funtimes-inbabylon

[funtimes-inbabylon]

Amaryllis

Venus retrograde, planetary distance falling back, snagging tooth and gravity healing, descending love a sinking feeling, mercurial ball quicksilver whimsy and wafting. Streaking glinted bronze along iridescent flesh, molten jaw eased open with tender lips, teeth grown stuff from misuse. Gold coin sun beating red back, Apollo’s discus in the Hellenistic sky, jumbled blue heavy-light blinding him.

 His wings are ugly ivory, worn leather ghost struck through pillar, obelisks with runic desires carved into them. Life light blood

drained tiny vessels kindling to the greater God-form fire. He twists

his neck, twists it pink and purple, indigo blue shadowed by

an omniscient shade of crimson.

 Red which follows him, lives behind his vision, settled a nest out of eye cavity and burned there. Black opal irises and moonlight glittered wings, candlelight cast his frame against knotted driftwood. Set him up high against the

glass sea, nailed temple with iron and blessed

him stigmata. Stretched pinion coruscating white devil’s tattoo, alabaster salted waves and wounds expanded. He is spinal seashore, pinnacle zenith healing touch, rippled refracted starlight holy brimming amber fingertips.

 Like emerald West Wind, he strikes Hyacinthos dead and watches as the oracle god breathes mottled blossoms from clotted blood.

Why have him if someone else

could? Royal cascading cobalt keeping tidal time with the moon, the shared symbiosis give and take, Newton’s cradle conservation of energy passed carefully between a magnetic duo. Saffron settled yellow silk ribbon held equal weight at each end.

[funtimes-inbabylon]

Betelgeuse Black

grew up in Austria, parents are art historians, entitled, chaotic, is a menace to society, likes to sneak around at night, has a lot of partners in crime and drinking buddies, has a mean streak

[funtimes-inbabylon]

serafim modest alkaev

RED

"The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead."

 Wrapping strands of her hair around your fingers does not seem to make them any stronger. The way the tints of honey brown catch sunlight, the same way her amber eyes looked at you when you bled from beneath your fingernails. She is brave where you are not. She is full of life where your soul lays emptied, for you had poured it all into her. Into the empty vessel of her chest, when her slender hands grasped the crystal bell jar that kept your heart in place, protection. Right there, she would whisper, and stick her finger against your bare chest, Where it should beat.

It would bubble up from between you two, that sticky scent of love, that effervescent red-colored goo they called love. When two bodies molded so well into one. When you were so convinced that soul-mates existed, that the string of fate had bound you two so close together, so strongly, that nothing could ever break it. It was pulled taut, rocked with the vibrations of love-making and fights thereafter. She was so beautiful and you, well. You're you.

She would press her thumb against your brow and kiss you where ever she touched you. The way her body looked in the moonlight could be described in a million different ways. The pale glow that silhouetted her figure so complimentary. It so hid the scars of her skin, where she might have lost her head, it hid the times she'd slipped and fallen, when you had not been there to catch her. You and your caves for cheeks and she and her chamomile arms and lavender lips. She brought you chrysanthemums from the garden one day, the flowers held tight between her palms.

She was bleeding, red as ever.

  YELLOW

"...the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."

Daisies lined the porch steps for months. You'd lost count of how many you bought. How many had been given to you. The weather was cold but the people were warm. Never as warm as she was, so smoldering, so radiant. Even when she was sick, she still beamed at you when you brought in the butter-yellow blooms. As much as you wished for time to stop, it hadn't.

It had been bruises at first, gentle ones that formed blue and green, you had to be cautious when you touched her. Her precious cream skin littered with marks. She cut too easily, and you would bandage her, Moy sladkiy... you might murmur as you wrapped her forearm with the sterile white gauze.

She'd become a bird, hollow bones, feathers, and all, her wings spread wide yet they were broken. Let me take your little bird bones, you would say to her as you gathered her in your arms, My fragile darling. Yet she would turn to you, with cracked lips, smile and mimic a chirp. Her brown hair still thick, her golden eyes still molten warm, the skin of her cheeks just barely blushed.

