acher0ntiastyx

[acher0ntiastyx]

apartment

It’s late.  You lie in bed, spending a few minutes with a book before trying to sleep, your apartment mostly dark save for a light still on in the bathroom and the small lamp beside your bed.  You’re almost dozing when you hear a door close too loudly on the floor above and sigh, rolling your eyes.  A neighbor you’ve never met, home from whatever late shift they always seem to be working, who’s never even tried to be quiet enough not to wake people in the apartments around them.  Something thuds to the floor above your kitchen, cupboards bang shut, a chair scrapes across linoleum, hard-soled shoes marking their passage around the room.  You set aside your book and click off your lamp, rolling over and closing your eyes in hopes to doze off and tune out the noise.  The footsteps continue, crossing into the room above your bedroom, and you groan into your pillow as that one loose floorboard creaks the way it always does.  You count the steps from the doorway, waiting for the muted squeak of bed springs as your neighbor sits to take off their shoes: one two three four… but the fifth step doesn’t come.  The silence is so sudden and total that it leaves you almost breathless and you open your eyes, rolling to your back to look up at the ceiling.  Nothing. Goosebumps prickle your arms and you wait, listening, muttering to the dim room come on, keep going, where are you, what’s wrong? Still nothing.  No footsteps, no creaky floorboards, no slamming cupboard doors.  You try to settle in and go to sleep but now it’s too quiet and in the end you have to get up and find some white noise video to play on your phone before you can doze off.  After a full day without so much as a thump from upstairs you really start to worry.  After two you climb up a floor and knock on the door to their apartment.  No one answers.  After three days you call the building manager.  On the fourth a flier is posted in the main lobby with a name you don’t recognize and a face you’ve never seen but the heading in big red capitals tells you more than enough.  MISSING.

[acher0ntiastyx]

training

You’ve been going to the same 24-hour gym for a few months now, taking a few classes and learning which machines are usually open when.  You’re trying yoga this week, an evening class that’s come to be a welcome hour of calm after work, and as you come back onto the main gym floor on your way to the locker room you pass a corner where personal trainers sometimes give kickboxing and self defense instruction, glancing over at the sound of a solid impact against one of the heavy training bags.  There are two, hanging by sturdy chains from the ceiling, and at each of them a youngish man is standing, landing blows in such synchronization that you wonder if they’re… maybe actors, practicing fight choreography?  They both have headphones on, and at least one of them is humming to himself, the sound uneven as the jolt of fist into vinyl punctuates the almost-familiar melody. It’s a little odd maybe, but they’re probably just in some sort of training.  You head to the locker room, change back into street clothes after grabbing a quick shower, and head home to make yourself dinner.  The next day you wake early, evening plans meaning you’ll have to miss your class, and head to the gym before work hoping to squeeze in a half hour on the stationary bike before heading to the office.  You make for the locker rooms, and a thump stops you in the doorway.  They’re still there, the two young men at the punching bags, side by side, but now they’re staring at each other with dark circles under their eyes and each swing of a fist seems heavier than the last.  Just before you shrug it off a few droplets of something red splatter the face of the one nearer the wall, and now you’re at an angle that lets you see the blood dripping down the backs of their hands, knuckles split open and raw.  They’re both humming now, one voice a little higher than the other, and in the early morning quiet it’s the only sound apart from the wet thud of blow after blow.  Their heads turn slightly, both of them seeming to glance at a rack of kettlebells not far away before looking back at each other, something in their eyes glinting like sharp steel. You turn and walk back out of the gym, trying to put their off-beat tune out of your mind. You don’t want to be here when the punching bags aren’t enough anymore.

[acher0ntiastyx]

closing

The store where you work is closed for the night, shutters down and doors locked.  You’re out on the shop floor, collecting unfolded shirts from a display and putting away some go-backs while your manager counts up the tills.  It’s quiet.  You straighten from picking up a fallen jacket and feel your heart skip a beat, and then you laugh at yourself.  No matter how long you work here those mannequins can still jump you when it’s empty like this.  You rehang the coat, take a few pairs of pants elsewhere in the store.  A plasticky clatter makes you jump again and you turn around.  The mannequin still stands there, the suggestion of its face expressionless, and with the racks between you and it at first you aren’t sure what made the sound.  Moving closer, you find one of its arms sagging out of its sleeve, knuckles scuffed where they struck the floor.  You look it over briefly, wondering what knocked the arm out of its socket.  Was its head always turned like that? your mind wants to ask, but you tell yourself it’s fine, you’re just at a funny angle.  You wrestle the uncomfortably stiff arm back into the sleeve of its sweater and crack it into position, and your manager tells you it’s time to pack up to leave.  You start to walk towards the back room and a rustle stops you, a faint scraping sound. You glance over your shoulder, and now the mannequin’s head is on backwards, eyeless face pointed directly at you.  After staring for a second, you go back over to it and quickly twist it into place again, then turn away from it and walk straight to the stockroom without looking again.  Your manager smiles as they step out of the office. You try not to think about how the smile began when they were looking over your shoulder.

