Let it never be said that that we at High Tensile shy away from experimentation. Contributor Sammie Bergs is a prolific writer of poetic monologues. Her style is that of a desperate confessional, or sometimes an accusatory diatribe. Above all, it’s astonishingly honest. She reads like she’s speaking in a performance written by a modern Shakespeare, with grand, weighty monologues. Each one is packed tight full of meaning and emotion.

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Today, we’ll be showcasing two of her darker works, short dark soliloquies that embody the human centred aspects of psychological thriller fiction. From Melted Face I felt the decay of a relationship with lover in real time. Becoming undone from the face first, falling apart into loose clay, the destruction of a self that was cherished. It’s a kind of despair I never knew I could feel.

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Somehow, Imperative manages to be an even more shocking creature: a haunting depiction of an abusive, or at least toxic, relationship. The relationship isn’t the harrowing part, however. Bergs parallels intense desire for another with drug addiction, an uncomfortably apt comparison.  Human minds are wired to seek pleasure in any and all forms. For a strong enough source, we are capable of doing anything- morality be damned. That revelation is at the core of good psychological thrillers.

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Indeed, these shorts are each individually the perfect circumstances for a traditional psychological thriller story. They easily contain all of the emotion of thriller novels and more. Bergs just condenses them down into bitesize form.

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Please don’t miss out on these word-painted portraits.

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They have to be read to be believed.

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Melted Face by Sammie Bergs

There was no one else. No one else that had ever entered my life and attached onto my soul so much. Every moment spent together gave us another piece of each other. Bit by bit, parts of who we were came together like puzzles pieces, and the picture it revealed was exquisite.

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I didn't know it at the time, but I discovered what love was like outside of the warmth of a family.

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Then, without warning, the face that had become imprinted in my memory slowly started melting away.

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I watched as your smile dropped to touch your toes and your eyes liquified into flowing streams I couldn't control.

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My hands lifted up to start remold what had been drooping off, but when I looked into your eyes, they were completely gone.

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New eyes stared back at me, eyes that were dark and lost. Inside, there was still that person who cared so deeply and so passionately, but the face being shown was unrecognizable. It was beaten and scarred; it was miserable and desperate.

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What you’ve left behind is only a heart, constantly burning from the same fires that had melted your face.

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Day by day, the sight of you dwindles into almost nothing. All there is now are small, almost unnoticeable, moments when you flash your teeth and squint your eyes in my direction.

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My heart aches in search for the face you once had. The one that hadn't been destroyed. The one that taught me that laughter was the cure to my missing identity.

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For now, all that exists is your melted face.

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Know that I’m here, searching for the right tools to mold you back. Come back.

 

Imperative by Sammie Bergs

It was overly compelling, this feeling of carelessness and unbalanced euphoria.

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My brain associated this with you and for that, I became addicted.

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Whenever you pushed me to the side, the pain became apparent and others warned me to walk away before I would lose sight of how to separate.

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Somehow, just as I would gather the sense to leave, you'd jerk me back and hold me so tight that all I could feel was safe and at ease.

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I could say that I melted in your arms, but it was more like electricity.

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Sparks that would drizzle down from my heart to my toes and I would be paralyzed,

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never wanting to move.

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As the loved ones around me fell into their narcotics,

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I found myself battling with my own drug;

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a strange enslavement that I begged for.

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It wasn't the withdrawals that hurt the most,

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but the inability to have more than what I already did.

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Every day, craving more of you than what you would give to me

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created pain that seeped through every vain attached to my slow-beating heart.

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Eventually, I'll find my feet and get the shove forward that I need to no longer be dependent on the idea of us.

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Until then, I'm addicted to your words, your mind, your lips, your heart,

and you.

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