Let me take you, my rosemary, don't leave me, my sage. Tender was the breeze through the window that night, with it was carried the smell of rain. Her breathing rhythmic, her breathing the waves, her body the sea. The ever-longing push and pull of the tide. The way the water so reached for land. Her solace turned into his desperation. The tendrils of the tide retreated back into the open sea. The calm of the ocean, still water no longer disturbed by the pebbles he dropped into the surface. The rocking waves came to a halt, and slowly but surely, her hand fell open.

Inevitably, the daisy fell from it.

 BLUE

"Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again."

 With no center, what would you orbit? Where were the hands that pressed against you as you slept? The gentle scent of cloves and roses that lingered on everything she touched? It still had settled, into the pillow, into the bed. Wrapped in your sheets was the still form of her. The curve of her back, the point of her knee. Leaves and petals and flower stems braided into ropes that she had decorated the walls with. Her paintings, framed, hung like the man from the tree. Trials held, kindling crackled, the flames breathed to life in the absence of her. They took her oxygen.

You set the house on fire and you left. Much like Lot, you did not look back as it burned. You would not turn to salt, you instead took the cord of bloodied tendons that you wrestled from her open arms and you pulled, hard. You took her teeth and put them in with your heart in your bell jar. You took her bones, hollowed and weakened, you took the soft hair that you had so often run your fingers through when she was still warm. Her dead amber eyes, now the amber of no why, the amber of time.

Secrets, stuffed far into your pockets and the depths of you, driven to darkness by death. Where her apple cheeks had rested against the stars of your shoulders scalded you. Was it the heat of the flames that licked at your heels? Where she lay burning? You would not turn to salt.

The hallowed grace of God that spat on you. That took your face and rubbed it into the gravel. What spirit had you? Stretched across the brick of the wall. Chest open, heart where it beats against the meat of the rib cage. Take me, too. What soul you had given to her, thrown back at you with no remorse. No sympathy for the hermit. You'd given too much to her, you did not want it all back. Dragged through the mud, what soul could find you? Recognize you? Earth smeared across your face, acceptance was dirty. Acceptance was greed. You had no space in this world, felt as if you were walking on borrowed time.

London is far away, you've taken the assignment, you've not looked back. Salt is blue, salt burns all wounds, could they heal? The scrapes of her death on your knuckles, on your palms, on your knees. You might wail all you want, but she is not there to hear you. To wrap you in the blanket and sing the lullaby that Mother would.

You could not get vengeance on a disease. You could not bring her back to life by chanting her name into the cold crook of her neck. The hurt spreads, in the chalky sense of your throat, in the raw red of your hands, the cracked skin of your elbows. The eternal throbbing in your head. The hurt is palpable in the air, the tears you bite back, into your lips, into your tongue. Your speech is strained, and it is obvious.

You will not turn to salt.

[funtimes-inbabylon]

FULL NAME:

Reynaud  James Saint

NICKNAME/ALIAS:

Ray

DATE OF BIRTH:

04  April (Aries)

CURRENT  RESIDENCE:

Hackney

MYTHOLOGY:

The  clever fox from Aesop's Fable, the Fox and the Crow  "That will do," said he. "That was all I wanted. In exchange  for your cheese I will give you a piece of advice for the future: Do not  trust flatterers."

MAGICAL  AFFINITY:

Thievery.  Jinxes, spells, and hexes that will let him play somebody like a fiddle.

OCCUPATION:

Parasite

APPEARANCE

HEIGHT:

6'01"

BUILD:

Lean  for speed. Tall and oddly lanky, graceful yet clumsy, if that makes sense.

HAIR COLOR:

Copper  red

EYE COLOR:

Untrustworthy  blue

DISTINGUISHING  FEATURES:

Smells  like potpourri and cigarette smoke, has scars where his ears were pierced,  one of his eyelids is a little lazier than the other. Also, he speaks out of  the side of his mouth.

RELATIONSHIPS

FAMILY:

His  dad is long gone, his mom went off the deep end, and Crawford is his second  cousin.

RELATIONSHIP  STATUS:

Single

PARTNER/SPOUSE:

See  above

CHILDREN:

Never

OTHER:

None

SEXUAL  ORIENTATION:

Pansexual

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION:

Panromantic

PERSONALITY QUESIONAIRE

TURN ONS:

Money,  skin sticky with sweat, cool air, soft dirt, sharing cigarettes, licking  teeth.

