Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

The Red Queen's Bidding

They’re out there.
The bastards.
Crawling on the holly.
Flying in and out of my gutters.
Winged henchmen
willing to do the red queen’s bidding.
I watch them from my kitchen window,
while I sit safe inside
eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
One by one they come,
until there are
five, ten, fifteen
red bodied devils,
all lined up on my white gutters,
each one taking flight in some weird insectian order
like World War II pilots going off to war.
I want to scream at them.
I want to tell them to leave my gutters alone.
I’d shoot them from my window if I could,
but the screens are in the way.
They seem to know they are well protected
tucked in the gutter.
We both know it.
They won’t be happy
until I climb up on the roof in the middle of the night
with my flashlight
and attack them while they sleep,
face to face.
They want my blood.
Tomorrow morning we’ll see
who comes back alive.