#but my dreams are filled with death and gore. and blue. and mutilation

[stemroses]

.

Not to sound weird or anything but

Is it- normal to be scared during your cycle?

And no I don’t mean regular anxiety, I mean spooked. Fear. Like you are physically in danger right now.

And shadows are scary. And loud noises are not cool. And an uneasy feeling like I’m not alone.

[deadboyfriendd]

Sovereign Creatures: The Triumph Of Death

Summary: You plan on reanimating your lover piece by piece, today, you are in search of his eyes.

Warnings: Fem!Reader, Mermaid reader, Plague Doctor!Steve Harrington, based off of The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw, period appropriate violence, gore, blood, self mutilation, surgical instruments

My content is 18+ Minors DNI

The bezoar sits encased in a glass cloche, its ruminating pulse the only thing to remind you that he was once alive, too– and that he may be alive again one day. 

The bezoar of your dead lover– a bolus of broken-off teeth and snarled hairs, fingernails, caked dirt, curds of mummified gray, colored glass. Over it all, a lettering of fine blue veins, like an alphabet that only muscle can decode – incubated his dwindling consciousness. You dreamed of the day this organ would pulsate behind flesh once more. 

You knew nothing of his pilot existence, where he learned his kindness. You did not know of the life he lived with a mother and father, where he learned to speak and run, where he felt the weight of the earth in all of its glory. Where the warmth of the sunburn overcomes the sting and the weight of existence is a beautiful one to bear. 

Instead you knew of his last existence. This one stunk with the morosity of being reanimated but never fully alive again. You’d wondered if his first death had been as painful as his last, even though you knew it would be foolish to assume that it hadn’t. Creatures of his nature rarely harbored peace in death. The weight of this existence was bruising– crushing, even. 

You knew this existence would be beautiful– almost as beautiful as he had been.

Your boy would be beautiful again, made in the image of your own ideal of it. 

Your finger traced over his notes, scared to smudge to ink despite its age. You felt the embossing against the parchment and tried to feel his hands against your fingers like reeds, blood flowing under his skin in its inky black beauty and pulsating through the ruminants of his inkwell heart. 

The study felt more like yours than his own now, though he had inhabited it for years before your existence. You were merely a vessel for his findings. A piece plucked and carved from this rib of his essence. A slave to the bezoar behind a glass cloche. 

It still pulsated its erratic song in a fleshy waltz. You looked for the hum of his voice beneath it, not quite able to remember its exact pitch. You listen to it again and again, the mellow drone of it a backing that fills your studies. Sometimes you listened for a whisper, sometimes you listened for permission to continue. 

There were more pieces of you covering this place than there were pieces of him, it felt like. You could no longer differentiate your books interwoven with his on the shelves– the lines between your handwriting and his becoming one blurred entity, the line where your being ended and the pieced-together formations of where his new being began intertwined as one desolate, threadbare creature. 

The human hands can be differentiated by the presence of an opposable thumb, made different from the other phalanges marked by the absence of the middle phalanx… the metacarpal is the connecting factor to the smaller subset of carpals within the wrist. 

This you knew was his writing, and you were thankful in the beginning for how thorough he had been in his studies. You allowed yourself the pleasure of feeling the ridges of his writing:

Trapezoid, trapezium, capitate, hamate, scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform. 

You try to feel them in your own wrists, try to feel the sutures in bone and the roll of ligament over them. You tried to feel the feeling of being alive once more, differentiating it from what– you weren’t quite certain. You tried to remember a time in which he had been alive. 

“That’s it.” He would have whispered to you, through a velveteen smile, his own gentle fingers wrapped delicately around your wrists– feeling the roll of ligament over bone the way you tried to feel now, “So Long To Pinkie, Here Comes The Thumb.” 

Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, hamate, capitate, trapezoid, trapezium.  You jotted down alongside his writing. 

His hands were one of the few things remaining after the day of the saints– your body seethed like the embers that remained of him. You watched them settle low against the glass in their formaldehyde home and wished desperately that you could pull one out to cradle your face just once– the way he had. 

You wished that you could trail your fingers over the hills and valleys of the soft plush of his hands in search of the canyons between his fingers in which yours would seek solace just once more. You wished to feel his thumb run rivers across the crest of your lip, pilling downward over the plush and settle in the crevice between there and your chin. Just once do you wish to  feel warmth behind flesh. 

It had been years, now. More than you could remember. 

His existence, the way he was before the only remnants of him you had were his studies, seemed blurry now– a far off memory in which you could not quite soft through. But you remembered the warmth that radiated from him like the sun. You do not remember who he was, yet the remnants of his previous existence consumed your entirety. 

The violence in which he gave his life for you no longer stings, but fills you with a hot, blinding anger.

His existence was violent and painful, manufactured to be that way, yet nonetheless beautiful. Sometimes you believe he does not want to live again, but you are selfish. You will show him that there is existence without pain. 

You press tender fingers, cold and aching against the glass cloche. A promise to him that you will return in due time. That you will come bearing gifts. That you will hold each other once more. 

The air is clammy this time of year, salty on your tongue when you inhale and chilled from the sea air. The cobblestone is right beneath your feet, and you walk with more caution than you typically would during the day. A fire burns in the distance, woolen-cloaked bodies stand around it in a horde in silence, staring into its molten nucleus. Humans were like that, you found, drawn to warmth. Maybe you had lost your edge. Maybe the frailty of humanity was contagious. 

Maybe a part of him had stayed human. 

He had been drawn to it as a moth to a gas lamp, quick to release his body to her thrashing, ravenous hands. Had the fire been the cause? Or, perhaps, the warmth in which death held him delicately between her fingers. He had held you the same way. You would hold him that way again. 

The first doctor was one that he was close to in his reanimated life; they had been brothers in death, harvested and reanimated at the hands of The Saints. They had passed years of orphaned childhood by playing kill the pig– a sickening game it was, even to you. Swine to slaughter, children for sacrificial youth. The saints plucked pieces from their bodies like ripened fruit, replaced them with other displaced pieces, ugly shows in sick theaters under the guise of ritualism for the other children to watch– until there were no remnants of them to be left. A quilt of leftover parts and shells of children that once were and would never be again. 