TURN OFFS:

Devotion,  love, exasperation, being choked, drawn-out conversations, talking at all, setting  yourself on fire.

THREE POSITIVE  TRAITS:

Humorous,  protective, witty

THREE NEGATIVE  TRAITS:

Manipulative,  petty, temperamental

CHARACTER  STEREOTYPE:

Gentleman  thief

MORAL ALIGNMENT:

Chaotic  neutral

MYERS-BRIGGS:

ESFP

ELEMENT:

Air

DIVERGENT  FACTION:

Erudite

PET PEEVES:

Poetry

BAD HABITS:

Stealing,  smoking

TALENTS/SKILLS:

Picking  locks, the violin

GREATEST  PHOBIAS:

Fucking  spiders, man

HIGHSCHOOL  CLIQUE:

Cool  Kid

ALLERGIES/AILMENTS:

He's  allergic to bees

SIN/VIRTUE:

Greed/Diligence

BIG SPOON/LITTLE  SPOON?:

Ha

FAVORITE  SEASON/HOLIDAY:

Spring,  he doesn't like holidays

WHAT'S YOUR  POISON?:

Cigarettes  and sometimes cocaine

Mother's pure blood had been muddled into your own. Mixed with the non-magical folk, cast from the family for the very thought tarnishing the name. Yet she had loved him, loved him so dearly and so profoundly, convinced that their love was prophetical. That philosophers from long before their time had woven tales and epic poems about their intimacy and rooted affection. Star-crossed lovers, where two worlds come to one. Then he got her pregnant, broke her arm, and left.

Spikes that poke and prod. Take the shining needle and guide it through the path. The thread that it brings together cannot be undone. Petty thievery was the first stitch. A filthy pickpocket. Stealing knuts from the purses of old women at the market. Snatching candy from the shelves of the store. Not long after did you learn the power of words and clever winks. Things the boy would fall for. A red string wrapped around your index finger. If you tug on it, he will come, bearing gifts and sad eyes.

Did you love him? The child who touched you with soft palms that did not bleed. The child who ate sand because you told him that it would make him prettier. Lips blushed pink and long eyelashes that fluttered when you called him beautiful. He is the second stitch, soaked in copper and gilded in silver. Zinc and nickel and the way bronze turned green over the years. A platter full of diamonds and sapphires, rubies and amethysts, all that glitters certainly is gold. Greedy hands that itch with unrest, that yearn for the solid weight of coins in your grasp.

Childhood that was pinched with Mother's new love for the bottle. You only saw the black-haired boy once a year, when his mother would let you come and visit for Christmas. At first, it was gentle; shiny new shoes, watches made of crystal quartz, you would tell him how pretty his hair looked and how ugly the watch was, no such thing should be on your wrist. Then school would start and it was only the first two years without him. Shunning him in the beginning, a small kid like that to hang around you? Yet friends would laugh and you couldn't stop words of defense coming from your mouth.

He had things you wanted and you knew how to get them. When you let sweet things fall from your tongue, it was as if jewels poured from his mouth. Soft things with hard edges, precious, an effervescence that filled you, champagne blood. They shine in the cradle of your hand, you pull strings around his fingers and keep him close. Eyes heavy with the weight of pearls, the small, dewy drops that form at the end of eyelashes. Were they pearls, opulent gemstones that shaped so from the pressure of the sea? From the weight of the world? Or were they tears? Brimming and leaking, salty like the water but not the utter creation of beauty. Tears were ugly, tears did nothing, there was no value to them, to be collected in a vial and hung around the neck.

It was flattery, the way his cheeks deepened to red, the way your eyes grew lazy with the thought of love or lust or the satisfying weight of coin in your pocket. Heavy was the time on your shoulders, in which his feathers turned like hands of a grandfather clock. Lead-plated roman numerals, steel chimes on the hour. Tick, tock.

The bells ring, a clamor ensues, you find yourself rummaging through a tossed-aside bag as he paces around the kitchen, looking for tea. He is humming to himself a poem and amidst your squirrel-like search for the golden acorn, a book happens to reach your hands. You pause, momentarily, to sit back and page through the short stories. The rush of finding worthy items to flip became subsidiary to you, as you turn to a dog-eared page that reads, The Fox and the Crow.

