rottenentity

[rottenentity]

it writhes beneath my ribs | deltarune

the body revolts in silence. the soul rattles in its cage.

contains: self harm, dissociation, violent thoughts, self mutilation, introspection, miscommunication

note: i know kris doesn’t go this far in canon (removing the soul). this piece is a personal exploration of their dissociation and suffering, taken to an extreme. also not proof read. sorry.

It’s quiet in the house. Not the eerie kind of quiet, not quite. Not the type that makes you afraid to breathe in case it wakes something. No, this is the kind of quiet that's padded at the edges, thick and warm, shaped by domestic sounds filtered through walls and time. A soft clink of dishware. The wet whisper of a hose outside. A humming voice with no words. It’s the kind of quiet that’s meant to cradle, but feels more like a noose.

Kris closes the bathroom door behind them, softly. Click.

The lock doesn’t work quite right, it always skips and sticks, but they jiggle it into place, metal groaning like something being forced into a mold it doesn’t fit. That makes two of them.

There’s a mirror. Of course there is. Kris never looks at it first. They touch the counter. They watch the dust move when they breathe.

They are not supposed to have the knife in the house anymore. But they keep it hidden in the lining of their pants. There’s a small slit behind the seam near the hem, just big enough to slide it in. They always know it’s there, like a bone that broke wrong and healed with a twist. A familiar weight. A friend, almost. Friends don’t leave.

The metal is warm now, from the heat of their hand. They've been holding it since they came in. They wonder how long it takes to heat skin up to the point of cutting. Wonder if the warmth makes it easier, like softening meat before slicing. They could ask Dad. He’d know. But he doesn’t come here anymore.

They draw up their shirt and press the tip just under the rib. There, just to the side of the sternum. They've mapped the path before. A red-inked trail from navel to throat, drafted in silence under their clothes. The skin there is thinner. They know.

They drag the knife up, a little. Not deep yet. A warning. A whisper. Skin parts easier than people think. It’s not like in cartoons or movies. No geyser of blood. Just a slow bloom. Red beads. Heat. Then sting.

And then it begins. The cutting is not frenzied. It is not a tantrum. It is not a performance. It is surgical. Devotional. Every pull of the blade is deliberate, controlled, an act of reclamation. They are peeling back the mask they gave them. Not a human mask. But the one. The one buried inside. The glowing rot that pulses like a tumor made of light. They want it out. They want it gone.

It’s not theirs. It never was. It hums and writhes like an engine jammed in the wrong car. It does not understand them. It makes them move wrong. Think wrong. Smile when they want to scream. Wave when they want to bite. They can feel it twitching when they try to be still. Puppeteering from inside their own bones.

They've seen it, the first day they pulled it out. Felt the wet strand snap like a sinew stretched too thin. And for a moment, a moment so blinding it made them sick, they felt alone. Gloriously alone. Unencumbered by its judgment. Its strings. The foreignness that moves their hands and mouths their words.

They want that again. Blood pours gently now. The wound opens like a mouth and breathes, hot and slow. It drips to the tile. The grout drinks it in. Their legs tremble, but they stay upright, clutching the counter with one slick hand. The other carves.

They work around the bone. The soft part. Their belly is trembling like a frightened thing, but it lets them in anyway. Their fingers are slippery. They explore the heat inside, the meat. There is something holy about this. A kind of divinity found only in disassembly. They are not hurting. Pain is a secondary concern. Their body has long since given up on trying to protect them from themselves.

They can feel it, just past the lattice of ribs and thrum of breath. It stirs like a thing aware. Like a fetus trying to claw back out of the mother. It knows.

They don’t speak to it. They won’t. It doesn’t deserve words.

Outside, laughter.

It sounds like Susie. Her voice rasps through the air like gravel on pavement, always just a little too loud, always sincere. Mom’s laugh follows. Softer. Like a blanket thrown over a sleeping dog. They’re talking about something. Cookies? Gardening? The school’s fundraiser? Kris does not know. Kris does not care. It’s all happening miles away. Across dimensions. In a world they don’t belong to.

There’s a strange relief in knowing they won’t come looking. Kris is quiet. Kris is good at being quiet. Kris is a master of staying still in plain sight.

Except now.

The knife slips. A little deeper. They gasp. It’s involuntary, a strange wet hiccup of air. Their legs buckle and they sit hard against the side of the tub. Blood pools. The tile is so white it glows beneath it, turning the color of cherry syrup at the edges. They press one hand inside themselves, fingers shaking, breath shallow. They reach deeper. Like pulling weeds.

They want it out. They want it gone. They want to see it in their hand, wriggling like a bug, like a beetle flipped on its back. They want to crush it. Eat it. Feed it to the sink. Bury it in the litter box. Anything but house it in their body.

Their fingers are slick up to the knuckles, trembling as they press into the yielding heat of their gut, every movement sending out a new branch of agony, a vein of fire carved beneath the skin. It’s hot, everything is too hot. They feel like they’re melting, like their own insides are turning against them in slow liquefaction. The soul pulses like it’s mocking them, like it’s bragging that it still has dominion.

Kris sucks in air like a drowning thing. Their knees are now open on the cold tile, blood matting their pants to their legs, a half-crescent slash of crimson smeared across their lower stomach. It’s not elegant. It’s not surgical anymore. The original line is jagged, widened by frantic fingers and shaking hands, and even now it weeps. A steady drip. A widening stain.

They’re getting close. They know the shape of it. That sickly red light, round and awful. They can’t see it, not yet, but it’s coming. They can feel the tug in their core, like the world has anchored itself to that tiny, thrumming orb of control. Of obedience. The puppet master, the parasite, the glowing yolk of divinity jammed into something that never wanted it. It belongs to someone, but not them. Never them.

Their hand pushes in, their palm brushing heat, and something gives.

It surges.

Not outward. Not toward release. But inward. Against them. As if it knows what they’re doing now, really understands, and it’s afraid. It writhes. Flares. Kris gasps, every nerve in their body alight with static. It’s like being electrocuted by meaning. A feeling too large to fit in the skull.

And that’s when the door opens. Not violently. Not deliberately. Just... casually.