[acher0ntiastyx]

notification

Your phone buzzes on the desk beside your elbow.  You sit back in your chair and take a breath, allowing yourself a quick break from your work to check the notification.  There is motion at your Front Door, the message reads.  You clear the notification, figuring it was probably just the mailman; you thought you’d heard a step on your porch a moment ago.  You read back over what you’ve written that afternoon, making a few edits. Five minutes later your phone buzzes again, twice this time.  There is motion at your Front Door. The same message in both notifications. This time you open the app, pulling up the video feed.  Nothing.  Maybe it was just a stray cat or something?  You go on with your afternoon, but that moment keeps coming back to your mind.  That night, relaxing in your room before bed, another notification. And another. And another.  Four, five, eight, ten in a row, all with the same emotionless message.  That can’t be right, you think, you would have heard it ring, but Someone is at your Front Door Someone is at your Front Door Someone is at your Front Door the message insists, over and over and over until you power down your phone.  You don’t check the camera.  You get what sleep you can that night with a locked bedroom door and closed curtains.  You disconnect the doorbell in the morning.

[acher0ntiastyx]

house

There have been storms recently, you remind yourself as you unlock the door to your motel room and flick on the lights.  The carpet is a bland taupe, walls a faintly cloying cream.  It’s probably just a leak somewhere that got out of hand. You set your suitcase on the bed and shrug your backpack off onto a chair, crossing to the small bathroom.  The tile is cool under your hands as you feel for another light switch, a ventilation fan whirring to life as the row of bulbs over the mirror illuminate the room.  I should have someone check the roof. You lock the bathroom door and turn on the shower, letting the water warm up as you undress.  The glass shower door rattles as you slide it back, making you grimace, and you step into the stall, turning the temperature up as hot as you can stand.  There are services that deal with things like this; I just have to make some calls. The thin white disc of motel-room soap lathers reluctantly between your palms, and you open the shower door just enough to reach out a sudsy hand and grab a washcloth.  You work the soap against the cloth, and when it’s dripping bubbles you set the bar aside and start to scrub, firmly, the coarse fabric reddening your skin.  It’s just a little mold.  It’s going to be fine. There was nothing little about it though, not really.  You try not to think about the way the bottom of the door had squeezed a trickle of dirty gray water from the carpet, or the way it had squished under your shoes.  You try to convince yourself not to worry about the way the dark smears of mildew and mold had clawed their way up the walls, clustering around doors and windows sealed too tight to let them out. You try not to remember the muted shine of daylight on the saucer-sized caps of the slick brown mushrooms growing up from the floor.  You try to tell yourself they hadn’t looked like webbed hands, palms up and beckoning.  And you very much want to forget the familiar, dazedly cheerful voices from the other room, the way the footsteps had sounded before you locked the door and ran back to your car and drove til you were too tired to keep going.  You rinse off the soap, lather the washcloth again, and turn the shower up hotter.

[acher0ntiastyx]

dream

It’s the same dream every night.  You’re back in your childhood home, unsure if your parents are asleep or away, and the house is on fire. You haven’t touched the stove, you know you haven’t, so how could everything, everything be burning?  But it is.  There’s smoke in your eyes and your throat and you run to the front door but the doorknob sears your palm and the latch has fused in the blistering heat, and for just a moment through the roar of the flames you hear a tinkling of breaking glass and look up to see your first school picture curling and blackening in its frame as tongues of fire lick up the walls.  And then you wake, sweating and out of breath, and have to get up for a while before your mind will calm enough to let you sleep again.  Your roommate always seems to know; she’ll peek out of her room when you open your door or pop into the kitchen when you shuffle across the hall for water.  The past few times she’s beaten you there, waiting for water to boil on the stove as she makes you both a cup of tea.  Her clothes smell like herbs, balsa, and charcoal from the incense she always seems to have going in her room. The first few nights after it started she would just ask a quick “you okay?” but when your nightmares didn’t let up she started asking if you wanted to talk about them.  Tonight she pushes a cup of tea into your hands the moment you step into the room and tells you she’s been reading about interpreting dreams, and maybe she could help you.  You’ve been talking in your sleep, she says; she keeps hearing you talking about fire, about everything burning.  You tell her it’s fine, it’s probably just stress, and she looks disappointed, but you aren’t sure how she’d take it if you did tell her about your dream.  She’s always the one who tells you about the fire in the nightmares, and you can’t tell anymore if the urgency in her voice is alarm or excitement.  She’s changed her incense, you think; now she just smells like charcoal.