[funtimes-inbabylon]

lazarus peverell

When Mother dressed you in saffron silk gowns, you did not know their worth. She would slip them over your tiny arms, held high above your head, as you giggled and she sang to you. She had never been the best at holding a note, yet she hummed to you anyway. Candles with fickle flames that flickered as you breathed.

Your little lungs took in too much life, soon, you'd breathe your mother in.

Ten years and she would deteriorate finally to ash and dust. The solemn colors of the dead, in the way skin crumbles from bone, the years spent giving to you, which you always took so feverishly. Took the essence from her, sapped her of her grace, of the reds and pinks in her handsome features. You would forever take from her, even after she was lowered into the ground and marked with a marble headstone.

Your life surrounding engraved beautifully, gilded in flakes of gold high up, catching the light that would shine through the half-moon window of the foyer. Adorned in sterling silver and Egyptian perfumes. The pelts of wild animals from Africa would arrive to you, sent by Father with these large elephant tusks and strings of ocean pearls, skeletons of animals with Latin names that you could not pronounce. Cryptoprocta ferox to stare you through with hollow eyes, orbital bone like Occum’s razor- if the creature were alive it would have him by the throat.

Father made maps. Sewed the world together with a graphite pencil and a compass. Trekked through the great unknown so others wouldn't have to. He would string you stories, fabricated mystical happenings, told you of peaks he had climbed and canyons he had lowered himself into. To the deepest depths of earth itself, with but a lantern and a knife. Caverns of big, reflective pools, Much like your eyes, he would say, bemused. He would follow lines with his fingers and show you rivers that he had discovered, recall the color of it and the way the breeze might have felt. Plants that grew from the shallow, sticky mud of the bank, or how he had almost gotten lost in the rush of the water. What would you do if I never returned to you? His voice was often so strong. Tender happenings where he would place you on his lap and point to different drawings of animals. I want to feel their fur, Papa.

Yet there was something about Papa, his eyes warm but never quite focused, his displacement only increasing with age. He would tell you, as you sat fourteen and impressionable, that monsters were out to get him. Immortal creatures that drank blood, wolves like men and a colossus with one eye, They chased me, he would whisper and you remember it, the way he said it in such a way that you could tell the pinpricks of terror that lifted from his insides. The way he blinked, fast, where his breath hitched between the break of the word. What could twist Father so tightly that the fear seared his heart?

It is the color of blood that lures you in first. The sweet red, like the meat of the ripe plum, the rich indigo of strained arteries against skin. Conflated so they were and pumping oh so loud. You reach out and it pulls you in. Your fingers reflect the dull light of the room, tears fascinated, lips parted. What had been fiction to you for years transformed to reality, its weight heavy in your hand. Too palpable, was it? Papyrus, the wet of the pulp, the yellow of the jaundiced skin of the newborn. Eyes ruddy from broken capillaries, frigid teeth as they break flesh.

Suddenly, this is unwelcome. The sense of panic like anaphylaxis, throat closing or the breath leaving you. He is on top of you and you cannot see and you cannot hear save for the blood pumping in your veins but even then, you feel as though that that is fading. Soon you will not have a pulse nor the heat to break, and like a priest with no pulpit you will only have God to preach to.

 -----------------------------------------

Father, after having died from consumption, had left his riches, his company, to you. You only ran the map-making company for close to ten years, traveling once - to Asia, with no ambition to discover. He had already done the discovering for you, you felt no drive to collect pieces of wildlife, of the landscapes. Your sketches were sub-par to his, you'd never been much of an anatomy student. You spent most of your time in the lavish bathhouses, with the exotic, tasty whores and beautiful bronze coins. Money could get you so far, you were able to purchase the furs and the flowers that your father would have otherwise sought out.