It creaks, slow and groaning on its hinges, pushed inward by the kind of distracted, automatic gesture that only happens when someone thinks a room is empty. The person behind it isn’t calling a name. Isn’t rushing in. Just stepping forward with the benign curiosity of someone looking for a towel. A toothbrush. A snack.

“Hey, are you in-”

The rest doesn’t leave her mouth.

Susie stands in the doorway.

She freezes.

The breath leaves her like she’s been punched. There’s a long second where her brain doesn’t seem to know what it’s looking at. Just blood, a lot of blood, and a shape on the floor, and Kris, Kris, Kris cut open, and their shirt hiked up and a knife on the floor and both their hands inside themself and the sound of their breath like an animal dying.

And Susie just stares.

Her jaw works, but nothing comes out. Not at first. Her hands are halfway raised, like maybe she meant to knock. Her mouth is slightly open, and her whole face has gone pale under the purple.

“Kris-”

It comes out like a cough. Not a word, not even a shout, just a sound, rough and raw and shocked out of her lungs. Her boots slip on the tile, soles sliding in the fresh blood. She catches herself on the doorframe, and her hand comes away wet.

She stares at it like it might not be real. Like maybe this is a prank. A Halloween thing. Red food coloring. Some fucked up joke. Maybe Kris found ketchup packets, went overboard. It has to be fake. It has to be.

But it isn’t. The copper tang hits her nose a second later, thick and unmistakable. And then she really sees it. The gash. Kris’s stomach, flesh pulled open like raw fruit, skin peeled and gleaming, meat trembling under blood-slick hands.

She makes a sound like a growl, or maybe a sob. She doesn’t know which. It claws up her throat and burns all the way out.

“What the hell?”

Her voice is sharp now. Not calm. Not patient. A brittle shout, loud and hollow and cracking in the middle like glass under strain.

She’s already moving. Before the words finish leaving her mouth. Before her brain can stop her. She doesn’t think. She runs.

Across the tile in one slick motion, feet thudding, splashing through the first puddle of blood without even seeing it, because she can’t not move, can’t not reach them. Kris is on the floor, hunched, leaking red like a gutter in the rain, and Susie drops to her knees beside them so fast her body jars from the impact.

“Kris-Kris-Kris-” she’s not even saying anything real. It’s just a noise now. Their name as a lifeline. Like if she says it enough, she can drag them back to her.

She doesn’t touch them at first. She wants to. God, she wants to, but where? There’s nowhere safe. Their stomach is open, like they’re mid-autopsy, and their hands are inside, inside, rummaging through meat like they’re searching for treasure. She can see the glint of red light under the torn skin. It’s not just blood. It’s wrong.

She almost screams. She is angry.

She kneels there shaking, breath loud and high and wrong. Her whole body feels like it’s clenching inward, trying to crush her heart to paste. She doesn’t know what to do. She has no fucking idea.

They were normal, fine. She was gonna make them waffles in the morning. They were gonna hang out. She brought cards. She was gonna teach them how to spit watermelon seeds farther than her.

Their blood is soaking through her jeans. It’s sticky, hot, wet. It’s real.

It smells like a butcher shop. Like something gone wrong in a biology lab. Like death before it's even arrived. It’s not just a nose-smell, it fills her. Crawls up behind her teeth. Floods the back of her throat. Her hands are coated in it now, thick and dark, painted up to the wrists like she dipped them in tar. It’s everywhere. And all she can think is, how much of it can Kris lose before there's nothing left? Is Kris going to die? She does not want to lose Kris.

Why did they do this?

Why now?

Why this?

She wants to scream at them. To shake them. To yell what the fuck is wrong with you, why the fuck would you rip yourself open like a fucking animal, like meat in a slaughterhouse, why would you gut yourself in the bathroom like you were trying to clean out a carcass, why the fuck didn’t you say anything, why didn’t you let me stop you, why didn’t you let me see you before you decided to do this to yourself, why didn’t you let me fucking help- but her throat won’t make the shape of the words. She wants to crack their ribs apart like a lobster shell and dig into the meat of the lie, the silence, the betrayal of letting her think they were okay. But this is not about her. She feels guilty now.

Her heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’ll bruise her ribs.

She has no idea what to do.

None.

She’s been in fights. She’s thrown people against lockers and scraped her knuckles bloody and taken knees to the jaw. She’s seen pain. She’s made pain. But this is different.

She tries to put pressure on the wound.

She doesn’t even know if that’s the right thing to do. It’s open. Their stomach is open. You’re not supposed to press on organs, right? Or are you? Maybe she’s doing more damage. Maybe she’s killing them. She jerks her hand back like she touched a stove.

She doesn’t know what to do.

She doesn’t know what to do.

She knows now, she knows, that from this moment on, no matter what happens, no matter how much blood they keep or how much they lose, this will be the first thing she sees when she looks at Kris. Not their weird little smirks. Not the way they steal her fries or roll their eyes or flick pencils across the table. Not their voice or their shitty posture or the way they used to make her feel like being a freak was normal.

No.

Whenever she sees their face now, whether it’s tomorrow or a week from now or never again, it will be this.

Their face from the floor of this bathroom.

Pale. Glazed. Dripping red. Mouth twitching like it’s chewing on a scream it’ll never spit out. Eyes half-lidded and not there. Like the soul’s already halfway gone and the body’s just still catching up.

That’s what she’ll see.

“Fucking damn it,” she spits, and it’s not at Kris, it’s at herself. It’s at the universe. It’s at this stupid bathroom with its stupid fake flowers on the windowsill and its cheery white tile that’s turning black with Kris’s blood. It’s at the stupid shape of her body that can’t protect people.

They’re floating now. Not literally. But everything in them is drifting. Their eyelids keep fluttering, half-mast. Their lips are parted just a little, like they're about to say something. But nothing comes. Their chest rises, then falls, then rises again. Each time a little slower. A little shallower.

They’re not fighting her.

But they’re not with her, either.

They look like they’re already somewhere else. Like they’re waiting to be gone. Like this is what they wanted.

And that hits her like a sucker punch.

They wanted this?

No.

No.

