propheye

[propheye]

—  sentence starters :  a softer world.

‘  i am learning to appreciate the simple things, like you.  ’

‘  we carry our own loneliness with us.  ’

‘  let them hate me, so long as they fear me.  ’

‘  i am surprised more suicide notes don’t just say ‘ no thank you ’.  ’

‘  everyone should have a contingency plan for when the dead rise. mine is to see my brother again.  ’

‘  even monsters are welcome when your home feels empty.  ’

‘  live every day like it’s your second last.  ’

‘  my five year plan is to maybe go out for ice cream this afternoon?  ’

‘  wherever you go, there you are, murdering more people.  ’

‘  there are two types of love: true love, and the love we actually get.  ’

‘  i don’t want to die alone, which i guess means i don’t want to die.  ’

‘  you are never here. you are always almost there.  ’

‘  you miss 100 percent of the shots you take at people who aren’t really there.  ’

‘  i only miss 92% of the shots i don’t take. no big deal.  ’

‘  i am so tired of taking everyone’s word for it that money doesn’t buy happiness.  ’

‘  when you get that look, nobody is safe. it’s why i first fell in love with you.  ’

‘  things are easier since i stopped dreaming.  ’

‘  i don’t wish i were dead, but some time off from being alive would be nice.  ’

‘  i cannot see where i want to go, only that i want the going.  ’

‘  it’s not you, it’s me. it’s both of us. actually, it’s your dad. it feels good to admit that.  ’

‘  there are so many hours in a day.  ’

‘  you and me will die the way we lived, telling ourselves stories to make it mean something.  ’

‘  when someone tells you you are wasting your life, smile real wide, and suggest they be grateful that you don’t waste theirs next.  ’

‘  it’s the little things that keep us going. like violence.  ’

‘  some friends you see every day, and some friends you see when there’s blood in the air. you need both.  ’

‘  you either die a hero or live long enough to die from alzheimer’s.  ’

‘  roses are red, violets are blue, you can do whatever you want to me.  ’

‘  i used to think being intelligent was enough.  ’

‘  i don’t know what the fuck true love even is, but i do want to hang out with you for basically the rest of my life.  ’

‘  fake happiness beats genuine misery.  ’

‘  relationships work best if we are honest about not wanting to know the truth.  ’

‘  i’m pretty sure the mysterious depths of the ocean is a metaphor for this conversation. does it ever end?  ’

‘  everyone smiles at us, like we’re the cutest couple. let’s do something wrong.  ’

‘  at my worst, i worry you’ll realize you deserve better. at my best, i worry you won’t.  ’

‘  happiness is not a house where you can live.  ’

[propheye]

Florence Pugh in Black Widow (2020)

[propheye]

Marisa Mell, from Danger: Diabolik, 1968

[propheye]

@bookburnt​       :      if it’s the last thing i do then it’s worth it.

anais cannot imagine anything being the last thing she does.      it seems as long as there is concrete beneath her shoes      &      air to breathe in,      she’ll be going      :      and she knows that’s not true,      knows full well immortality isn’t within anyone’s grasp,      not really,      and she knows everyone does everything for the last time at some point,      but it’s so far-off.      in her mind everything happens far away,      through binoculars.      clear,      but distant.      the end of a very long tunnel.

when she shakes her head a chunk of hair comes loose from behind her ear.      she pushes it back like she’s angry at it for the infraction.

‘      what,      like it’ll save the world if you die?      ’            says it like she scoffs at the concept      :      like she’s never dreamt of the end of days,      like she wasn’t raised believing in raptures and didn’t spend time brutally pushing the concept away the moment she turned nine,      unable to believe in much of anything but the horror of living.      looks gerard over      :      has she seen him before?      has she dreamt him?      is this the last thing he’ll do?      does she know this?

her dreams lately haven’t had people in them.      not alive,      at least.      not anywhere she could see,      despite the screaming that echoes in her ears after she wakes.      so she doesn’t know the answers to the questions she asks herself,      but asks nonetheless,      because who is she without the asking?      what are people if not questions?      keep up a facade,      because anais is a woman who keeps her secrets well      :      frown,      brows drawn in and creasing.      not thinking of apocalypses.      concerned,      like anyone would be.

‘      nothing’s really worth that.      ’            that,      at least,      a truth.      anais doesn’t buy into selflessness as a rule      :      everyone’s looking out for themselves,      and she doesn’t trust those who claim differently.      nothing’s worth the end.

[propheye]

anais isn’t a real avatar of the eye, though she could probably get there if given a push in that direction. mostly, the eye feeds on her fear — fear of the things she dreams of, fear of people finding out about her prophetic dreams and not believing her, fear of being watched, constant extreme paranoia, etc. if her dreams sometimes have positive impacts on her life, that’s only to spice things up and keep her on her toes.