[acher0ntiastyx]

noises

Coyotes have moved into the wooded area near your neighborhood.  At least that’s what you think you keep hearing at night, strange warbles that never quite hit a full howl and high-pitched barking yaps coming from somewhere out in the trees.  It’s sort of a nice sound, though it makes one of your across-the-street neighbors worry for his chickens.  You never see them, even on nights when you walk or drive right near those woods.  Sometimes the chorus of them yowling at each other can go on for hours before it fades out.  Sometimes, though, it cuts off all at once, so suddenly it makes you look up at your windows in surprise.  They don’t start up again those nights, and it makes you wonder if someone chased them off.  Coming home from visiting friends one night takes you past those woods. Maybe it’s just the quiet of the rest of the night but the coyotes seem so loud, and for the first time you wonder how many of them there actually are.  You’d swear you caught a glimpse of eyeshine in a streetlight or two, but never long enough to find it again in the underbrush.  Other than your footsteps on the sidewalk their hoarse quick-yap-then-wail calls are the only sound, which makes the silence when the sounds cut off all the more chilling.  You stop, a few low, fast-moving rustles away in the brush giving you the distinct impression that yes, something’s spooked them, and you look as far as the streetlights will let you into the dark trees to see if you can spot anything.  More rustling, then quiet.  Nothing moves that you can see.  Then something calls out there, and your arms prickle with goosebumps because that was not a coyote but sounded like someone or something that very much wants you to think it was a coyote.  You take a step back, think about crossing the street but there are woods on the other side too that right now don’t seem any safer than these ones, so with your gaze on the trees you begin, very slowly, to walk in your intended direction.  It happens again, that not-a-coyote coyote howl, muffled just enough by brush that you can’t tell how close it is.  You move a little faster. Twigs break.  A bush rustles.  You think you start to hear the howl again but the opening yip instead becomes a quick raspy giggle and now you can hear the footsteps in the leaves and you are running. The giggle becomes a growl and there’s a sound like bare feet on cement but you don’t turn around, you run faster.  You hit the locked front door at full speed, dig out your keys, at every second expecting to be grabbed, and finally fling the door open and slam it shut again behind you.  There’s nothing in the street or on the porch when you look out. Someone passes on the street outside a little later, humming to themself, but you can’t make yourself look.  You don’t hear coyotes after that night.

[acher0ntiastyx]

journal

The journal had been a relative’s, a great-great-aunt Leslie you’d never met in person.  It’s a small thing, the size of a standard paperback tucked in among the other books that had been willed to you, the red cloth-bound cover frayed and worn nearly white at the corners and along the spine.  Her handwriting is slightly spiky and as you thumb through it it takes you a few pages to get the hang of reading it.  Most of the early entries are mundane, pencil descriptions of birthdays and trips with friends flipping by under your fingers, but then an entry in black pen catches your eye and you stop to read it.  Saw the door again last night, she wrote, where the cellar door should’ve been. You read the sentence again, puzzled; the rest of the entry mentions a headache, that she’s still having trouble sleeping, that Dr. Boxer still can’t find anything wrong.  You keep turning pages; the pencil writing returns for half a dozen entries before another, this time in blue ink.  I keep having the same dream, it reads.  I’m walking down a spiral staircase, and every turn the steps get smaller and the corkscrew gets tighter. It keeps happening, an inked entry describing some strange thing Leslie saw or heard or felt, the pen pressed hard into the page like she wanted to make sure it wouldn’t fade or be forgotten.  More than once the nib poked right through, dotting ink onto the page behind. Near the end of the journal is an entry, in black ink again; The door is open behind me.  I feel a draft from it.  It’s warm.  I’m not going to turn around because it isn’t real.  It can’t be real.  It isn’t real. It isn’t real it isn’t real it isn’t real it isn’t real the writing dissolves, the letters growing larger and less stable down the rest of the page.  You turn it, and the next page is almost blank except for three words, so sharp and jagged it looks like it was written with a knife dipped in ink.  This isn’t Leslie’s handwriting.  You aren’t either, it reads.  Somewhere in your house, a door opens.