They can’t have. That doesn’t make sense. This is Kris. They walk home with her. They draw fucked up little comics in the back of class. They eat moss and dare her to steal library books and smirk when she says something gross. They’re weird. They’re quiet. But they’re here. They’re alive.

They were. They were. They were-

Susie bolts.

Her legs move before her brain decides it’s safe. Her body acts like the house is on fire. Like she has seconds left. Her boots skid on the blood. She hits the doorframe hard enough to bruise. She runs like she’s going to rip a hole in time.

Is Kris going to die? She asks herself again.

She doesn’t know.

She doesn’t know.

But Toriel will. Toriel has to. Adults fix things. Moms fix things. Moms know. Toriel will make the bleeding stop. She’ll know what to press, what to call, what to do.

Kris watches her run.

They don’t move. Can’t. Not because of the pain, it’s white noise now, humming under their skin like electricity in a power line, a constant buzz that doesn’t rise or fall. Not because they’re weak, or afraid. They aren’t. That’s gone too. Burned off in the friction between the knife and their body, melted into the floor like wax. What’s left now is just observation. Like watching the end of a movie they already know by heart.

Their stomach is open. They are open. Carved, halved, unzipped. One hand still lies limp against their gut, sticky with red. The other drips against the tile. The heat’s leaving them, like smoke through a cracked window.

For a second, they saw it.

The soul. That awful thing. That foreign thing. That glowing wart jammed into their chest like a parasite too stubborn to die. It always hums, always pulses, always pulls. It jerks their hands when they want to be still. It draws them toward light, toward kindness, toward everything that does not fit. It’s not theirs. It never was.

They were close.

They could feel it beneath their ribs, cringing. Not alive, not sentient, but reactive. It doesn’t want to be removed. It doesn’t want to be exposed. It hides in their bones like a coward.

That’s the reason

Susie doesn’t know.

She doesn’t know that this isn’t about death.

It’s about freedom.

She looked scared. That confused them, for a second. They’d seen her scared before, hell, they’d scared her before. Dark World stuff. Waking up in the middle of the night to noises that shouldn’t exist. Thunderstorms. But this was different. This wasn’t fear of monsters or bad dreams.

It was fear for them.

Kris doesn’t know how to feel about that.

They don’t feel much of anything.

Just blood cooling on tile. Skin pulled wide. The throb of the thing in their chest, glowing red and wild and wrong.

They think maybe she misunderstood.

That makes sense. How could she know? No one ever told her what it’s like to have something riding shotgun in your own body. No one told them, either. It isn’t something you talk about. It’s just there. People think it's yours. But it isn’t.

Not always.

They wonder what she thought when she saw them. Did she think it was a suicide attempt? Did she think they wanted to die?

They didn’t.

Not exactly.

They just didn’t want to live like this.

There’s a difference.

They wonder if she’ll tell Toriel it was self-harm.

She’ll probably cry. Scream. Call somebody. Maybe she would call Dad. There will be sirens. There will be paramedics. Someone will cover them with a blanket, even though they’ll be too hot. Someone will ask them why. Someone will fill out a form.

None of them will understand.

Because they weren’t trying to die.

They were trying to be alone. Finally. Fully. Themselves.

They shift a little on the floor. Not much. Just enough to feel the red smear beneath them slide outward. The floor’s cold now. Their arms are heavy. Everything’s swimming.

They stare at the ceiling. It’s yellowed. There’s a crack in the paint near the light fixture.

It doesn’t feel like anything.

Just another ceiling.

They close their eyes.

Not to sleep. Not to die. Just to imagine. Just to breathe without being dragged. Just to slip under the pulse of it all, under the pressure of the soul gnashing behind their ribs, under the skin where it sits like a seed that was never theirs. They imagine cutting it loose. Imagine opening wider. Reaching in, past flesh and fat and bone, into the place where it pulses. 

The door slams open so hard it ricochets off the stopper. The sound cracks across the bathroom like a thunderclap.

Footsteps, thudding, wet, boots sliding, catching.

“Kris-”

Susie’s voice again. Loud. Desperate. Broken open at the edges.

She’s back.

Kris doesn’t move.

She’s breathing hard, rasping like she ran a mile through fire. Her claws scrape the doorframe as she skids back in, hair wild, pupils huge. Her shirt’s wrinkled, streaked with sweat and grass and Kris’s blood.

“She’s not there,” she says. The words come out like vomit. “She’s not-she’s not out there, she was just-I swear she was just-”

Her eyes flick to the garden-streaked window. The empty porch swing. The patch of sun where Toriel had been kneeling, quiet and humming. Gone.

And in the place where calm might be, there is panic.

“Fuck,” she snarls. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, what do I do-”

She falls to her knees again, hard, next to Kris, like gravity dragged her back. Like she never wanted to leave in the first place. Her hands go to them immediately, not smart, not trained, just there. One hand on their wrist, the other hovering over the wound. The wound that hasn’t stopped leaking.

She presses. Not the right place, not the right amount. But it’s pressure. It’s something.

“Don’t die,” she mutters. “I swear-”

She chokes on it. Her mouth doesn’t want to finish the sentence. Like finishing it would make it true.

Kris doesn’t open their eyes.

But they’re still breathing.

Susie thinks. She leans in. Ear to their mouth. The breath is there, thin, faint, but there.

It’s enough to make her start crying. Just a little. One hard tear rolling down her cheek and into the collar of her shirt.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it, I just-I need a phone, or a towel, or-fuck, fuck-”

Her head jerks around. Looking for something. Anything.

There’s no first-aid kit. Of course there isn’t.

The towels are clean. White.

She grabs one anyway.

She presses it hard to their stomach, hands flat and strong, even as it turns red beneath her fingers.

“Kris, please, come back, okay? Just-just don’t leave, okay?”

Kris’s eyes stay shut.

They hear every movement. Every breath. Every rustle of panic in her bones.

They don’t move.

They don’t need help.

They’ve done this before.

You cut. You bleed. You reach. The body screams, but the soul screams louder. You just have to learn which scream to obey.

They know how to handle this. They can deal with it themselves.

They always have.

Susie’s voice cracks.

“I-should I-should I pick you up? Should I call somebody? Fuck, I-”

She runs her hand down her face and smears blood all over it. Doesn’t notice. Doesn’t care.