At home, in the opulent house your parents had left you, pillars of polished marble and golden and copper moldings. Floors of colorful stone and oaken wood. Heavy silk and linen curtains woven with organic patterns, windows that the housekeeper cleaned every night. Large oil paintings that hung over every fire place, each one a portrait - one of mother, one of father, one of grandfather. The rough paint strokes were visible on the portrait of grandfather. The color still bright, retaining its liveliness. The canvas enchanted so he sat, smoking his pipe, eyes knowing and piercing, as you would sit on the embroidered loveseat and stare back at him, ashing your clove cigarettes. What would he say? If he knew a vampire was living in his house? Pure blood contaminated, stained and spoiled. Foul, you know he would spit at your feet.

Soon, you took down the painting, replacing it with a calming landscape, you placed the portrait in the storage room, covering it with a thick sheet. No, he would not judge you, would not cut you with a glare.

Mirrors showed you a different face, and it grew lonely quickly, with just you and your reflection. You brought home company, but they never made it to morning. The maids did not talk to you, for they knew what happened to your companions. Red often stained the silk sheets, the plush carpet, the floral wallpaper. You held a candelabra of intricate detail above the deceased, their muscle showing beneath the scarlet, ligaments and sinew, strips of flesh. You wipe your face with a clean cloth. Eternity is lonesome.

Until you meet him. Were rose-colored glasses such a thing? The way his bones felt underneath your wandering hand. You'd never met someone before that you didn't want to use entirely. Where you were met with age, his youth felt as fresh as a breath of sweet, new spring air. The stale winter chased off with its tail between its legs. Whimpering, you would take him into an embrace and he would come out anew. You had to have him, mark him as yours, spend life with him. Time became fluid, the ether created loops, absinthe calmed the nerves, opium ceased the pain. His arms were slender, his chest benevolent, his throat inviting. The plasma of ruby shade felt fast beneath where your finger was pressed plumb in the middle of his pale wrist. You twisted it around, as he watched you with sedated eyes, and pressed your lips to it.

[funtimes-inbabylon]

fenrir greyback

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Mother told you that her life ended when yours began.

-

Sacrosanct are the fruits of your labor. Rotten in their root, rotten on the tree grown from holy soil. The tree that sheds its skin for you, reaches its tender branches out to you for you take its decaying legacy. Divinity is what you breathe into his flesh, after sinking your teeth so lovingly, so tenderly, into the boy's side. And he tasted so sweet, aromatic to fill your senses with blossoming honeysuckle, pomegranate blood to drip from your full lips. His body a parable, he who is made saint among the wretched. You do not call him son but instead savior.

A pariah, a chosen Messiah. Succinct is your will, writ into him, etched into his skin. Scored stories, didactic in their prose, the way the words form and fall about him. Illustrious in their verses, their psalms that sing into your ears. You'd make him your Bible if he refused to be your godly Prince. You would line him in gold and spin him tales of grandeur. Of kingdoms on clouds, snow-capped spines of mountains and white-feathered servants. You would place words on translucent page, use his skin as script, imperial in your longing.

He'd call you manic in your preaching, your fables and fantasies until you convinced him otherwise. No, not manic, not crazed, lunacy does not run through these veins. He is kept from you, hidden and mistreated - yet you need him near you, where you can plant seeds of righteous thought, where hallowed ideas can bloom. Child, Christ-like, to fulfill a self-appointed prophecy. Delusional, you bit him, delusional, you wanted to raise him.

You read passages from the Old Testament, memorized Lucifer and his morning star. Where Lucifer speaks, the fallen angel breathed through him. He who loved God so dearly, an angel with wings that failed him.

-

It comes to you in fluid dreams, of Catholic renderings, of Ancient Canaanite and Greek mythos poured through your veins. For Eros and the morning star to enter you, to salt the wound that the ropes made, daffodils that grew around you. Fogged vision, surrounding red, blanketed in violet and lily. Lucidly, you line your fingers with golden rings, diamonds placed on them in faceted ovals.

Their teeth flash white ivory in your vision. Their wailing is but illusary to you, it echoes in your mind, overtakes your psyche, as a malign moon burns ocular, circling where you stand. Its silvery light touches you and you cry out, in pain as bones break and form anew. Rip your skin for the sake of change, bleed infected blood, cardinal and ruin.

Hangs like steel manacles around your wrists, tethered to the canine feeling. Imagery and spooled fraternal revelry at your feet, they call you home by howl, compulsion driven by eternal feeling.