The woods that congregate like hooded men at the mouth of where river meets ocean are deep. His house is hidden deeper within them, not unlike your own, a dry thatched roof and stone walls. Solitary, with sea salt tears brimming cobblestone eyes. Yet, somehow warmer than yours. It felt like the depths of the ocean in which you resided. The part of you that human-adjacent held it close to you. 

His name is Edward. It was one of the few things he kept for himself in his old life, along with his eyes. When you would ask why, he would say:

“The Saints preferred colored eyes, my dear.” 

You’d figured that was why you were searching for your own pair now. Green, like the moss that covers the dirt in a spongy expanse in the spring.

You knock on the door and he is warm in greeting– almost as warm as it is within his house. 

“Ah, you’re here for them.”

There is a code in the way the plague doctors speak, they are warm to each other, but speak around the visceral topics of what they are actually doing. The world still feared them. In your bluntness, you had still not mastered the art. 

“The eyes, yes.” 

His back is to you. Even with his figure cloaked, you can see the misshapenness flex and roll beneath a linen sea. There is a tincture clinking as the jars bounce off of another in a song as he picks each one up and examines it– contents dancing formaldehyde dances. He is a creature in his own respect. You feel a solidarity to him despite the sovereigness to your creation. 

Your hands were not warm, not like his were. Skin rubbery and catching along itself in a tacky half-dryness as you reach to your back. Scales lay there, green and blue like the refraction of abalone. Sharp against any flesh that dare come close. The skin there is raised where you had done this before. 

It stings less for this time, but the dull ache pulsates beneath the skin where the pockets still remain. Your fingers bleed from the grip, and a deep blood seeps from the wounds like outstretched arms that reach for the scale. 

There is an infatuation that resides within the plague doctors with your existence. These pieces of you had proven incredibly valuable to them in the past. 

A book on the shelf calls to you– bound in leather and charred to an inky blackness around the edges. Necromantia. 

An old magic. Older than your lifetime. 

“What will that cost me?” You asked, Edward, who, in turn, pulls the book from the shelf. 

“We will settle that in time.”

You aren’t quite sure what it means, regardless, you tuck the book into your cloak– near your chest. It ruminates its own pulse, respires its own breaths– much like the bezoar. 

“You know,” he begins, eyes somber and black against the golden glow of the fire light, “the saints had a way of resurrecting us, of sorts… bringing us to life without actually killing us–”

“Rebirth without death.”

“Yes, so it was.” His eyes have become pits, swirling blackness of eternal oblivion. A rift in the seams of this world that points you toward his damnation. 

They had only been children. 

“I know this may be difficult to hear,” He says, voice low– you cannot tell if it for preservation of your emotions or for caution of violence, “but it may be best to let the dead be dead.” 

You assumed his resentment towards the saints was a mirror reflection of Steven’s. A fiery hatred that burned like embers deep within his chest– the lifeblood in which kept him alive for so long. He fed off of this hatred, he burned his own body to ash in search of it. He wanted The Saints dead– so much that he would offer himself to this hatred, too. 

This resentment burned in your throat tonight. It burned in choking sobs and hot tears that rolled down your rubbery flesh. It clouded your vision as you splayed ocular nerves. It burned your nose in tandem with preserving fluids. It burned in your chest as you took a step back, admiring his beauty in anatomical pieces. 

He isn’t dead. Just incomplete.

You should let him be dead, but the pulsating of the bezoar pleads to stay alive. 

When he opens borrowed eyes again, would he resent you too?

[turquoisedays]

Grimscribe Aesthetic Meme

REPOST, DO NOT REBLOG AND DO NOT DELETE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION.

The following quotes and phrases are taken from the stories in Thomas Ligotti’s anthology Grimscribe. Some of these quotes were slightly tweaked for the sake of this meme. If you enjoy the imagery or writing in this meme, please support the author by purchasing his work. Content warnings for horror in general and brief mentions of blood, gore, nihilism, unreality, body horror, clowns, and insects.

Bold what applies to your muse.

Tagged by: Me, myself and I, because I’m ALWAYS A SLUG FOR THOMAS LIGOTTI.

Tagging: @choujin @mothersins @flowerytruth (You decide which muse! >:3c) @givealls (For Kazuma mayhap?) annnnnnnd my other blog.

--------

The Last Feast of Harlequin

A place behind the clownish mask / an enthusiastic urgency / sunny fields and farms / steeply roofed houses / a weird distortion of perspective / an album of old snapshots / a pointed hat jauntily askew / a billboard displaying a group of grinning vegetables / a neutral, bureaucratic voice / blue-green ink / a brilliant and profound circus of learning / a quotation from Poe’s “The Conqueror Worm” / a feeling of frigid numbness / dull, earth-colored scenery / the snowfalls of late autumn / black, ragged clumps of abandoned nests / the thin light of a winter afternoon / poles raveled with evergreen / holly wreaths / green lights / green streamers / peacock green floodlights / an eerie emerald haze / chthonic divinities / miniature candy canes / colored lights that bloom out of flower-shaped sockets / a chilling brilliance of manner and expression / sea-green lights / the face of an adept clown / a heart bathed in green / another coldness within the cold / warmly wrapped bodies and green-scarved necks / worried and guilt ridden glances / a wormy mass / the black void of winter / the brightness of an artificial spring / a great green rainbow / green gleaming streets / the dark immensity of a winter night / an effect of stricken horror and despair / an inhuman likeness more proper to something under the earth than above it / a festival within a festival / depressingly pallid clowns / the particular kind of hatred of resulting from some powerful and irrational memory / optimistic greenery in a period of gray dormancy / a kind of obnoxious intelligence / freezing atop an icy throne / commitment to a meaningful mania / bodiless invisibility / seeing without being seen / a sea of zigging and zagging celebrants / the darkness of narrow country roads / innocent normalcy / icy wind / trembling with cold / lanterns that beam with dazzling and frosty light / cadaverous clowns / the apex of darkness / a long snowy robe / moody malignancy / pure unlived lives / all the many shapes of death and dissolution / a dirge for existence / a sea of thin, bloodless faces / icy beauty / a moment of frozen trance / the death known to those whom the gods have first made mad / the welcoming glow of green / slow and silent and entrancing / a velvety white abyss / the paradise of the unborn