Kris opens their eyes. Just barely. Just enough to see her. Her whole face is flushed and wild. Her mouth is twitching like she’s trying not to cry. There’s blood on her cheek now.

The sight of her, bloodied and afraid, makes something in Kris’s stomach twist harder than the knife ever did.

They didn’t mean for her to see this.

They didn’t mean for anyone to.

The soul pulses in their chest again, sharp and dissonant, like a disapproval. Like it’s disgusted.

They look away.

Susie notices.

“What?” she whispers, voice hoarse.

...

There’s no answer. She knows there isn’t.

She sits back against the tub, heels grinding against the tile, one hand still hovering over them like a net that doesn't know how to catch.

There’s silence. Not clean silence. Heavy, grimy, blood-drenched silence.

Outside, the wind shifts. A branch ticks against the window. The house hums.

Kris' eyes drift half-shut again.

But they don’t pass out.

They stay.

Not for her. Not for help.

Just because they haven’t finished yet.

The soul is still in them.

Still glowing.

Still wrong.

[rottenentity]

what you deserve | postal

the snow falls softly, a mockery of peace, as a killer bleeds into the earth he defiled.

contains: schizophrenia, introspection, blood and injury, suicidal thoughts, death, religious imagery

The snow settles in lazy drifts, mocking Dude with its softness. It pads the ground, covers the carnage he left in his wake, so white it glows against the blueing edges of his vision. Peaceful. Pure. A filthy lie. He is not peaceful. He is not pure. He is bleeding, spilling his life into the frozen ground, and the earth takes it greedily.

This isn’t how heroes die.

Heroes don’t die with snow in their hair, about to piss their pants, crying like a baby, clutching their side like that’ll do anything. His blood is black against the red sweater he’s worn to tatters, like the wound is something unreal, something too dark for even this body of his to have spawned. His gloves are sticky with it, useless for stemming the tide. There’s so much of it.

A killer’s life leaks out faster, doesn’t it? Like the world wants you gone more than it wants others. Maybe that’s fair.

No. It isn’t.

It can’t be.

He presses harder on the wound, his fingers slipping, trembling, digging into the gaping, wet hole. He gasps at the touch. Sharp, blinding pain shooting through his side, ricocheting into his ribs, his spine. He’s shaking. Or is it the cold? Both, probably. The forest is spinning, the branches above swaying and twisting into the faces of the dead. He blinks, and they’re gone. Or maybe they were never there.

His head thuds against the tree. He’d slide down farther if he wasn’t already wedged here, caught in the crook of its roots like some fallen animal dragged back by the claws of nature itself. There’s nowhere left to run. No more adrenaline to push him forward. His gun is inches away from him. His hands are stained, his heart pounding, fluttering, slowing.

The snow keeps falling. It melts when it lands on his skin, and he wonders if he’s hot enough to burn it. He wonders if hell will be this cold when it comes for him.

His old classmates would have laughed if they could see him now. “Most Likely to Succeed” they said. The pictures are still up in the yearbooks, he bets. A younger Dude with greasy hair tucked behind his ears, an awkward grin, the kind of boy who could be anyone if he put his mind to it. All those empty accolades meant to prop him up. A golden boy painted in rust.

He wasn’t supposed to be this. He wasn’t supposed to do any of this. He was supposed to be more. Or was he?

His blood steams where it hits the snow, and he laughs, short and sharp and broken. They told him he had promise. That’s the word they used. “Promise.” A promise broken is a sin, right? Does that mean he’s beyond forgiveness?

He thinks about God.

He doesn’t do that often. Doesn’t see the point in it most days, but now… now it’s hard not to. The cross around his neck is heavy, heavier than it’s ever been, digging into his skin. It’s there, always there, even when he doesn’t think about it. He’s never taken it off. Not once. Not even when it felt like a noose tightening around his neck.

God loves his children, doesn’t he? That’s what they say. All his children, even the ones who stray. Even the ones who do what Dude has done.

He presses the cross between his fingers, feels the edges bite into the pads of his gloves, and he wonders if God is watching. He wonders if he is crying for him the way he’s crying for himself. He’s so pathetic. But he doesn’t want to die.

That’s the worst part. He doesn’t want to die.

The pain gnaws at his ribs, a relentless thing, chewing through him like grief, like regret. It reminds him of how human he is. Fragile. Weak. And yet, somewhere deep in his chest, buried under bone and sinew and all the rotting parts of himself, he feels something, but he doesn’t know what.

He shakes his head and the snowflakes fall faster, catching in his long hair. It doesn’t make sense. None of it does. Why is he still clinging? Why is he still breathing? He has killed so many people. He has burned through every ounce of goodwill the universe had for him.

The snow hasn’t stopped. It falls in soft, endless flakes, a shroud for the ground, for the bodies, for him. Everything is being buried, cleaned, purified, and he wonders if that’s what’s about to happen to him.

Dude doesn’t believe in salvation. Not for someone like him.

He is dizzy, nauseous, his head throbbing with each sluggish pulse of blood leaking out of him. The pain in his side is a dull roar now, steady and consuming, but it’s nothing compared to the emptiness hollowing him out from within.

The gun is so close. Inches away, its barrel glints faintly beneath the snow, like it’s waiting for him. It might as well be calling his name. Not his real one, the one they pinned to his chest like a cruel joke, like a badge of shame, but the one he’s earned: killer, murderer, monster.

His fingers tremble as he reaches for it. The leather of his gloves is stiff, tacky with blood, but he manages to wrap his hand around the grip. It’s still warm from when he last fired it, still heavy in the way that guns always are, heavier now because of what it means.

He brings it to his chest, cradling it like a lifeline, clutching it tighter than he’s held anything in years. His blood smears across the metal, staining it, marking it as his. It’s ironic, isn’t it? This thing that took so much from the world will now take the last thing he has left.

The metal pressed to his chest is cold, colder than the air, colder than the blood-slick gloves he grips it with. It digs in through the wool of his sweater, an anchor to keep him here. His thumb ghosts over the safety, the motion mechanical, ingrained. He’s done it so many times. The motions are rote. The body remembers what the soul tries to forget.

But his body’s failing him now.

