you, those who try to bring us to death.
But century-old people like me, we don't fear you.
Even if you skin us and beat us and cut off our heads,
the joke is on you, because we'll never be truly dead."
The homeowner grits her teeth and readies herself;
the glint of her knife in the sternum of the child.
"Then leave or be mutilated," she warns the girl,
"I only need five to break the world."
The girl grimaces and takes a step forward.
"Raggedy rags, raggedy rags," she whispers.
"I don't believe you in the slightest.
You'll save those five at best."
"You can't save everyone, my child."
The owner of the house's father comes back to her mind.
"But trying is all you can do,
and remember to never consume."
He held up the jar, the water that would extend their lives.
The fountain of youth was found and dried out.
"This is all that's left, nothing but a jar.
It cannot be burned, cannot be harmed."
"They will smell it from miles away,"
he went on, warning her over the years.
"They will come and search for it
until they their body bathed in it."
She looks down at her clinched fist,
gritting her teeth and biting her tongue.
The jar has been passed down for generations,
None of her family joining with the world's evil fun.
They used to be scientists and searched for a cure,
but the world shunned them and exiled her blood.
Her family believed immortality was evil,
and the little girl before her proves that point.
"Raggedy rags! Raggedy rags!"
The girl suddenly screams.
"You sit there and, in your eyes, you brag,
tell me I'm wrong and face my wrath!"
The girl leaves the body behind her and she reaches for the tree.
The homeowner pulls her body a few branches higher.
She judges where the girl clambers
and a smile reignites the fire's embers.
Reaching upward, the child screams,
"Rags! Rags! You are nothing but a rag! My rag!
Let me use your limbs to replace my own;
Lend me your clothes—"
The owner kicks her face and she tumbles down,
the quick stitching in her neck popping.
The head rolls to the ground
as the homeowner climbs down.
She gathers the corpses one by one,
pulling their heads off and dragging them by their hair.
She puts them back where they belong,
the jaws snapping as she triggers her gun.
One bullet to each skull will knock them out
she has about thirty minutes before they wake.
Their bodies lay still on the ground, spiritless,
as she drags them back to the room, restless.
The little girl is nowhere to be seen,
but she has twenty minutes to find her.
One head is missing, but she can find it;
she just has to retrace her steps to do it.
Five minutes to spare, she finds the head,
eyes lolling in their sockets and she smiles.
"I found your head!" Her need is simple
as she listens for sounds with her gun to the temple.
"My head!"
A chilled wind rushes through her, nearly knocking her down.
She sprints in the direction it had come from,
holding the severed child's head by its red hair,
then stops to smile as she stares.
The child's body stands stagnant,
another gust of wind pushing her clothes.
She lifts the gun and pulls the trigger,
the body dropping to the ground.
She drags them both to the house;
her five minutes are up.
But she finally has the matching pieces,
and she can rid of the demons.
"There must be five, always be five," she says aloud,
counting the bodies once more.
I removed your thoughts so you'd never leave,
I removed your thoughts to give you reprieve."
The fingers on the bodies begin to twitch
as she plunges a needle into their still hearts.
They writhe in pain and she takes a step back,
heading over to the heads with a bat.
Five heads, the five she needed to stop it all:
two-of-a-kind, a male with raven hair,
a woman with a scar, an old child;
now her family will get what's desired.
The flames turn green and blue,
exploding and throwing her into the trees.
She sits up to see people walking toward the fire
as the flames dance higher.
They ignore her as they turn to ash,
her house burning before her eyes.
The woman who had told her family what to do long ago,
she was right. She was right and helped save the world--
The people ash even without touching the fire,
screams ringing through the air and making her ears bleed.
Smoke fills the air as the blue fire spreads,
the colors shifting to a deep, crimson red.
"My head!"
The voice explodes through the trees
as the house collapses, people still ashing.
In the rubble, in the midst of the fire,
the little girl stands, smiling as she expires.
"Raggedy rags! My raggedy rags!
You cannot escape the sin that touches man,
and you are not righteous for slaughtering the breathing.
Only the holy will stop the demons from feeding!"
"There are more than the wholes in which you've destroyed--
There are those who have drank the altered waters,
and they are the ones who will be left behind--
and they will slaughter all mortals of mankind!"
The voice stops.
The little girl falls to ash.
The fire's silenced.
The forest quiets.
She is free.
She walks to the cliff where her father died.
Killed by an immortal trying to save its life.
She places the flower down, alone in this life.
For she is the only one alive.
She is free.
Except.
"Your head."
The voice comes before the strike.
A hybrid from tainted youth fountian water,
a new breed of the immortal--
they who call themselves unmortal.
"Anna Grace."
The leaves were crisp along the ground,
Leading to where her head was found.
No body, no soul, no scream, no sound,
Poor Anna Grace fell all the way down.
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