a red sun can’t re-liven this staunch grey. dead and loud: it calls to your sockets. where your eyes blink, where your joints bend. tightened lungs, and the air isn’t enough for you to breathe. you need smoke, heavy and dirty. teetering upon the awning of your own existence. a part of you – breath, hair and spit – will drip over the precipice like run-off, spring rain. lost to the thirsty sand, exhaling with the wind. some days, the ground is more alive than you, some days. some days. warmer and firmer. it wouldn’t drift away from itself. earth doesn’t clutch its shoulder to ensure it’s still there. that there’s a steady pulse, even at the bones’ hardest points, that rocks your body. i wake; i hunger. some days. i hush the white, desert light, and answer to the train’s pull. wind on my skin / a clenched, dry jaw. you almost remember disinterest. but there, a man’s question, and again, you are a glutton for sun-bleached warmth. an attention that breathes. count to ten, now, before you hum. bare your canines: call this a smile. ‘ well, if you don’t want to catch the pretty penny. ’ the glistening shade of plum slots into akami’s hand. their thumb touches a middle knuckle. a bitten nail presses into their meaty palm. again, they hum like a wolf awaiting moonlight. ‘ mighty kind for a dusty old fella such as y’rself ( … ) not costly enough for you to pawn the shiny, now, is it? no, no. wait. don’t tell me. the lord sent ya t’teach me restraint. ’
who: open to anyone !
where: train station, near the general store
when: harvest / 20th anniversary festival – day one
Warren thumbed his lighter open and close like a nervous dog around carrion meat.
How many times can a man stand to watch morals disintegrate until he too forgets it ever existed? The number is often higher than one might've thought but lower than some would care to admit. For Warren he had not yet forgotten it, but quite often felt as though it would've suited him better if he had. Hell, it'd beat having to watch the train arrive with smoke stacks like fumes from Satan's cigar. But then again, he never was so lucky.
The metal beast came to a smooth stop and in the minutes afterward cattle meandered straight from its iron mouth and into the rolling sun. Was it cruel of him to associate their arrival with that of meat processing? Possibly. But wasn't that exactly what it was? Man changing himself to transform? Warren shifted from one foot to another and watched with little interest as white linen dragged along the filthy ground. Dirt grabbed at the new arrival's hems and dirtied it real nice and pretty. His own attire was coated in soot likely caused by his refusal to take his eyes off the railroad.
Silently he pat himself down and swept what he could off before anyone noticed; wouldn't want anyone thinking he worked at the train station after all.
Despite two years of tenure, Warren never quite put a label on his role in Westworld outside of his official capacity (which he kept hidden from host and guest alike). In fact, he made it a priority to look as unapproachable and as invisible as humanly possible. Still, nothing ever worked the way he'd wanted it to and morals had not yet left him; so when a shiny object spilled out from the depths of an unsuspecting pocket, he was kind enough to scoop it up and present it to them as an offering.
"This here yours? You best be keeping your belongings close to your heart, lest a sticky hand pawns it off somewhere cheap."
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eaten or rotten. i am all mouth.
basics.
given name. akami sakurai.
nickname. mimi, aki, give them some.
label. the bloodhound.
age. thirty-one.
place of birth. los angeles, california.
gender identity. non-binary ( they + she ).
orientation. pansexual.
occupation. outlaw at the campsite.
moral alignment. neutral / chaotic evil.
character inspiration. frankenstein’s monster ( frankenstein ), power ( chainsaw man ), pearl ( x film series ), jinx ( arcane ), libby day ( dark places ), thomasin ( the vvitch ), anakin skywalker / darth vader ( star wars ), dani ardor ( midsommar ), rebecca ( cyberpunk: edgerunners ).
background.
a mother dreams of her child, congealed into the walls of her womb. her poorly-shelled little peanut. you are a soft thing once –– indented by fingerprints that can’t be your own –– gently swaddled in jelly that should’ve grown into muscle. soft like tears leaking through their eyelids. where her skin is weakest; where her fingers cannot press deep enough to crack you open into her own hands. you will be cruel, and seep through her belly button under a blanket of moonlight. ensuring a mother’s body betrays her. again and again. she stops sleeping. her body swells until she feels a heartbeat at the harsh crest of her belly.
in her unblinking haze, a man thumbs her bruised eyebags. a man who birthed none yet fathers many. a perfect baby, he says, who will perfectly live. you tear into the world, instead, blood wetting your tongue like spit. a birth-bed kills when delivering you. mottled by lungfuls of cries, and your mother’s newly barren body. a neutered woman; her purpose fulfilled. akami will think this, meanly, as they christen a new knife. you are heavy in her arms: a baby skull harder than her reedy collarbone. and now she is the only blood you can share. there will never be another of your kind. you’ve atoned, he says, for being born. she will sleep, and you will continue to wake.
your mother cradles you loosely, once your raven hair can braid. in her grip, with your enfleshed body, you would fall without your whitened knuckles clutching tightly at her. to mewl at your mother’s feet. those fingers pick knots from your hair; too afraid to scruff you truly. you leave bite-marks on the meat of her palm. your mother has two hands: one for the lord and the other for her own heart. all that remains, then, is the father. who will find you, as he always does, alone at the riverbank. plopping rocks into the abyss where you poured your friend. the one who would lie upon the mossy ground beside you, smearing mud on your cheeks, and scaring away a pair of torch-lit, glowing eyes. pushed to the bottom of the riverbed, she will no longer see the stars up in the black, night sky.
this father’s eyes glint, looking down upon you. just like hers. do you miss her, he asks. miss her how, you reply. his thumb finds the unbruised, tender spot on your forehead. do you miss her? tears glass your eyes. no, you reply. he presses harder for a moment, before pulling you close. his heartbeat rests at your temple. red pain / bruised song. and what is pain, if not a held hand? you clench your fists tighter; he starts to rock you.
( our father who art in my arms. )
his brother sees you, in a way you care little for. with an axe in hand, cutting wood from a sap-soaked tree. there, he says, you blacken the green language of earth. the forest rejects you, like sacred ground burns a sinner’s skin. oh, how ungodly the land makes you. how the father chooses his brother –– toothed shears fray the string you linked to both of your wrists –– who wouldn’t miss him. who wouldn’t flower his grave, more than a week after his death. unloved and unloving. born of the same ilk, and he casts you away all the same.
his blood paints the flowing waters, along with trickles from your clutched abdomen and scarred brow bone. you allow it to leak, to touch his dead lips somewhere along the river’s trail. in the afterlife, he will drink wine in remembrance of you. a parting gift from daughter to father. he will not return to dust, but to the empty fish stomachs that once bore a hunger called our own.
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Topaz Winters, from Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing; “But First, the Stomach”
[Text ID: “in the beginning there was want / I can’t remember what came after that.”]
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#𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐃: dependent multi-muse blog affiliated with westworldhqs, as penned and hated by katy ( they / them, gmt )
akami sakurai. intro. study. threads. pinterest.
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