The Spectacles in the Drawer

A double-handled dagger with a single blade of polished stone / tall cabinets / ceiling-high shelves / tantalizing arcana / glistening fog / a tedious clarity / a cyclone of strange patterns and colors / spasms of sardonic hilarity / a pale-blue blade / stiff, crackling pages / a seeker of recondite knowledge / undying hope / a gutful of shame and regret / a small and silvery knife / a razor-sharp letter opener / a pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles / everything that fascinates / the wish to look away / an infinite and overwhelming scene / the dazzling diffusion of all known universes / landscapes without end / landscapes that are themselves alive / a life unknown to mortal eyes / form and motion / design and dimension / cilia wriggling / mammoth shapes lurching in outline / an obscure oceanic niche / a mere fragment of all that there is to see and to know / labyrinthine astronomies / constant transformations of both appearance and essence / a witness to the most cryptic phenomena that exist or could ever exist / the ultimate thing waiting to be born / still greater visions / a cataclysm which will be both the beginning and the end / unbearable anticipation / ecstasy and dread / the ultimate source of all manifestation / the absolute and the wholly unknown / a revolution of all matter and energy / the visions remaining active inside you, deep in your blood / to be dazzled in the worst way / the total substance of things / an occultist auction / a disreputable quarter of a foreign city / a student of the Gnostics / artificial eyes / a malicious aim to undermine / a child’s awkward embrace / rusty scales / cockeyed bookcases / broken toys / standing ashtrays / desolate bazaars / the charm of disenchantment / a tilting mirror / a climate of dull horror / sinister whispers that make no sense yet seem filled with meaning / sensations of infinite expansiveness and ineffable meaning / astronomical emotions / a mutilated carcass / something of terrible rawness / a torn and flayed thing / microscopic precision / twitching and quivering like a gory heart / hellish giggling / a haunting, lifelong memory / unfathomable depths of feeling / to suffer over and over / a way to kill a dream / the sheltering shadows of one’s home / sobering shadows / a cold and stagnant peace / esoteric ecstasy / vulgar pain / a broad expanse of empty field / a mosaic of mirrors / a shocking galaxy / redundant reflections / dark stars on a silvery firmament / to see with countless eyes / a body ripped raw / a gallery of glass and gore

Flowers of the Abyss

The first rank scent of autumn / a glass of water / a thirsty walker of the woods / a pale flower amongst the dark summer trees / a ghostly flower of autumn / grayish planks / a pallid lily / a pulpy toadstool / a roof of rippling shingles shaped like scales from some great fish / sea-green and sparkling / attic gables with paned windows / the tip of a tear / hundreds of raindrops / light rain / an icy autumn storm / a fragrance damp and decayed / walking ahead of the clouds / the echo of hollow words / a long crooked arm / malodorous gardens of misshapen growths / an oval mirror in an ornate frame / cobwebbed corners / tilting books / something shapeless and nameless / something dampish and submerged / something swampy and abysmal / the pure cold of an autumn storm / a dusty green bottle / a sparkling glass / a world of frozen light / cool and limpid water / the hardness of a jewel / a small music box / stars of sound / twilight shadows and silence / infinitesimal flakes of light / barren decor of dead days / yellowish haze / silvery tones / a tenebrous expanse / unknown exploits / the madness of things / a vagabond of the universe / a drifter among spaces / a mess of hacked pieces / dark horizon meeting dark horizon / a universe of darkness / a convulsing tangle of shapes / the radiant entrails of hell / rain-softened soil / parted waters rushing to remerge / corrupt waters / sticky and pumping veins / slimy tendrils / aberrations of the abyss / a night-gowned figure / a crowd carrying lights / lamps and lanterns bobbing in darkness / clusters of flames / buried like a forgotten dream

Nethescurial

Delicate, crinkly script / greenish-black discoloration / dark waters / moonlit skies / earth mounds / mountain peaks / northern leaf and southern flower / each star and the voids between them / blood and bone / watchful winds / murky waters below / contorted rock formations / pointed pines and spruces of gigantic stature / sea-facing cliffs / stagnant fog / an omnipresent evil / a sleeping sense of doom awakened into full vigour / evil, beloved and menacing evil / sunshine and flowers / darkness and dead leaves / some shaping force of demonic temperament / wartlike hills / tumorous trees / oil lamps scattered about / a sacral glow / a degree of mutual ease / the verdigris of centuries / decomposing jade / pandemonism / cold gray waters / a mere mask for the foulest evil / an absolute evil whose reality is mitigated only by our blindness to it / the universe as a dream / the feverish nightmare of a demonic demiurge / an abstract monster of metaphysics / an altar of coarse stone / skinny shadows / to be actually bound in blackness / white-faced shadows / luminous smoke / glowing, ectoplasmic haze / something thick and oily and strangely colored / an ancient anonymity / spirits beyond all hope or consolation except in the evil to which they would abandon themselves / a ceremony of the chosen / an ancient, darkened mould / petrified lichen / wrought iron tracery / great overgrown gardens of writhing coral / a chaos of little carvings / a world of demonic faces and forms / oneiric visions / inkish waters / an infinitely extensive body of evil / the gods of the ordinary world / dream-induced illusions / visionary intrusions / a banquet of fear / what is squirming beneath every surface / penetrating the usual armor of objects / dark and greenish / garbled whisperings / an island of grass and trees in the middle of the city / globes of light balanced on slim metal poles / a glowing orb / set in the great blackness above  / trees swishing overhead / muddied green / walking some indefinite time along some indefinite route / strings of colored lights / a tall, illuminated booth / clownish creatures / expressionless faces and dead puppet eyes / slow, monotonous phrases mingling like the sequences of a fugue / the faces of the living and the dead / wind-blown trees / the greenish darkness of the night / mold-colored smoke / a squirming, creeping, smearing shape / a great deformed crab / the black oceans of infinity / the island of the moon / the cancerous totality of all creatures / oozing ichor / dying in a nightmare