[acher0ntiastyx]

power

It’s evening when your power goes out.  There’s no flickering, no bang or deep electric hum of a transformer blowing outside, but suddenly the lights are gone, the central air stops whirring, and it’s still.  You sit for a moment, expecting it to flick back on again just as quickly, but it doesn’t, and you key the flashlight open on your phone as you leave your chair.  You look outside first; there’s a streetlight on but it’s blocks away, and that little pool of yellow light is the only one you can see.  There’s no movement from the neighbors, no other flashlights bobbing in windows.  Your phone light flickers.  Was that a footstep you just heard?  You freeze, and the silence holds for a long moment.  A stair creaks, slowly, then another, and in your mind’s eye you see the feet on the edge of each step, the steadying hand against the wall, the head cocked and listening as the person who must be there waits.  You hold your breath and press your light against your thigh, the barest edge still creeping out so you can see, and you inch towards your open bedroom door.  It’s so quiet.  Then your light goes out.  Then footsteps are pounding up the stairs.  You throw yourself forward and slam the door, fumbling blindly for the lock and twisting it shut just as a body crashes into the wood on the other side.  You stumble back, shaking.  The door holds.  Someone laughs a strange deep laugh. Footsteps go back down the stairs.  Just before dawn the power comes back on, and when you work up the nerve to open your door you find a smear of something black and wet on the other side.  Your spare key is neatly in the middle of the top stair.

[acher0ntiastyx]

garden

Your neighbor is working in his garden this morning.  A tall screen of hedge hides most of his yard from view but you catch a glimpse of him over the gate, shovel in hand.  You have your windows open to let in some fresh air and when you pass those that face his house you can sometimes catch the sound of metal against soil, the thump of damp earth tossed onto sod, the occasional clank as the shovel strikes a stone.  It’s been rainy lately and whatever he’s doing he must be digging deep, the smell of wet dirt soon so cloying that you have to close the windows closest to his backyard.  And then the rest of them.  It’s late afternoon by the time you see him again, climbing the stairs to his back door.  He doesn’t have his shovel now, and his clothes are sticking to him from how muddy they are.  Later, after dark, you’re in your kitchen when movement catches your eye. He’s outside again, going back down to his yard.  From his gait before he disappears behind the hedge, the stairs seem to go much farther down than they should.

[acher0ntiastyx]

bridge

You’re walking across a bridge.  It’s a clear day, sunny and breezy, and even with the sound of the traffic behind you you take a moment to stand at the railing and look out over the river, the murky water below rippling lazily with the fading wake of a passing boat.  The wind picks up a bit and as you glance to one side you notice you are no longer alone on the bridge.  A woman is approaching you, the wind in her hair, and the eyes that meet yours are the shocking blue of an August sky.  She smiles, wide and easy, and your stomach drops.  The bridge beneath you seems to list like a ship and your hands grip the railing, the wind swirling past your ears with the whitewater sound of falling.  And then she breaks eye contact and passes behind you, and a moment later the dizziness ends.  She’s gone when you’ve caught your breath enough to look after her.  Glancing back over the water, you have to take a step back from the rail; the bridge is still solid under your feet but it suddenly feels much too high.  You finish the crossing, carefully not looking over the edge til you’re safely on solid ground, and try to continue your walk, now not at all looking forward to going back across the bridge on your way home, but things seem to be fine.  It’s something of a relief when clouds start to move in with the breeze.  The sky had started to feel much too big.

[acher0ntiastyx]

Light and drawing, Nikita Busyak

[acher0ntiastyx]

Writing Tips Masterlist

Last updated April 9, 2021.

World-Building

4 Tips for Writing Magic

Creating a Culture

Totalitarian Governments

Creating a Distinct World

Creating (Fictional) Medicine

Describing New Settings

Writing a War

Writing a War with Superheroes / Magic / Fantasy

70 Questions for World-Building

Creating Superstitions

49 Questions for Creating a Religion

The Tie Between Characters and World-Building

34 Questions for Creating a Government

36 Questions for Music in World-Building

Creating a New Species

42 Questions for Creating an Education System

Characters

Developing Character Appearance

Developing Character Personality

Multilingual Characters

Creating a Wardrobe

How to Name Your Characters

Your Characters vs. Already-Established Characters

Effective Point-of-View Character

Writing an Impactful Death

Writing with Archetypes

Designing Your Characters

Mute Characters

Thinning Your Cast

Not Enough Characters?

