Bogleech.com's 2016 Horror Write-off:
The Ostrich God
Submitted by
Jenne Kaivo (email)
The Ostrich God has no water and only drinks blood.
Its long legs walk in the harsh, sharp sun
Their scaly skin strides over mountains of sand.
The feathers are black on the Ostrich God's back.
Bedraggled and long, they are puffed unwhole plumes
That can write out your sigils so neat and so bold
In the melted red resin of Daemonorops.
Where they fall to the land, they hit it so light
With a little dust puff, and an unheard loud sound
Like the breaking of sand baked to glass by the sun.
The Ostrich God walks over ancient, dry graves
And its claws mark the granite like it was soft clay.
Its bare dark-eyed face blinks languid and calm
And it plunges its head in the recent-dug earth
To eat the fresh meat of the recently dead.
It pulls its head up, flings a small scrap of cloth
As dark ichor drips down its dinosaur neck.
The sun sinks away and the Ostrich God runs
At a pace that's so swift it can outrun the light.
No-one knows where it sleeps in the precious cool hours
When the night rides the land till the day comes again.