The Dreaming in Nortown

A solitary perdition / a mind to remember the stages of their downfall / a mirror to multiply their abject glory / a memoir of dreams / peculiar powers of sympathy / a decaying and spacious apartment / an ill-mapped world of dreams / a slightly infernal aroma / an acrid combination of tobacco and autumn nights / a small red glow / a long threadbare overcoat / many pungent Octobers / the remote heights or depths of an artificial paradise / the stumbling words of a returning explorer / a stuporous and awed voice / midnight assemblies / in the grip of strange mystical ecstasies / long red hair / esoteric development / a general tenor of chaos / a quality which may or may not make for good company but which always offers promise of the extraordinary / a contrived noisiness / a strange catalogue of sounds / low moans emanating from the most shadowy chasms of dream / sudden intakes of breath / the suction of a startled gasp / abrupt snarls and snorts of a bestial timbre / expressions of unknown turmoil / the calm darkness of the night / staccato groans / the entire audible spectrum of nightmare-inspired terror / mingling overtones of awe and ecstasy / a willing submission to some unknown ordeal / the deeper registers of somnolence / the smell of a freshly lit cigar / the dun colors of dawn / a flood of eidetic horrors / fleeting scenes of nightmare / a reverberating slam / a note scrawled upon a slip of paper / a disproportionate anxiety / the imagined threat of a reprimand / the frayed end of a disciplinary whip / colors twisting in blackness / a tentacled abyss / bone-colored stars / a dream-distorted voice / a spiral notebook with a cover of mock marble / mystical masochism / feats of occult daredevilry / glimpsing the inferno with eyes of ice / a doomed determinism / the striving for horrific dominion over horror itself / wobbling glitter / a field of venomous colors / the glistening inner skin of deadliest nightshade / the entrancing fragrance of fear / the city’s lurid glamor / cryptic badges whose significance is known only to the initiated / comic colors from an electric spectrum / a chilly autumn evening / engraved brass / dingy neon / a black autumn sky / scattering sparks across the sidewalk / flea-market antiquities / calling feline-voiced / colorful chaos / neon signs streaming across the night / clothed in flashing colors / a many-hued phantasmagoria / a flickering and disorderly rainbow of dreams / a multitude of indecisive thoughts and impulses / a brick and neon landscape / a frigid and fragrant October night / darkness and a voice / a coarse scream / a pulsing opalescent aura / a delirious blend of images derived from nightmare / an ominous sunrise over a dark horizon / a field of fear / a painfully lush iridescence / a burnt-out patch of earth / newspapers mutilated by time / two fresh cigars / a thin book-like box / a scene from some Boschian hell / a hideous series of transfigurations / the screaming mass of a damned soul / an abyss of nightmares / explorations in a hell of one’s own choosing

The Mystics of Muelenburg

Trees made of poster board / houses built of colored foam / mud and dust and ashes / a nightmare of nonsense / fantasy, that misty domain of pure meaning / dim and empty storage space / an ancient armchair / reposing far beneath crumbling rafters / surveying remote worlds / a burst of fireworks / buzzing like flies in the blackness / glow worms flitting in the blinding sun / to keep the sun in the sky / to keep the dead in the earth / a universal vice / a parasite of chaos / a maggot of vice / the prospect of absolute terror / men in the mouths of demons / withholding heaven’s light / the pointed shadows of peaked roofs and jutting gables / faded artifacts of a dead town / high castle turrets / grayness undisturbed / ashen twilight / the yellow light of lamps / sumptuous chambers / humble rooms / the lost luxury of shadows / an infinite vault of glowing dust / a deception by demons / old deities formerly driven from the earth / shadows streaming horribly / the twitching light of a thousand candles / prismatic jewels / a greyish whirlpool / indefinite twilight / the blackness which is the domain of death / necromantic learning / drunken dialogues / unparalleled credulity / fluidity, always fluidity / an ornamented void / the stars and moon / the legions of the dead