84 Questions for Developing Plot and Character Roles

Sexuality without a Relationship

Consistent Personalities

Skills and Knowledge

Creating Conflict

Character Arcs

Sympathetic Characters

Name vs. Pronouns and When to Use Them

Creating Character Voice

Characters Who Are Learning Another Language

Character Fears

Finding Motivations

Creating Character Flaws

Emotionless Characters

Relationships

Dynamic Relationships

Sibling Relationships

Believable Romance

Characters Who Don’t Know How to Relationship

Complementary Character Traits

Writing a Slow-Burn Romance

Characters Who Fall Out of Love

Groups of Characters

Making Compatible Characters

Emotions

Frustration

Grief

Fear

Planning & Plotting

Planning a Series

Writing an Outline

Tips for Writing Subplots

Non-Point-of-View Romantic Subplots

Avoiding Generic Plots

Planning and Pace

Editing & Prose

Writing with Emotion

Controlling Pace with Detail

Steps of the Editing Phase

Descriptions in Context

Imagery

Dialogue

Showing vs. Telling

What is passive voice?

Reworking Moments of Exposition

Adverbs

When to Cut Your Content

Avoiding Cliches in Your Story

The Importance of Vocabulary

Writing Beginning Paragraphs

Motivation

How to Balance Multiple Projects

How to Fall Back in Love with Your Story

Writing Every Day?

Sticking with Your Story

Getting (Back) Into the Writing Habit

Setting Realistic Goals

Shiny New Idea Syndrome

Positive Writing Mindset

Staying Motivated on Your Projects

Getting in “The Zone”

Keeping Writing Logs

Avoiding Burnout

Breaking Out of Writer’s Block

Scenes

Quick Decisions

Travel Scenes

Breakdown in the Shower

General Writing & Miscellaneous

The Joys of the First Draft

Injuries

Creating Suspense

Writing Poison

Prophecies

A Word to Young Writers

Making a Moodboard

Consuming with the Producer Mindset

For First-Time Writers

Building Your Writing Skill

Advice for Student Writers

How to Do Research

How to Maximize Your Writing Time

How to Make Your Book Look Like a Book

On Experimenting in Writing

When to Use Multiple Points of View

Building Theme

Becoming a Beta Reader

Background Music While Writing

Why Committing to a Project Can Be Stressful

Warm-Ups for Writers

Determining Your Story’s Genre

Why do we get stressed when we don’t write?

Writing Short Stories

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[acher0ntiastyx]

Let’s play Writer’s Would You Ever

Send me an ask that says “Would you ever write…” and continue the sentence.

I’ll respond with yes or no and give an explanation as to why if I want to.

[acher0ntiastyx]

me: ok here’s a new character who needs a name

also me: *forgets every name i have ever known in my life*

[acher0ntiastyx]

Cascade Range Gothic

as suggested by @malinchi!

- Your ears pop as you wind your way up into the mountains on the narrow two-lane highway. A car passes you, on its way back down, and then the road is empty again as it disappears around a bend. You drive on, watching for the turn-off for the trail you’re going to be hiking, and another car startles you as it comes around a blind curve to pass you going downhill. You check your mirrors and it’s already out of sight around the next bend in the road, but you would’ve sworn that was the same car.

- You squint as the usually dense pine forest opens sharply into a clearcut, ferns and wildflowers nodding among the debris of dropped branches, a lone tree still standing here and there. From the corner of your eye you catch a glimpse of someone standing in the open space as if watching the road. There’s nothing there when you look over. You tell yourself it was just a tall stump.

- The Gnarl Ridge fire was over 10 years ago now. Some of the forest it burned is still standing. The trees are like ghosts; bark mostly burned away, exposed wood bleached silver-white by sun and rain and snow. You rent a cabin in the area, looking to go hiking, but you don’t sleep well. You can’t hold on to your nightmares long enough to remember them, but every time they jolt you awake you swear you smell smoke.

- You camp for the night just off the Pacific Crest Trail. You’re on the edge of dozing when a sound snaps you bolt upright in your tent, a ragged wail that leaves you gasping in shock. It echoes out of the dark for several long seconds before falling silent. You had heard before that mountain lions could scream like women but never properly believed it til now. At least you want to believe it. Even in the worst distress, a human would remember the rhythm speech is supposed to make. No human voice would sound like that. You make yourself lay back down, and spend the next several hours trying to convince yourself it was just an animal. That there weren’t any words in that scream.