-

There is no existence without fear

-

LUCIFER: It may be thou shalt as we.

CAIN:

And ye?

LUCIFER: Are everlasting.

CAIN:

 Are ye happy?

LUCIFER:

We are mighty.

CAIN: Are ye happy?

LUCIFER:

No: art thou?

-

There is no happiness without worship

-

Monarchs fell long before you rose as King. The cushioned crown placed on your head, dealt in jewels and pearls, in where insects surrounding - locusts swarming, their frail bodies quivering, carrying news of your reign on their paper wings. Royalty changed Canis Lupus, and wolves replace soldiers, replace your people, bare their fangs for you. Reach gullets and bite through tendons for you. Bathe in blood, pupils dark, claws tear flesh for you.

You want the same from him, your Godly Prince, to be cloaked in crushed velvet, swathed in red silk, dripping and dripping with golden ruby'd chains for you. You would place him in pelts of wolves, their lives given to you for his return. Where you'd wait on your marble throne for him to beg mercy, forgiveness, divine exoneration from his sin of betrayal, a blaspheme crying crystal tears before you.

You want him crawling back to you, your heir, your only. You want him on hands and knees for you. With head bowed and neck craned, asking for regalia, cratered paradise, elysium nowhere but the palms of your hands. Which, for him to take, is paramount desire. To kiss each jeweled fist and vow loyalty, again, lupine in its hunger. Raven-winged, his plumage onyx iridescent, covertly viridian and cerulean. A jigsawed jaw, the amber of the moment, the snapping of fangs and where bone breaks cleanly to reveal itself rimmed with iron and wine.

Dionysiac in your raging prowess, you'd no choice but to tie his hands with the fated red thread.

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite: Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

I. INTIMACY WITHOUT FEAR

For his name to be on your tongue, to embrace your very teeth and cushion between words. He was pillowed, perfect synonyms of grace and utopic euphoria. Placed, crucifix, in a crown of laurel and olive. To feel him before you, come to life, reverie-like in a fixed reality. How mist surrounded him, a pull inward, to fold over himself not in pain but ecstasy. To feel the divine glory, venerated light drug through gaps in the wall, pellucid in window panes, behind stained glass mosaics, your portrait hung from the wall behind him. A line of pews for his followers to preach, to listen with intent, eager ears - to hear that their worries would ebb, as he would grant their redemption.

II. INTIMACY IN WAVES

He'd come to you in a daze, in a trance of circling hounds, a canine ouroboros. He pulls cuspid and molar from his mouth, places them in your hands, pearls of bones to be stringed together, to hang from your blessed throat.

Metacarpus in mineral, a backbone carved from lapis lazuli, bruised, redolent eucalytpus leaves to cloak in archaic fashion. A wine reminiscent of velour. He'd look at you with glazed eyes and you would speak his name, feel it wash over every inch of you.

III. INTIMACY IN A SHARED MOON

It wanes, a harvest moon riding your shoulders, and you'd be haunted - a spiritual representation of the past before you. Wrapped in waving neon, tender kinetics of ghosts squeezing your soul between histrionic fits. Fistfuls of ripe berries, bleeding violet through fingers, digits veiled in pulpy residue.

Morning is pure, stained carmine in the wake of savage passion.

"There is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death — those monstrous upheavals of life that the greeks call miasma, defilement — been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death"

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

[funtimes-inbabylon]

deirdre orpha clay

First, there is the pain, similar to salt on an open cut. An intense burning, stinging lights, a kick to the stomach. Second, there was blood, as she screamed, facing the heavens until she turned blue. Birds flew from telephone wires, crows engulfed her, her howl only ceased when she ran out of breath, only to continue in a stream of wails. Only then could she be heard over the caws. There is blood on her legs, the red matter at her feet, as she presses herself into the soil. She had begun to dig a grave.

Third, there is the man with the red steel-toed boots, with the scar on his shoulder and a missing fingernail. There is the husband, with the red dress shoes, with the chip on his shoulder and his fingernail still intact. Still sat on his bed of flesh, before she had ripped it out with the back end of her hammer. Before he had kicked her where her child lay safe. Blood womb.