In the Shadow of Another World

Walking down streets at twilight / watered lawns / the edges of leaves / pale specters within a fog / the infinite sky itself / gently stirring trees / old silent houses / strange cities disguised as clouds / the depths of a vast, echoing abyss / a blurry little window with a crack in it / a tree-lined street / a pale sky at dusk / peaks and porches / worn wooden steps / dreams and vapor posing as solid matter / a fabulous overlap of properties / petrified flesh / gigantic bones from great beasts of old / chimneys and shingles / a shadow on the horizon / a thing of nightmarish beauty / impossible hopes / a kind of ceremonious desolation / translucent festivals / the faraway sounds of mad carnivals / an instinct for mystification / dubious spectacles / trumped-up histrionics / immaculate to the point of being suspect / a plush and well-tended mausoleum / where the dead are truly at rest / oppressive awareness of other times / secret conspiracies with departed spirits / the unnatural mood of twilight / sinister echoes / dark, polished floors / lofty, uncobwebbed ceilings / a malign presence in the cellar / an insane shadow in the attic / thaumaturgic curios / a hermetic chant of the heavens / no hint of hauntedness / an innocent ambiance / a spiritual wasteland / spiritually antiseptic surroundings / a twisting and tenuous stairway / shattered panes of glass / misshapen glyphs / the shadowy nuances of clouds / a twisted kaleidoscope of colors / the aura of stained-glass cathedral / some obscure desecration / prismatic lenses / that of the dead or the demonic / an eclipse of this world’s vision / a quivering translucence / iridescent sterility / the aftermath of a strange exorcism / neither hallowed nor unholy / a pristine laboratory / a science of nightmares / a small, lamplit library / night’s darkness / a voice that’s accustomed to speaking of miracles / mystical freakshows / a grave sincerity / dissonant overtones of fear / the shadows of another world / forms of specter or demon / the eyes of the flesh / a luminous hell / psychic survival / hopelessly dreaming / terror recollected in tranquility / mazy trauma / the sensations of the soul / a monstrous mystery / a theoretician of nightmares / crude and cryptic designs / a remote and shadowy stage / an adept of pasteboard visions / mucilage and gauze / pulling the strings of light and shadow / shadows gathering / a strange radiance / phosphorescent panes / superlunary light / some cosmic tapestry / a haunted world / the marriage of insanity and metaphysics / a spectral ontogeny / a pageant of nightmares / sunlit bazaars in exotic cities / transparent masks / insectoid countenances / moonlit streets in antique towns / a strange-eyed slithering / dim galleries of empty museums / a ghostly mold / the sullen hues of old paintings / sticky luxuriance / pulpy warmth / an uncanny flux of sounds / cadaverous generations / sculptures of human coral / bodies heaped and unwhole / limbs projecting without order / eyes scattered and searching the darkness / a monument to Terror / a maze of interconnecting doors / spectral monstrosities / the cover of masks / the concealment of stones / feverish properties and intentions / a framed phantasmagoria / grotesque transfigurations / a systemless cosmogony / the caprice of the immaterial / weirdly lucent rooms / chaotic fantasies / narrow, spiraling stairs / the gazing eye of some god / a pyrotechnic craze of colors /  a vibrating echo of vocal utterance / swirling sights / a vacuum and a void / doubtful strategies / unknown and extravagant possibilities / occult theories / arcane analyses / the irreducible certainty of nightmare / great shadows in the stars / an infinite catastrophe / protective sigils / the full glare of starlight / stars and shadows / privileged arcana / the enchantments of hell / cold sunlight / the visionary time of twilight

The Cocoons

A gloved hand twitching / a rather unapologetic tone / egg-shaped pills / a half-glass of water / a soft grinding noise / a quietly urgent voice /  blotched vapors /  a growl of exasperation / unpeopled avenues / a mass of shadows / a landscape without pattern or substance / the moon shining / a doubtful glance / a devastated plain / an open field heaped with debris / bits of glass and scraps of metal / lunar spaciousness / a skeletal structure with all markings of identity scraped off its bones / a densely tangled nest of houses / the dull light of the moon / a yellowish swatch of illumination / high wooden fences / a ruined turret grazed by moonlight / a minor mania / a cobwebbed corner / a blank battered wall / warped floor moldings / a watery light / the quivering light of candles / an old-fashioned film projector / the whirring of a projector / a visual record of a scientific experiment / dark wiry appendages /  a pair of slender snapping pincers / tiny translucent wings / glistening but useless / malicious eyes / a dubious look / candles flickering like fire-flies / a cold swamp of shadows / a collection of bones / dazed silence / a clockwork world / sunrise schedules / lunar routines / a pandemonium of forces / a phantasmagoria of possibilities / the shadow of a laugh /  a curious hedonism that can’t be controlled / the vagaries of omnipotence / breeder of indulgence / languorous exhaustion / a psychic matter / unheard of habits / a clown’s oversized grin / bliss on the brink of apotheosis / a universal process of transfiguration / restless skittering / a pitiful delight / giddy pride / demoniac undercurrents / the grotesque ultimatums of creation

The Night School

A high, full moon shining among the spreading clouds / shadows singing with the clouds / a slowly flowing mass of mottled shapes / a kind of unclean outpouring / the black sewers of space / the wall of night /  smoke, dense and dirty, rising up to the sky / the spastic flames of a small fire / a slender gentleman / a dark suit / broken bones / the process of degeneration / the mulchy rot of autumn or early spring / yellowish light / dark scabby bricks / ruined factories / ravaged mausoleums / abandoned orphanages / a blossom of the cemetery or the cesspool / guttering candles / blurred remnants of past lessons / cloacal forces / time as a flow of sewage / drowning in the pools of night / a thousand molting autumns / the melting soil of spring / a pair of yellowish eyes / undiluted darkness / a darkness far greater than the night itself / consolidated darkness / the science of a spectral pathology / a philosophy of absolute disease / the metaphysics of things sinking into a common disintegration or rising together / dark rottenness /  filthy smoke from some smoldering source of expansive corruption / the scent of corruption / the nostalgic perfume of autumn decay / the feculent muskiness of a spring thaw / smoky blackness / the offal of worlds in decline / the dark compost of those about to be born / the primeval impurity In which all things are founded / native putridity / pieces of paper with strange symbols on them / the very face of a plague—pustulant, scabbed, and stinking terribly / a black fog / many voices crying and calling from total blackness / tightly packed earth in a grave / the disease of the night / bright flames / the noise of a fire and the wind / a full moon / shining bright and blurry / a luminous mold / the great sewers of night