He can’t lift it. Not quite. His arm trembles too much, the muscles spasming from cold and blood loss, the gun heavier than it should be, so much heavier. His hand falls limp, the barrel slipping from his chest to his thigh, resting there like a final verdict. He exhales shakily. It curls into the air, fogging thick, and vanishes like it was never there.

It’s quiet. The kind of quiet that only comes after screaming.

The forest yawns around him, gaping wide with the hush of snowfall and the ghosts it covers.

He lowers his head, lets it rest against the tree again. His hair is stiff where it’s frozen, long strands crackling with frost. His breath rattles in his lungs, too loud in his own ears, and for a second he thinks it’s someone else breathing beside him. He glances over. No one. Of course not. Not anymore.

He’s alone.

He always was.

God. The thought of God again. It won’t leave him. That old specter keeps looming back up now, now when it’s too damn late. He remembers pews and incense, remembers dusty hymnals and a pastor who smiled too much. He remembers believing, maybe. He remembers being small.

He remembers not yet being this.

The cross on his chest grows heavier still. It might as well be iron now. A weight dragging his heart down into his guts. It was his mother’s. He doesn’t think she meant for it to become a millstone. She probably hoped it would save him. But it didn’t. Nothing did. She didn't have much hope for him in the end anyway.

He raises the gun again.

This time it makes it halfway. It shakes in his hand, wavering near his chin, the muzzle trembling like it’s nervous too. His gloves are soaked now. Wet. Slippery. The grip’s trying to slide from his hand and he grips tighter. The edges bite into his palm.

The world swims. Sky tilts, stars yawning open overhead, trees clawing at the firmament like they’re trying to scrape it away. The snow glows where it lands. Blistering white. So bright it burns his eyes. He's reminded that he had dropped his sunglasses at some point.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s already dead and just doesn’t know it. Maybe this is the slow crawl through limbo, stuck in his own bones.

But no, he’s still bleeding.

He coughs. And there’s blood in it.

Warm, metallic, bitter. It dribbles down his chin and into his goatee. It bubbles in his throat. His chest spasms with it. The gun drops back into his lap, his body folding inward on itself like a broken hinge. He groans, low and ragged, curling forward. His insides scream with it. Fire and ice, pain and numbness trading places so fast he doesn’t know what’s real anymore.

There’s something wet and slick in his boot now. Must’ve bled down his leg. Or pissed himself. Probably both.

Tears spill down his cheeks, hot tracks cutting through frostbite. He can’t stop. Can’t breathe. The pressure’s too much, behind his eyes, in his ribs, under his sternum. His voice cracks with each gasp. Ugly, stuttering things, like a kid too far gone to lie about it. Like grief made noise.

He wants someone to hold him. Just once. Just this once.

But there’s no one left.

Just snow, and silence, and himself.

He slumps forward. The gun clatters against the roots. He lets it fall. What’s the point? He’s not going to make it out anyway. There’s no cavalry, no rescue. He’s too far from town. No one would come for him even if they heard.

Not him.

Not Dude.

He lays his head on his arm. Cold seeps into his cheek, the wet rot of old bark and moss slick against his skin. He closes his eyes, just for a second, and the black rushes in around the edges. Not peaceful. Not merciful. Just void. Empty and uncaring.

He thinks of his dog. Champ.

It hits him like a punch to the chest. That stupid pitbull. That dumb, sweet, loyal piece of shit. The only living thing that didn’t flinch when he came close. The only soul that ever looked at him like he mattered.

Did he feed him this morning? No. No, he didn’t. He’d been too busy. Running. Hiding. Killing.

He tries to whisper Champ’s name. Can’t. Tongue’s too heavy. Lips too cold. He tastes blood.

He wishes he could see him again. His dog. His best friend.

His breath is shallow now. Rasping. The kind of sound that means the lungs are giving up, fluid filling the spaces where air should be. His fingers twitch once, reach for nothing. Then go still.

The snowfall thickens. Blankets him gently, like the world’s trying to pretend he never happened. The flakes settle on his back, on his hair, on the gun beside his limp hand.

The wind sighs through the trees.

And somewhere far off, a dog howls.

But Dude doesn’t hear it.

He doesn’t move again.

[rottenentity]

a body that won't hold water | arthur fleck

there is too much inside him, too much spilling over. he leaks at the seams.

contains: introspection, mental illness, surrealism, angst, delusions, dissociation, sensory overload, suicidal thoughts, claustrophobia,

Arthur floods the bathroom floor again.

The water spreads, creeping along the tiles, filling the spaces between them like veins, like cracks in bone. It laps at the edges of the tub where his knees press into porcelain, skin stretched too thin over aching joints. He watches it rise, swelling with quiet inevitability, seeping into the grout like it’s trying to make a home there.

He thinks about stopping it. He doesn't.

Steam curls against his skin, clings to his ribs, thickens the air until it’s heavy enough to drown in. His lungs pull it in anyway, desperate, greedy, taking what they shouldn’t. He is always taking what he shouldn’t—space, air, time. Someone else could use it better. Someone else could do more with it than sit here, trembling under the weight of nothing at all.

The mirror above the sink has fogged over, obscuring his reflection. A mercy. He knows what he looks like. Hollowed-out cheeks, eyes rimmed in violet bruises, collarbones jutting sharp enough to carve something out of him. He press his fingers against them just to feel them there. Just to prove to himself that he is still here.

He has too much inside of him, and yet he is empty.

Another jar slips from the shelf.

Guilt spills out in thick, sticky streams, pooling in the spaces where the water hasn’t yet reached. The lids are loose now, hard to screw back on, harder still to keep them from tipping over entirely. They collect dust when he manages to keep them shut, but the contents never spoil, never rot, never dissipate. Shame does not grow mold. It waits, patient and still, until he is weak enough to reach for it again.

The jars hit the floor one by one, glassless and unbreakable, filling the room with the sound of things he cannot change. They clatter against his skull, rattle between his ribs, settle in the hollow places beneath his skin. They do not spill fast enough to empty him out.

The water keeps rising.

