Yellow Mama E zine

Back Into the Rain

 

by Christopher Hivner

 

Through a rain-streaked window.

I saw her standing

in the grass,

hair soaked against her head,

clothes hanging from her body

heavy with water.

I ran downstairs to let her in,

not knowing the rain she wore

was mingled with

my wife’s blood.

I saw the stains

when I opened the door.

She stood in the frame,

not blinking,

mouth creased,

and before I could speak,

she said,

“I made her suffer.”

At first

I didn’t understand

who she was referring to,

but a tilt of her head

and uplift of the brows . . .

What had she done?

The other woman,

whom I had let in

through my lust,

limped into my house,

the face I had

so often caressed

now looking deranged.

“This is all mine now,” she said.

“Starting with you.”

My heavy legs

tripped backwards

into the kitchen island.

Before I could go further

her hands were on my chest,

her breath in my face.

“Come now, lover,

this is what you wanted,” she said

in a husky voice

I had never heard before.

Her face changed in an instant

to that of my wife,

Caroline’s eyes filled with blood,

her mouth screaming,

other parts of her face missing.

I turned away,

tried to run

but my lover’s hands

held me in a vise,

her nails having grown

to thick talons.

She took me apart

slice by slice,

my body slapped to the floor

one piece at a time

yet somehow the agony

never ended.

The witch

had subsumed my essence,

swallowed my mind,

I was long dead

but still felt every pierce

of her spoke-sized talons,

could see through her eyes

the sloppy pile of body parts

that were once me.

With a dismissive laugh,

she made my physical remains

disappear as though

I had never been.

Satisfied with her work,

she opened the kitchen door.

My wife Caroline

walked in reluctantly,

her eyes

darting to each

corner of the room.

“He’s gone,” the witch said,

and with that

she walked out of the house

back into the rain,

and I went with her.   

 

      Christopher Hivner is a lifelong resident of Pennsylvania in the United States. He has recently been published in The Horror Zine and Illumen. His book of horror/dark fantasy poems, Dark Oceans of Divinity, is available from Cyberwit.net or Amazon.

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Image: A rainy day staring outside a high school cafeteria window. Image processed in Prisma and extra PNG elements added: man and witch in silhouette. Photograph and Photo-art credit: John C. Mannone

 

     John C. Mannone is a scientist, poet, lyrical essayist, fiction writer, and poetry editor who creates derivative visual art and photo art for speculative poems in Abyss & Apex, Silver Blade (on hiatus), and ADR Poetry (defunct). His photography/art appears on the anthology cover of the 2026 Tennessee Voices, inside Chattanooga Writers’ Guild anthologies, and on select collections. He currently serves on the artists staff of Yellow Mama Literary Magazine. His literary work appears widely in Artemis, Critical Humanities, The New England Journal of Medicine, and others. He’s the Poet Laureate for the City of Oak Ridge, TN (2026-2028).

 

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