The Glamour

A fine aura of fantasy / both blurred and brightened / a starless evening / diamonds of plate glass / old buildings of dark brick / the display window of a toy store / a chaotic tableau of preposterous excitation / mechanized monkeys / fated antics / tiny cymbals / the destined pirouettes of a music-box ballerina / a newly sprung jack-in-the-box / strangely picturesque / dreamily illuminated / sculptured frosting / a winter landscape of swirling, drifting whiteness / snowy rosettes / layers of icy glitter / a glacial kingdom / a brilliant arctic scene / a vitality of enterprise / a glossy light / the placidly enigmatic expressions of a different time / faded lighting / an old photograph / the kind of acute anticipation that a child might experience at a carnival / a possessing impulse without object / wretchedly aglow / a long, narrow corridor with a single light set far into its depths / a strange shade of purple, like that of a freshly exposed heart / a purple lamp / arterial light / a deep pink / a richly blooded brain / a beating heart / wispy shrouds / sparse hairs sticking to the scalp of an old corpse / purple-tinted glass / the darkness of a theater / a swarm of filaments / an elaborate chandelier / a sickly, liverish shade / an operating room where a torso lies open on the table / a palette of pinks and reds and purples / diseased viscera imitating all of the shades of sunset / headstones in a graveyard / endless filthy alleys / long desolate corridors in an old asylum / the dripping passages of a sewer / a dust-blinded window / a dark unvisited cellar / a mirror gone rheumy with age / facets of murky crystal / cobwebs / long pale threads / hazy purple light / the slow curling of thin smoke / a great rectangular web / the ever-mutating images of clouds / a surge of dark elation / a sudden chill announcing bad weather / a vibrant presence / an expression of avid malignance / inner webbings / swirling fibers / wild shocks of twisting hair / a portrait of atrocity / lust for sites and ceremonies of mayhem / writhing cobwebs / reaching tendrils / graveyards and alleyways / a joyous hysteria / a pale purple / sinister and seamy regions / spectral ambiance / all pervasive purple coloration / the labyrinth of a living anatomy / palest pink / a purple light / putrid chambers and cloisters / an infernal land / fleshy, gelatinous integuments / translucent tissue / the theater of a mad surgery / hair-thin sutures / unseen hands designing unnatural shapes and systems / weaving a nest in which possession would take place / the weaver and web-maker / an old puppet-master / setting a helpless creature with new strings / through eyes unknown / purple shadows / a type of degraded rapture / a seizure of debauched panic / webs of hair / great evil / an appeal for deliverance / eyes that would see what should not be seen / stray threads pulled from a sleeve or pocket / a paralytic silence / eyes gazing fierce and malignant / a purple glow / two shafts of the purest purple light / an old woman with glowing eyes

Father Sevich’s Visit

A manner at first vaguely troublesome and afterward rather attractive / the arrival of a priest / the very echoes of the air / mellow afternoon sunlight / dark wooden floors / pale contortions of ancient wall paper / invisible games / abstract dread and a bizarre sort of indebtedness / a thick maze of propositions / a well-made bed / a relentless failure / cloistral tunnels / vaulted penetralia / a single column-clutching hand / the necessary features of fear / a maddening task / a series of completely irrelevant expressions / misty-eyed wonder / cretinous bafflement / smiling in an almost amiable way at one one’s impending doom / the trap of expectation / a sleepy whisper / the sound of soft conversation / the world of good manners and polite talk / a look of incompleteness / some unfinished effigy in a toy maker’s workshop / something vital to expression / the purple-robed mysteries of priesthood / animated eyes / withered things reeking of medicine and prayer / a painfully delicate subject / varnished wood / salvation through suffering / sacred horrors / the divine destiny toward which the paths of anguish have always led / volumes of blessed agony / an attitude of prayerful pleading / torturing demons / a single squatted devil / bristling lashes that sprout like weeds / an explosion of miniature grotesquerie / a brief and calculated absence / a modest fund of moral energy / a macabre icon / profane lessons / a countenance of true terror / a ridiculously empty slate / an off-stage atrocity / a cycle of mute, incredible lore / anthropomorphic mist / an eerie lividity / unconscious hours of darkness / a chronicle of truly unspeakable things / the light of every constellation in the visible universe / the oppressive mysteries of the autumn season / thick orange crayons / black cats / black paper / a hopeless urge for innovation / a tiny white collar / dripping with fever / hat and cloak and walking stick / narrow, nocturnal streets / a fairy-tale vision / serpentine lanes / the distorted glow of street lamps / the thinnest blade of moon / a narrow niche / an unpaved lane / a small courtyard surrounded by high walls / the stars above / jaundiced lamplight / a stairway of cut stone / the earth and absolute blackness / tiny lights glimmering like stars / clouds of shadows / some golden metal / a caricature of serenity / a hand as white as the whitest glove / chaotic rays / underworld starlight / a certain expression of rarefied scorn or disgust / indignant shadows / black, ankle-high shoes / the natural nightlight of the moon / an infernal aura or an angelic halo / a planet revolving its unspeakable tonnage in the blackness of space / a small bottle of holy water / secret denial and privilege / a smile of deep contentment

Miss Plarr

Misty, drizzling days / sharp, urgent rappings at the front door / a world of darkening mist / mist-covered locks / listening with intense expectancy / the world’s chaos of faces / a seething luxuriance / dark battlements of clouds / a mute and sullen twilight / a stone-gray sky / those days all shackled in gloom / a fugue of noise / the livid radiance of moonlight / the wild shape of some night-blossom / some strange and cruel kingdom / an intimate dungeon cell reserved for the most exclusive captivity / constant, noisy marauding / sedentary or stealthy rituals / an abyss of unspoken reproaches and suspicions / some ancient seagoing vessel / an old oil lamp / a series of quite fascinating lectures / a kind of brutality and an air of exile / deliriums of earth and sky / fog-bound islands in polar seas / shadowed realms littered with dead cities / peaks lacerated by unceasing winds / a bluish slime / the proper way to behave / the great mists of spring / murky sheets of ice / a world of shadows bound in place / the sound of something that stings the air / the hissing of rainy afternoons / immense blades sweeping over vast spaces / expansive wings cutting through cold winds / long whips lashing in darkness / intangible sympathies / a dark mesh of nightmares / a foul nest in which one’s own suspicions are swarming / links to a strictly mundane order / a briskness that seems to be an effort / a heavy spring dampness / lost to the world of wholesome practicalities / a hypnotic and fateful determination / a child’s weakness for prospects of misadventure / a fog-smothered landscape / a pale, floating web / an immense and awful kingdom / a patternless conglomerate of crystals / a misty graveyard / angular and many-faced monuments / the mountainous and murky thunderheads of a rainy season / the very essence of a storm / a matter of suspicion and conjecture / atrocious potential / fogs and mists and gray heaping skies / a conspicuous stridency / a dour mystique / a gray mist / skies of hissing rain