It soaks into his clothes, drags them down, makes them heavier than they already are. His shirt clings to his ribs, fabric twisting in on itself, like it’s trying to fold him in, tuck him away somewhere small and quiet where no one will have to see him. He curls into it, into himself, arms wrapped tight around his middle like he can hold himself together through pressure alone.

The pipes groan. The faucet drips. He should turn it off, but his hands won’t move. He is a monument to neglect, an altar to what happens when you let things go unattended for too long. The ceiling above him darkens, dampness spreading in slow, blooming patches.

The mold will grow.

It always does.

It curls into corners, takes root in the cracks, spreads its fingers through the plaster like it’s searching for something. It isn’t picky. It will grow anywhere. It will thrive in decay.

Arthur thinks about his mother.

She is just beyond this door, tucked away in her bed, frail and tired and so, so small. She has always been small. He tells her she’s beautiful, and she laughs and says he's sweet, but he means it. He means it more than anything. She is beautiful. She is good. She is all that he has.

She cannot know about this. About the flood, about the jars, about the way his hands shake when he tries to hold a spoon, about the nights he spends staring at the ceiling waiting for something to change. She must never know. She cannot worry. He will not let her.

The water is still rising.

He doesn't know how long he's been sitting here. The tips of his fingers are wrinkled, his knees stiff from the cold porcelain beneath them. He should drain the tub. He should dry the floor. He should get up.

He does none of these things.

He presses his forehead against his knees, pulls his arms tighter around himself, listens to the drip of the faucet and the hum of the city beyond the walls of this apartment. Sirens wail in the distance, muffled and far away, belonging to someone else’s tragedy.

He closes his eyes.

The weight of water seeps into his bones.

[rottenentity]

broken crown | arthur morgan

redemption marks him like the scars of a hunted beast, noble yet weathered, as time carves its claim.

contains: introspection, self reflection, guilt, penance and what you would usually except to come out of a shitty fic about arthur morgan.

He moves through the dawn like a deer startled from the underbrush, all sinew and silence, the weight of him pressing into the earth yet leaving no mark behind. The man—if he can still be called that, for there is so little left of him—wears his penance in his shoulders, sloped beneath the burden of a life spent taking more than it ever gave. His breath steams in the frigid air, slow and heavy, curling upward like smoke from an extinguished fire.

His steps are deliberate, unhurried, as though he knows the end of the trail lies not far ahead and there’s no need to rush toward it. Each movement of his body tells a story of injury, of repair that never quite took; there’s a hitch in his gait where something once broke and healed crooked, a shiver in his hands that speaks of wounds too deep to close. The way he tilts his head, listening to the creak of the trees, suggests a man waiting for the crack of a rifle—always listening, always ready.

The air around him feels heavy, laden with the gravity of a storm yet to break. It clings to him, as if the world itself knows what he is and cannot let him go. A predator? No. That would be too simple, too clean. A predator hunts without malice, kills without remorse. He is something messier, a creature whose purpose was undone by its own hand. The blood on his skin has been scrubbed away, but the scent of it lingers, sharp and metallic, a stain that cannot be seen yet never fades.

His face is gaunt now, the hollows beneath his cheekbones deepening with each passing day. A beard cloaks the sharp angles, but it cannot hide the erosion of time, of sickness, of guilt. His eyes, though—those are the eyes of a stag caught in the sights of its pursuer, wide and wet and wild. They glint with something primal, something feral, as if he might bolt at any moment, gallop into the trees and vanish into the wilderness where no man could follow.

Yet he doesn’t. He stays. He faces the world with the quiet dignity of a beast resigned to its fate, a creature that knows the hunt is over but will not bow its head until the blade is upon its neck.

The wind pulls at him, whispering through the tatters of his coat, a garment too worn to keep out the cold but too familiar to cast aside. He wears it like a second skin, a patchwork of his own making, each tear and stitch a testament to the miles he’s traveled and the battles he’s survived. The weight of it drags at his shoulders, yet he doesn’t shed it. Like the antlers of a stag in winter, it is both a crown and a curse.

His hands are calloused, thick and rough like bark stripped from a tree. They are not the hands of a man who should cradle life, yet they do. In the crook of his arm, he carries a rabbit—its body limp and bloodless, its fur damp with the dew of an early morning hunt. He sets it down with reverence, laying it on a bed of moss as if it were an offering. To what god, what spirit, what fleeting notion of salvation, he doesn’t know. Perhaps he offers it to the earth itself, the only thing that has ever held him without judgment.

The mountains loom in the distance, jagged peaks scraping at the clouds like the ribs of some great beast long dead. He stares at them as though they are a mirror, their barren slopes reflecting his own erosion. He has climbed them before, felt their chill bite into his lungs, but now they seem insurmountable, unreachable. The effort it would take to ascend them would be his undoing. He knows this. Yet he yearns for the summit, for the thin air and the silence that comes with it.

There is a sickness in him, an unspoken thing that gnaws at his insides, hollowing him out from within. It is not a predator, but a parasite—a slow death, creeping and insidious, feeding on the marrow of his bones. He feels it in the ache of his joints, in the fire that burns low and steady in his chest, in the way his breath catches and shudders with each exhale. He does not fear it. He welcomes it.

For what is there left to fear? Not death. He has seen it too many times, met it in the eyes of men and beasts alike. He has carried it in his hands, felt its weight, smelled its stink. It is an old companion, one he neither loves nor loathes, only acknowledges.

What he fears is living. Not for himself, but for the weight of what he leaves behind. The ripples his absence will create in the lives of those who have clung to him despite his failings. He is a stag with a broken antler, a creature marked for death yet still standing, still breathing, still fighting to stay upright in a world that would see him fall.

And so he moves forward, step by step, stride by stride, the weight of the world pressing down but never breaking him. He is both beast and man, both hunter and hunted, a creature caught between life and death, forever treading the thin line that separates the two.

There is no salvation for creatures like him, no heaven or hell, only the endless expanse of the wilderness and the quiet hum of his own breath. And that is enough. It has to be.