[propheye]

—   ask meme   :   THE MECHANISMS,   THE BIFROST INCIDENT.

any schoolchild could tell you about it.

it’s as much a history project as a crime scene at this point.

from the stars to the place where the void sings, we’ll answer its call.

there’s a lot of corruption in the recording, and picking out clear words is difficult at best.

somewhere deep inside of me fester memories and dreams.

is it me? or just a dream?

if that was me, then who am i?

you can’t erase me. you can’t unmake me.

if we were betrayed, there’s a price to pay.

when your doomed projects fail, i will be there to take up the reins.

you traded your honor for folly.

you’re nothing in my eyes.

shut up and listen to reason for once.

you’ll find your resignation letter laid out on the desk. please feel free to sign it at your own leisure.

i swear on my life you will regret this day.

we’ve nothing but our shackles and the boot across our throat. our freedom and our vengeance born in blood and smoke.

sharpen your knives. we strike tonight.

you’re here. can you be real?

you’ve come back to me and i don’t care why.

i swear that i’ll not lose you again.

i can’t shake the feeling that she’s looking at me.

i have no idea what happens next.

the void sings.

if it’s the last thing i do then it’s worth it.

my destiny is calling. i stare into my fate.

is this truly me? what have i left behind?

i’ve got nothing. there’s only one option left, and i really, really don’t want to use it.

where did you get that violin?

the recordings are clear now. i can see everything.

something has gone very, very wrong.

the walls begin to tear. not the walls of the room, but those of a false and hollow reality.

all the doors are open now.

your dead are lucky.

you, don’t i know you? ___, weren’t we friends?

die in peace. die in honor. perhaps that’s enough.

sanity has no meaning in this place.

killing me will not save your world.

any window with a hammer is also an emergency exit.

i won’t forget. i won’t leave you this time.

it’s going to shit! can anyone hear us?

oh my god, is anyone seeing this?

look at the skies!

[propheye]

THE   BITTER   GHOST   OF   EVERYDAY   LIFE,   THE   ICY   SINKING   OF   THE   SOUL!         —         an   original   character   set   within   the   world   of   the   magnus   archives.   by   rosemary.   sideblog   to   arcvist.         *

[propheye]

Adèle Haenel photographed by Julien T. Hamon.

[propheye]

make usher foundation ocs with me if u aren’t a coward

[propheye]

[   STATEMENT OF ANAIS VALENTINE,   REGARDING A 1996 FAMILY VACATION TO THE GRAND CANYON AND AN ATTEMPTED RITUAL SITE FOUND THERE.   STATEMENT GIVEN IN A DREAM,   JANUARY 2017.   ]

anais is not my real name.   i probably don’t need to tell you that;   you’re a tape recorder in a dream,   i’m sure you know my name.   dream-logic dictates you should know everything i know.   something else i know is that dream-logic isn’t always consistent,   doesn’t always make sense.   not in the usual dream way,   but in the this is more than a dream way,   in the way that i’m sure if i went hunting in the usher archives on monday i’d find the very recorder i’m talking into right now with these very words on it.

so hi,   future me.   i know i’ll be too curious to resist.   that’s the issue,   isn’t it?   my own fucking curiosity.

you want a story.   i know the deal.   here’s one.

my family was never the type to do much;   we went to the farmer’s market together every sunday but only because all our hands were needed to carry the groceries,   and that was probably the only time all five of us were in the same place.   mom worked nights,   dad worked pretty much all the time,   and i was the youngest of three.   but mom won the lotto when i was eight   —   not the kind of prize that makes you rich,   but a couple hundred meant we could have a family vacation for the first time,   and we road tripped from san francisco to the grand canyon.

it was a ten hour drive and by the end of it we were all sick to death of each other.   my sisters were teenagers by then   —   emil’s ten years older,   frank nine years,   so it’s not like we had anything in common.   mom and dad’d get divorced two years later,   and things were already tense there,   too.   we spent a very quiet night in a roadside motel   —   the kind of quiet that’s heavy,   that even an eight year old can tell would be a sin to be broken,   or would unleash something that no kid really wants to let loose.

the canyon’s big.   obviously,   right?   but it’s the kind of big that’s   —   that’s vast,   and i fucking know what that means,   now.   the elements at play.   that kind of scale isn’t something you can look away from,   even when you’re an eighteen year old supposed to be looking after your kid sister while your parents scope the gift shop for snacks.

i don’t blame emil for losing track of me.   but she did.   i was a tiny kid,   and it was easy to slip past barriers,   and i’d just had a climbing unit in my gym class,   where they hauled a rock wall into our gym and let us loose on it,   so i thought,   obviously,   that scaling the side of the canyon wouldn’t be any huge deal.