The Shadow At the Bottom of the World

Some feverish intent / sheaves of cornstalks standing brownish and brittle in a newly harvested field / a sky of empty light / fiery leafage / something dark, something abysmal / small shadowy voices / sweet wine turning to vinegar / a hysteric brilliance / displays of thorn apple, sumac, and towering sunflowers / crooked roadside fences / a moonlit field / a bright round moon / nocturnal solitude / patched-up overalls / worn flannel / the withered leaves of cornstalks / moonlight spread across a dead field / a great idol in shabby disguise / a sacred avatar out of season / fidgeting bemusement / a leaden vault of clouds / pure sunlight / misty dreams of the past night / a vine-twisted stone wall / dormant vines / a strange network of dead veins / calculated grayness / radiant leaves / legions of local cicadas / a dark fungus / of the blackest earth / a rich loam / a bog of shadows / an abyss in the outline of a man / the feel of wind and water / a few shifting flames / flames of only the slightest warmth / black flames / the molten texture of spoiled fruit / a shriveled scarecrow / an armory of axes, shovels, and other implements / an eccentricity of the harvest / a viscous mire / innumerable insects laughing / sprouting blackness / a perverse reluctance / the great shadow of a moonless night / the dark rustling depths of the season / the glass globes of streetlamps / the dense leaves of elms and oaks and maples / blazing auras / the frigid aurora of dawn / frost-powdered earth / shadows and corn shocks / countless insects chattering unseen / the feverish life of the earth / the wrinkled grimace of decay / corrupted by vile impulses / a mound of soft dirt / the darkish grooves of ancient bark / the mottled complexion of old flesh / a multitude of crooked smiles / a freakish mask painted with russet, rashy colors / a virulent intensity / an autumn night when fields lay ragged in moonlight / moist and fertile shadows / a hollow-eyed howling malignity / the cold emptiness of space / the pale gaze of the moon / the depths of an extraordinary harvest / insecure hints and delvings / the luxuriant shadow of trees / the mocking plumage of a strange season / an array of whims and suspicions / scraps of lush color / gold and crimson hieroglyphs / deathless leaves / an ill-formed village / a hideous impersonation of a face / leprous masks / knotty shadows / a subterranean craze of roots and tendrils / an underworld riot of branching convolutions / gnarled ornamentations / autumnal decay / knives and axes and curving scythes / countless colored leaves / pronouncements of dire or delightful curiosity / a dull trance / a wild luminousness / a diamond-bright fever burning within / perennial strangeness / tenacious foliage / softly glowing against a black sky / an untimely nocturnal rainbow / a harvest of hues / peach gold / pumpkin orange / honey yellow / winy amber / apple red / plum violet / the pyrotechnics of a new autumn / a thousand glittering dreams / a rigid scarecrow / a patchwork of shadows / a quivering glow / a premature craving / an expertly whetted blade / a betrayal or deception on the part of creation itself / something buried deep within appearances / something that wears a mask to hide itself / holding a spatula like a weapon / moldering shadows / a dreamless sleep / a sudden rage of mortification / the remains of a dismantled scarecrow / an ashen autumn morning / the feeling of blood / a bottomless grave

[aestheticminyard]

We’ve Got to Break This Cycle

pynch | 1,764 words | M | part 3 of 3 (part 1) (part 2) | tw: gore, blood

Chapter 3: Mother (ao3)

Cabeswater had died, in a sense, almost a decade ago; it had sacrificed itself for Gansey, for the simple reason that he was integral to its survival. Cabeswater did not exist without Ronan, and Ronan did not exist without Gansey. Ronan’s magnificent creation—his channeling of the ancient magic into a tangible forest—had been tainted, poisoned by the demon and was already dying.

It’s sacrifice allowed for new life, for the chance that it would one day return—in a millennia, in an age, with a new dreamer who dreamed new dreams (who would hopefully be more like Ronan than the others had been). Some part of Cabeswater remained in the grove of Ronan’s dreams, fading into hazy shadow at the edges of his vision; some part remained in Adam’s magic, admiring his attempts to revive it. The trees had lost their souls for salvation, but everything is reborn someday.

Why Ronan? Why was he allowed this reminder of what he had done for love—love of a brother and a friend, love of memories and of dreams—and for fear and knowledge of what loss could bring? Gansey had died for him, and so part of Ronan had died for Gansey in turn. Part of Ronan was already dead anyway, a beautiful part that had taught him to swim and kissed his knees when he fell and scared away the dark left by his father’s long absences with candlelit stories.

Aurora had lived in Cabeswater—as much as someone neither alive nor dead can live—and became a part of it as all its inhabitants had. She was not the trees that Blue traced her lineage to, not the abandoned Mitsubishi missing keys and maker. She was not hands nor eyes of the magic itself, not born of the ley line her son and his friends had chased for so long.

She slumbered for the ten odd years that her son learned how to live with her loss, but she remembered his pain. She was dead—as much as someone neither alive nor dead can die—when Ronan and Adam found her body, mutilated and bloody and far too much like her husband’s had once been, but her sentience had struggled when she heard his agony shake the ancient forest.

Ronan had lost so much, though he gained love that sometimes made him forget for a moment that he was an orphan with too much resting on his tired shoulders. His father had been a wicked dreamer, and his mother a perfect dream. Both were long dead, but Adam was broken in his arms, a fragment of his life still holding on—as much as something that is practically dead can do anything—as though Adam knew he was a necessity to Ronan’s survival.

Ronan’s agony was stronger even than it had been when Niall had died, when Aurora had ceased to be. It shook the world. Aurora was his mother, but she knew this was not a bloody knee to patch up, nor tears to wipe away. She knew this was not a monster to chase away in the night, nor the demon that had killed her that Ronan had almost died because of too.

This was Ronan’s soul wrenched from his body, held in a place between life and death. Aurora had ceased to be once Niall died, for she was made by him. Ronan was made for Adam, and even he could not survive this death.