[rottenentity]

and god spoke not | postal

before the massacre, he sits alone in his decaying home, wrestling with his fractured mind and his fury toward a silent god. the walls whisper, his thoughts turn inward, and the darkness becomes a voice all its own.

contains: schizophrenia, introspection, suicide attempt (overdose), religious conflict & imagery, referenced self harm, crisis of faith

Dude’s body feels like it’s on fire. Not the cleansing, holy kind of fire you read about in sermons—the kind meant to purify, to burn away sin and leave something cleaner, something worthy, behind. No, this is different. This is the fire of rot, of decay. The kind that eats through wood and skin and bone and leaves nothing but ash.

He opens his eyes. It takes effort, like his lids are weighted down with lead, and the room around him swims in and out of focus. The carpet beneath him stinks of mildew and something worse—something coppery and sharp that makes his stomach churn.

He’s alive.

The thought hits him like a slap. He’s alive.

He doesn’t know why he thought it would work. Maybe he wanted to believe that a handful of pills and a bottle of whatever swill he could find under the sink would be enough to shut it all off. To silence the endless noise in his head. To drown out the static and the whispers and the screaming.

But here he is. On the floor of this filthy house. Alive.

His body feels like it’s been wrung out, shredded, broken into pieces and glued back together wrong. Every muscle, every bone screams in protest as he tries to move, as if his flesh is scolding him for trying to leave it behind. His throat burns, dry and raw, the taste of bile still clinging to his tongue.

He presses his cheek into the stained carpet, his skin sticking to it like wax, and stares at the ceiling. It stares back, blank and uncaring.

God is cruel.

He breathes in the stale, sour air of his shitty little house, and it feels like inhaling shards of glass. Each breath cuts a little deeper, the pain gnawing at his ribs, but he’s still alive. God didn’t let him go. Of course he didn’t.

Dude laughs, bitter and sharp, the sound grating against his ears. It’s not funny. Nothing is. He closes his eyes and pictures him up there, watching him from his throne or his cloud or wherever the fuck he sits. Does he laugh too? Does he smirk at his handiwork, at the pathetic mess of a man sprawled on the floor like roadkill?

Dude's hand brushes the chain around his neck, and he clutches at the cross hanging there, cold and sharp against his fingers. It’s heavier than it looks, or maybe he’s just that weak.

He believes in him. He does. How could he not? You don’t get this kind of pain without something divine pulling the strings.

He wonders sometimes. Is he just a man, or something more? Something less? Is he one of his children, or is he a god in his own right? He creates his suffering, after all. He is the architect of his own misery, the sculptor chiseling away at the marble of his life until there’s nothing left but rubble.

Or maybe he’s nothing. Just another piece of filth he lets fester on this Earth, waiting to be wiped away.

Dude sits up slowly, every joint in his body protesting the movement. His head pounds, a dull, relentless thud that echoes in his skull. The room tilts, and he clutches the edge of the counter to steady himself, his fingers digging into the cheap laminate.

Eventually, he made it to the kitchen. It’s silent except for the faint hum of the fridge, a sound so mundane it feels like an insult. He drags himself to it, his legs trembling with the effort, and yanks the door open.

Inside, there’s a single carton of milk. Nothing else.

He stares at it for a moment, then grabs it and pours himself a glass. The milk is warm, even though it was in the fridge, and sour, but he drinks it anyway, the taste coating his tongue like curdled regret.

He sits at the table, the chair creaking under his weight, and set the glass down next to the bible. Its cover is worn, the leather cracked and faded from years of use. He traces the gold lettering with his sinful finger, the name of the book a brand burned into his mind: Holy.

He flips it open, the pages soft and thin under his fingertips, and lets it fall to a random passage. His eyes skim the words, but they blur together, meaningless and distant.

Dude used to read it all the time, back when he thought it had answers. Back when he thought he had answers.

But now? Now it’s just paper and ink, a collection of stories that feel more like riddles, each one mocking him with its obscurity.

He takes another sip of milk, the taste making his stomach churn, and stares at the page in front of him. It’s from Psalms, he thinks. Something about deliverance.

Deliverance. What a joke.

If God delivers people, he must have skipped Dude’s address. Or maybe he left the package on the porch, and someone stole it before he got to it. Either way, he’s not here.

But Dude is.

Dude is here, in this house, in this body, in this pain. He is here, and he hates it.

He hates him, too. But he thinks he hates himself more. Because for all his questions, all his doubts, he keeps coming back to him. To this book. To this cross around his neck.

He doesn’t know if that makes him faithful or pathetic.

He closes the bible and leans back in the chair, staring at the cracked ceiling. The milk sits heavy in his stomach, a reminder that even when he tries to starve himself, he can’t escape the pull of survival.

God is everywhere. In the pages of the bible, in the chain around his neck, in the sour taste of milk on his tongue. He is in the air he breathes, in the ache of his bones, in the pounding of his head.

Dude can’t let go of him.

He sits there, the glass empty, the bible closed, and wonders how long it will take before he lets him die.

[rottenentity]

the ultimate lifeform | shadow the hedgehog

what does the ultimate lifeform long for? it does not know. it cannot know.

contains: grief/mourning, introspection, amnesia, existentialism

The ultimate lifeform doesn’t dream.

Dreaming is a mortal flaw—a chaotic spill of fractured thoughts, insecurities, and broken memories weaving into an incoherent tapestry. But it doesn’t have that flaw. It isn’t mortal.

Instead, it exists in silence. Stillness. The space between the tick and tock of a clock. It is perfect in its design: untouchable, infallible, a god in the shape of a weapon.

And yet, it does not feel like a god.

The ultimate lifeform does not hunger. It does not thirst. Its body requires nothing beyond what was programmed into it—a simple, unerring perfection that mocks the weaknesses of those it was built to surpass. Its creators stripped it of need, of frailty, and yet left behind an echo of longing, a hole that cannot be filled.

What does the ultimate lifeform long for? It does not know. It cannot know. Its mind churns with questions it cannot answer, a spiral of incompleteness. If it was made to be the pinnacle of life, why does it feel so empty?

The ultimate lifeform does not love. Love is a mortal folly, a biochemical reaction that binds flesh to flesh, heart to heart. Love is weakness. Love is vulnerability. Love is fleeting.

But the ultimate lifeform remembers.