i fell.   of course i fucking fell.   it’s a goddamn miracle i didn’t fall further and break every single bone in my body.   as it was,   i only broke my leg;   it never healed quite right and i still have to use a cane on bad days.

it’d make sense if i’d screamed,   but i don’t think i did.   i remember being very sure that if i made any noise at all,   i’d get something’s attention.   i must’ve had a concussion too,   but i didn’t know what that meant,   and it wasn’t   ...   i’ve gotten concussions since then,   y’know?   it didn’t feel the same.   things weren’t fuzzy.   they were really clear.   like when i looked around i could see everything.

i saw:   an old man at the edge of the opposite side of the rocks,   with people falling around him.   i don’t know where they came from.   from the top,   would make sense,   but they seemed to just keep going,   like a repeat pattern.   i saw:   skeletons,   half-decomposed,   piling up from the very bottom where the water flowed until they’d almost reached the height i laid at.   i saw:   the air around me,   like it was a physical thing,   pressing in closer and closer until i could barely breathe.

more things,   too,   but they’re harder to describe.   more feelings than sights.

i turned myself around as quietly as i could and found myself in a cave,   and i sure as fuck hadn’t been there a moment ago,   but i wasn’t really in a place to question it,   was i?   on the wall there were carvings.   i saw them clearly,   even though it was dark and i’m pretty sure i still haven’t developed nightvision,   but it took me a second to understand them.   they were all eyes,   carved in relief so they were three-dimensional and jutting out at me.

i reached out to touch one.   that was fucking idiotic of me,   but i was eight,   so i’ve stopped judging myself for that one.

things stopped being all high-definition then,   so it’s kind of a blur,   but i must’ve finally started yelling because someone came and found me and returned me to my family.   vacation got cut short,   but that wasn’t really such a bummer   —   i got to miss the first two weeks of third grade to rest my leg,   and my family never had to be all in the same car for ten hours again,   thank fucking god.

the dreams started up afterwards.   i got really good at pop quizzes in my classes,   to the point that i wasn’t allowed to take the same ones as the rest of the class,   because the teachers thought i must’ve been cheating.   i mean,   i did cheat,   sometimes.   just not on those.   i dreamt that a boy in my grade was going to be in a car crash,   and he missed school for a week afterwards.   things like that.

it’s not always bad things,   but it usually is.   they’re easier to make out.   i don’t think this dream is one of those   —   they’ve got a certain tint to them,   and they’re like i’m looking through more eyes than just my own,   like a security camera setup is in my brain and i’ve got a three-sixty degree view.   this one’s weird,   but in the usher way,   not the cassandra way.

it wasn’t just the dreams that started after the canyon incident.   i’m always being watched.   i’m not paranoid,   no matter what my dad might’ve said if you asked him.   he thinks i’m dead now.   it’s   ...   it isn’t easy to fake your death,   exactly,   but after the first time it’s not hard.   after you figure it out once,   erasing yourself is a whole lot easier than keeping yourself the same.

i think that brings us to the now.   i could go into my two years in college before i dropped out,   or the half-dozen fake names i’ve had between eight and now,   but i’ve seen your ilk around the foundation.   don’t really get the recorders thing,   but it goes with everything else there,   right?   the watched feeling’s worse there,   but not oppressive in the way it is everywhere else.   more like a blanket than something smothering.   like i’m part of it,   somehow.

i started working at the usher foundation six months ago.   needed a tech person for their research team,   they said.   i’m going to destroy this damn tape if it actually shows up there,   so i guess i’m good to admit that that’s not why i started working there.   didn’t drop all my shit and move five states to dc because i saw a linkedin listing for something i hadn’t yet forged the qualifications for.   that’d be crazy.

there’s a reputation when you go snooping about weird shit of a certain kind.   not ghosts or whatever,   not bigfoot,   not even the paranoia thing,   but the grand canyon suddenly being filled with bones kinda weird.   y’know,   i’ve never actually told anyone about that part.   i knew,   even as a kid,   that it’d get written off as a hallucination.   all the roads lead to usher.   any answers i could get,    i could get there.

and i sure as fuck wasn’t going to give a statement of my own.   i guess that’s what i’m doing now,   but dreams don’t count unless they come true later.   i’ll deal with that when it happens.

so i’m working there,   researching and occasionally hacking when whatever info they need isn’t available.   you pick up skills like that.   an ex of mine was much better at computers than i was,   but i learned a lot from her in the year i stayed there.

i’m there to look into what happened to me,   sure,   but there’s a bigger reason.

i keep dreaming about the end of the world.   i don’t need to tell you which kind of dream those are.

[propheye]

are my prophetic visions a joke to you