Involuntary Doppelgänger

Dead lives rive

From my human hide

When the cult had come for me

I could have got away, but didn't

I couldn't be the one to cause this any longer

Had it been a day or a year inside this skin? I could not tell

The faces I had captured over centuries took hold

I became a kind of hunter, eating pelts of pleading meat

To acquire their appearance, taking their form

With will alone, alive and crawling out of me to catch its prey

Shed you foreign poison peltry, take the rind you want

Seen to be a wicked omen

Despite attempts to hide my live birthmark

Crown of a dark demon tar

I'd taken back with me from the other side

There is no god for if there was then how'd this evil take me?

It seeped and crawled its way along my face as mother wept

Stealing identities from every skin it sees

Growing with urgency

When he tried to cut it off, many a time to no avail

It would take my livid father's manic features

Laughing at him as he tried to hack them off his son

Knowing that he could not end my life, he took his own

Mother mourned the death of him and knew that many more would follow if I didn't leave right then

Heading out into the wood, I promised I would never come back

I thank the dead that she knows not what I have become

Taking over adolescent tendencies to feed, to hunt, to kill, to change

Decades take me deep into the curse's endless undertow

There is no time or end behind this epidermal prison

My thread of youth imprisoned, tortured by immortal victims

I am the involuntary doppelgänger

I cannot stop it, my skin is alive

All of the time I've spent inside it

I never thought it could be calling out to any other

Involuntary doppelgänger

Had it grown bored of its feed or gained knowledge with time?

Whatever the change had been, I felt it emanating information

Had it tried to send a beacon

Warning them to stay away?

I heard the voices calling back

Involuntary doppelgänger

Had it tried to send a beacon

Warning them to stay away?

I heard the voices calling back

Involuntary doppelgänger

One last face

It had to acquire before it's caught

The menace cloak

Found her still alive and skinning bodies of her own

It appeared she had done the same as I for all this time

To see her son again, and there I stood

The cloak of others made her impossible to recognize

She carved me like any other martyr of our curse

When the cult had breached our cabin

Taking me to be a random victim of the doppelgänger

Heading out into the woods, I promised I would never come back

I thank the dead that she knows not what I have become

Taking over adolescent tendencies to feed, to hunt, to kill, to change

Decades take me deep into the curse's endless undertow

My tongue speaks in a cadence that only A.U.M. can decipher

Void of bidding heading out a very heated inner wreathing

Of a demon with intent to animate and be gone