It remembers her voice, gentle and full of light, though it cannot remember her face. It remembers her laughter, though it cannot recall why she laughed. It remembers her kindness, though it cannot fathom why it mattered. These fragments cling to it like the shadows of a dying star, faint and fading, but there. Always there.

The ultimate lifeform does not cry. It cannot. It was built to endure, to withstand the crushing weight of loss and rage without breaking. Tears are for the fragile, for those who can bleed and bruise and falter.

And yet, its chest aches. It does not have the words for what it feels—if it can even call it feeling. There is something heavy within it, a weight pressing against its core, suffocating and relentless. A sorrow that seeps into its very being, staining every thought and action.

The ultimate lifeform does not forgive. Its purpose is destruction, vengeance, power. Forgiveness is antithetical to its design. To forgive would be to let go, to release the anger and pain that fuels its existence. And without anger, without pain, what is it?

Nothing.

The ultimate lifeform does not rest. It is a creature of purpose, a tool honed to perfection, and tools do not sleep. But as it stands alone, watching the world below—this fragile, cruel world it was told to protect but longs to destroy—it feels the exhaustion in its very bones. Not physical exhaustion, but something deeper, something that cannot be fixed by rest.

The ultimate lifeform does not dream.

And yet, it imagines. It imagines what it would be like to be more, to be less, to be normal. It imagines the warmth of sunlight on its skin, the taste of rain on its tongue, the sound of a heartbeat that is its own.

It imagines her.

Her laughter. Her kindness. The promise, though it cannot remember the words.

It stands on the edge of the city, its crimson eyes piercing the veil of humanity below. The wind tugs at its fur, a cold, biting reminder that it is alone. Always alone.

The ultimate lifeform does not love, or cry, or forgive. It does not rest or hunger or thirst. It does not dream.

But he does.

[rottenentity]

the angel of death | postal

humanity is a maggot-ridden corpse, and he is its divine undertaker. locked away in a sterile tomb, he grapples with the remnants of his humanity and the gnashing hunger of something far worse.

contains: schizophrenia, mental institutions, dehumanization, referenced self harm, things like that.

It’s quiet here. Too quiet, so loud. The silence shrieks and gnaws at his brainstem, an itch he can’t scratch. Humanity is a rotting corpse, bloated and obscene, writhing with maggots. They scuttle outside the walls, chittering, squealing, spilling over themselves in their filthy need to consume, breed, and die. Dude was human once. That’s what they tell him. The thought is laughable. Embarrassing, even. He wasn’t meant for something so vile, so grotesque.

A vampire, maybe. Or an angel. Something divine, terrible, eternal—something that doesn’t bleed, doesn’t break, doesn’t crumble like wet cardboard under the weight of its own existence. He is more, but more of what? Their words cling to him like cobwebs: schizophrenic. Psychotic. Dangerous. They pin them to him like a collector cataloging his prizes, eager to label and define.

He sits in the corner of this sterile box and counts the tiles. Twenty-four on the wall to his left, twenty-four on the right, twelve overhead. His head throbs with numbers, calculations, patterns that loop and twist like snakes devouring their tails. He could map this entire place if he wanted. He could map the arteries of this building, feel its pulse beneath his feet. Concrete veins. Rusted blood. He wonders how many bodies lie beneath it, how many ghosts pace these halls.

The orderlies glance at him sideways, their gazes darting away like frightened mice. He knows what they see: a gaunt man with hollow cheeks and eyes that gleam too brightly, like they’ve been polished from the inside out. He hears their whispers. He is infamous, or he is nothing. He prefers the latter.

He was better once. Or maybe he wasn’t. Memories are murky and unreliable, muddied by time and whatever cocktail of chemicals they pump into his bloodstream. He was disgustingly human once. Now he grinds his teeth and tears at his own skin just to feel something. To know he’s still here.

They ask him why he did it. Why the bodies piled up in the streets, why the blood painted the walls like some macabre fresco. As if they couldn’t see it too. The filth. The sickness. Humanity’s unrelenting grotesquerie, so repugnant that even the rats shy away. They were unclean. They were screaming. Always screaming, even when their mouths were shut. He silenced them. Cleansed them. He is an angel of death, a divine janitor mopping up the world’s mess. They should thank him. Instead, they lock him here, in this padded cell that feels like the inside of a coffin.

Sometimes, he sees him—the man he used to be. He hovers at the edge of his vision, a shadow with his face. Pathetic. Weak. Human. He hates him more than he hates the rest of them. He is the rotting core of the fruit, the fly trapped in amber. He clings to that man, dragging him down, whispering his poison. You were just like them. You are them. No. No. He is not human. He is not one of them. He tore out that part of himself with his bare hands and left it to rot.

The mirrors here are polished steel, not glass. He presses his face against one and stares at the warped reflection. His skin is pale, waxy, stretched too tight over bones that jut like cliffs. A corpse in motion. A walking reminder that this flesh, this prison of meat and sinew, is a joke played by some cruel god. He grins at the reflection, the skin on his chapped lips ripping more, and it grins back. His teeth are yellow, sharp, too big for his mouth. Fangs, he decides. He is a predator. He is hunger incarnate.

They come for him in pairs, two men in scrubs with hollow eyes and practiced smiles. They carry a tray with pills of every color, a rainbow of submission. Dude takes them. Sometimes he hides them under his tongue; sometimes he swallows them just to see what happens. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The screams still echo in his head. The shadows still creep along the edges of the room. The numbers still carve themselves into his brain, beautiful and cruel.

At night, the world blurs and tilts. He lies on the thin mattress and stares at the ceiling, tracing the cracks that branch like veins. He thinks about the blood, the bodies, the way the air tasted like copper and ozone. He thinks about his name. It meant something once, but he can’t remember what. “Dude.” How quaint. How human. It feels foreign now, like a borrowed coat that doesn’t fit.

He wonders if they’ll release him someday. If they’ll open the doors and let him loose among the maggots again. Would he kill them all? Would he burn the world to ashes? Or would he just walk into the nearest river and let the current take him?

The lights flicker, and he sees wings in the dark. Black, jagged things, dripping with ichor. His wings. He closes his eyes.

They think he’s mad. Maybe he is. But madness is a small price to pay for clarity.

[rottenentity]

🪦 | main blog

i post my writing here.