- You stop at a small roadside diner for lunch. There are a few other cars in the lot, a couple of grizzled hunter types at the counter inside. You grab a booth. The waitress smiles and calls you ‘hun’ as she hands you a menu and pours coffee into a white mug. You get the feeling now and then that you’re being watched as you eat, but when you glance towards the counter the hunters haven’t moved.  They don’t so much as turn their heads when you get up to leave. The waitress stares out the window after you as you drive away. You drive that stretch of highway many times, but you never find that diner again.

- You rest your skis on your shoulder as you walk back to your car.  It’s getting dark now after a few hours spent relaxing and warming up back at the lodge, and the parking lot is almost empty.  You move slowly and watch where you step, though your snow boots give you good traction on the icy ground.  Somewhere, off in the trees that border the lot on two sides, you begin to hear another set of footsteps crunching through the snow.  They’re coming closer.  You quicken your pace and keep your eyes off the woods.

- You loop back to the trailhead after a long hike to find your car isn’t where it should be.  You left it parked only a few yards from the opening to the trail and now it’s across the parking lot and tipped over on its side, windows smashed and flashers blinking weakly.  You have just enough signal to call for a tow, and when the men from the service arrive they’re eventually able to maneuver the car back onto its wheels.  One of them wrinkles his nose at a strange smell lingering around the lot and mutters something about skunks, though it’s unlike any skunk you’ve ever smelled in your backyard.  They all keep their eyes off the dents in your car’s roof and the base of the driver’s door.  You press your hand into one when the men aren’t looking; it’s the right shape, but a good five sizes too big.

- Sometimes when you go camping and you look out the mesh door of your tent you can see flashlights moving by on the path through the campground, the people carrying them little more than shadows beyond their brightness.  Usually they stick to the ground in front of them, only occasionally passing far enough to the side to hit you.  Even rarer than that are the lights that sweep side to side as they move along the path, scanning the campground in wide even arcs.  You swear you once saw one of them blink.

- There are noises around your house sometimes.  Usually at night, though not always.  A floorboard creaks on the stairs.  The wood of the small door in your bedroom that leads into a crawl space shifts or the outside metal storm door to the basement expands in the heat of full sunlight and the sound is so much like a single soft knock that you stare at it for a long expectant moment.  Something hits the siding at the front of your house and you flip on the porch light and find a single pinecone on the painted floor, when the nearest evergreen is well at the edge of your backyard.  You never see anything.  You can’t decide if that makes you more comfortable, or less.

- In the foothills leading up to Mount Hood you drive and camp along parts of the old Oregon Trail.  The ‘road’ is rocky and rutted, jostling you almost painfully in your seat, but it’s fun anyways.  The campsites are small and simple; a fire pit, a wooden picnic table, a patch of flat pine-needle-covered dirt where you pitch a small tent.  A stream runs nearby, its steady babble soothing you off to sleep.  When you wake to the creaking rumble of wagon wheels on packed soil and the snorts of horses or oxen, you put your back to the tent flap and try to go back to sleep.  When one of the few voices you catch says the salted pork has run out, you wonder if your bear bag is high enough up the tree.  And then, if that would satisfy them. 

- There is a Himalayan blackberry thicket on the edge of your yard.  You don thick gloves and with shears in hand you hack down the trailing vines.  Thorns snag in your clothes, a few deep enough to draw blood, but hours later you’ve beaten it back, stiff canes chopped only a few inches above the ground.  Something moves in the woods one night, sends leaves rustling against your windows and branches scratching the siding.  There is a Himalayan blackberry thicket in the middle of your yard. 

[acher0ntiastyx]

here have this

I submitted this piece to a literary magazine last year, didn’t get in but i feel like putting it somewhere

—

By the fifteenth month of the drought, the lake no longer held her secrets.  Luta had felt it coming, had prayed to the goddesses of rain and harvest for water and made private offerings in their names.  But her pleas were unanswered.  Her words had fallen on deaf, or perhaps uncaring, ears.  The sky remained cloudless, the sun unrelenting, and as the village’s crops withered and the lake slowly receded from the shoreline Luta gave up her nightly praying.  As the fourteenth month ended and the fifteenth began she sat at her window through the night, and when the first pink of daybreak crept above the eastern hills she knew that the piece of her past she had thought sunk deep and beyond discovering would be laid bare by the rising sun for all the village to see. 

For as the polished sickle-blade of moon reached its zenith over what remained of the lake, another light had bloomed into view beneath the surface.  

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