Aurora woke up, deep in the grove of Ronan’s memory, of his dreams. Her hair was matted with decade-old blood, her nails broken and her body mangled, but she dragged herself onward. Gansey had been searching for a lost king who would change his world, but did not recognize that the woman who had bore the Greywaren was a queen.

“Help him,” she demanded, exerting more force than she ever had in life—as much as someone neither dead nor alive can live.

“We are not able,” the trees replied, words more of wind between their leaves than wrought from lungs and mouths.

“I was not making a request.”

The trees were silent, realizing as Gansey had not that a queen lay among them. Her eyes were cloudy after years of disuse, but she looked through their exteriors to hold the souls within with her stare. She had been beautiful once, but she had always been much more than that, something slumbering beneath her somber superficiality.

“He is not yet gone,” she said, feeling at once herself and Ronan, still shaking as he clutched Adam’s body, breaking her heart as each sob wracked his body. Adam’s soul still held its grip, as it could not stand being ripped away. She reached through her mind, through Ronan’s to Adam’s, and clutched his hands in her own, relegating her remaining strength to him. “Help him.”

“His fate is decided.”

“We are beyond fate now. It does not exist here.”

Adam’s hands were cooling against her own, and she felt his fear. She heard his last thoughts, his impossible wish for Ronan’s happiness. It was him she addressed, pressing her forehead to his.

“You are his happiness. You are all that he is.”

Aurora gazed up at the trees again. Her words, her might, had moved them too. She felt their hands on her shoulders, their strength flooding her empty veins and reaching for Adam too.

“You tried to save him from perishing at my death. You can save him now.”

The magic of Cabeswater had sacrificed so much for Gansey, who was truly gone, who believed his death an inescapable necessity. He had not attempted to remain once he had died, not realized that a sacrifice would be made for him. Adam’s soul remembered Gansey’s death, how they begged for his life back. Aurora felt more hands, more magic, come to their aid. Adam’s friends—his family now—with their love and pain and fear and agony even louder than death.

Aurora chased away death’s darkness, it’s grip on his soul. She pushed him a little, pushing his soul back into his body. Aurora knew she could not repair any lasting trauma, but the trees put him back together—putting him back inside himself too. Aurora kissed Adam’s forehead, wiping away his tears and as much of his pain as she could muster.

“This is what a mother is supposed to be,” Adam whispered.

Adam was aware of pain receding from his body, but he could not place why it had been there to begin with. His head was pounding, and he heard the metallic scratch of his wedding ring on the wet pavement beneath him before he felt it; Ronan would roll his eyes at the new marks on the ring, but he would surely repair them if Adam wished. Adam felt as though he were missing something important. What day was it? Why was everything so wet?

He was in Ronan’s arms. He could hear sobs—that was what was moving him rather than his own volition. There were hands bracketing the rest of his body, gripping him so hard he might have bruises in the morning.

What had happened that morning?

Adam remembered Blue and Gansey and Henry were supposed to come over, that Ronan had reminded him of this as soon as they woke. They hadn’t gotten out of bed right away until Opal threw Orion’s left foot directly at Ronan’s eye, and he had to get out of bed to chase her down. Adam had sat up, resting on his arms as he heard the sounds of them sprinting and yelling throughout the house. This was happiness.

Adam managed to open his eyes slightly. He had a strange, sideways view right at the bottom of Ronan’s BMW. It really did need an oil change; Adam would have to take it in tomorrow. He looked around as far as his half-open eyes would allow. The wetness covering the ground wasn’t rain, but blood. Who was hurt? Who was bleeding this mu—

It was Adam.

It all came back to him in a rush. The man with the tire iron, mirroring Mr. Grey so many years before. Laumonier. The blows against his head, that made him wince just to remember. There was something beyond that, beyond his brutal death.

He had died.

How was he not dead now? He remembered trying to stay, remembered his grip starting to fail and then strengthening as though more hands were joining his. He remembered light against his eyes, love so strong it was too painful to stay away. He remembered a mother’s kiss against his forehead, a mother’s belief in him—something he found hard to understand, though he was sure it had happened.

He fought through his lasting haze of confusion, and opened his eyes fully. They were partially obscured with blood still, and his mouth felt as though it were filled with sand. Was he even breathing? He was definitely dehydrated—that much he knew.

Adam tried to say Ronan’s name, but no sound managed to make it past his lips. Adam tried again.

“R-Ron-nan,” he choked out.

Ronan’s hands were on his face instantly, rubbing against his cheeks and over his brow and his lips and everywhere that he could reach. He maneuvered Adam so that he could see him, and Adam saw that the majority of the sobbing had been Ronan’s. He still wept now, though out of joy at the impossibility of Adam breathing again. Ronan’s hands shakily traveled to the back of Adam’s head, looking for the gaping wound and finding none.

“Adam,” Ronan said, heart in his throat. “Oh, Adam.”

Adam willed his arms to move, and wrapped them around Ronan’s neck, pulling him close until there was barely space to breathe between them. They were both shaking now, Ronan’s stuttering hands tracing every inch of Adam. Adam hated himself for what his death had put Ronan through.

“Do-don’t you d-dare,” Ronan ordered, as though he could read Adam’s mind, which wouldn’t even be a shock at this point in the day.

Adam was aware that his friends were also there, but his heart ached too much for what he’d almost lost—what he and Ronan had almost lost. Their souls were inseparable, and even the weak remainder of Cabeswater could see that.

Ronan pulled away an inch, just to look into Adam’s eyes. His gaze was reverent—more so than usual—and it was as though he never wanted to miss another second of seeing Adam alive. He pressed a kiss to Adam’s forehead, murmuring again and again there between the press of his lips.

“You came back.”

Ok firstly I am so sorry that it has been a year since I posted the second chapter. I kinda stopped writing fics for a while (as I’m sure some of you noticed), and tried to focus on more of my own content. This is not technically the end of this piece—I am planning on writing a (happier???) short epilogue very soon. Thank you for reading this piece.

I know I seriously haven’t done anything in like a year, but send me prompts and comments if you want and I will try to start getting to them.