Fourth, back of the neck, tip of the tongue, top of the head, into her hands, into her fingertips and fists, as she rocks back and forth with the rope clutched to her chest. In there is the solid ball of rage. What purity she found in it, what forgiveness she found in wrath. Clean and clear, anger held no obscure prose, no hidden meanings or loopholes. It fell upon her, washed her and baptised her, granted her rebirth, free from the sin of failure. Iron weights that dropped from her wrists, a butcher's knife that laid at her feet. She would cut his wings off. 

Fifth, she would split his skull, find the ring and melt it down into a golden needle. With it, she would sew their names into his flesh. With it, she would pierce his eyes and shut his mouth. "You bleed for him," she would hiss to him, "You bleed for the child with your body, as I have."

There are five steps to finding a missing man. One of them is to move from Ash Springs, Nevada to Canterbury, England. To pack her things into three bags and board the plane and leave the dog with a friend. To keep her wand fastened to her waist, to buy the knife when she lands, to never decorate the apartment except for the cactus in the corner.

One of them is to find a job at the Ministry of Magic, to study love and all of its great affects. To find out why he did what he did. Was it out of love? Crooked as it is. The color red as it pulls at her knees, the color of blood, the color of raw eyes, the color of her face as it flushed without air. Where the love meets in the middle, an empty place with dead trees and sand, burnt leaves and no hope. Only despair is what is met with love. Where they dance under gentle moonlight. Love that journeys on wounded feet and hands with the stigmata rested on her palms. Love that is holy with rage. Rendered righteous, retribution outweighing mercy on the scales of Justice.

The third, imparted with the words of the divine God, venerated and hallowed, "Someone's gotta pay." It is the echo of the sanctified, the hurried footsteps of the men who ran. One who ran so fast, that not even guilt could catch up to him. She will, though, and she will find him with a .22 caliber Colt Diamondback glinting in the sliver of sunlight that finds its way through the Men's Bathroom window. Guilt would force her way to him, with the barrel of the revolver pressed against the place where his chin met his throat. With her patterned dress and her red heels that she would stab into the meat of his thigh, the only thing that could run from guilt was blood, as it chased down the length of his arm and on to the grimy tile floor. 

Fourth, when there are instances of calm, where she lets waves compose her skin, where she drops the curtain over the hatred and cooks eggs for herself. Feet cool on the linoleum of her kitchen. The wind uncertain, as she so was, when she ties the string around her finger as to not forget her reasons. When the fierceness subsides into something placid and impalpable. The ghost of her touch. The simplicity of feeling so tired. When she takes the blade and urges it to the skin.

In the Church of the Holy Mother, her children sang to thee. "O gracious Lord, please see mercy unto us and bless us with thy presence." Five. Here, where she knelt and buckled before the altar, where the pure water doused her, on her hands and knees in the red velvet carpet. Here, where God made her unforgiving, where she bled from the teeth for her revenge, nails scraping on the wooden cross of Christ. Christ has risen, so has she, where the blood runs from the palms. "Give me my child." Broken halos and the stained white cloth of the Bible's horror story. Praise be unto thee, O Lord, Hallelujah. It is shouted, spit and stone, hands clasped together. Sacrifice. "Give me my baby."

Count down, five, four, three, two, one.

One, there is only one, and she would wrap the wire around his throat and watch him die.

[funtimes-inbabylon]

caoin

✞ the day you first woke up, really woke up, you felt cold. there was still that spark in your step and the light behind your eyes, but you were so cold. your brain felt fuzzy, weird, like something wasn’t right. you didn’t know where you were and there was blood on your shirt. so much blood. you cover yourself with your arms and you sprint home, avoiding eye contact with the strange passersby. the mirror shows you something different than what you had seen in it before. your eyes were bloodshot, twitching, your teeth felt a little sharper than the week before. you check the calendar, a week? how did you miss out on a week? why was your head throbbing so hard?

✞ when you start from the beginning, you recall a beautiful woman. she takes you to the back of the pub, and then everything goes dark. you remember feeling… animalistic. wolfish. hungry and angry and rabid. your hand starts to shake, you wash the blood off of it. you burn the clothing. you cut your hair and shave your beard, it is matted with something. you smell like iron, that metallic scent, it makes your stomach rumble. you make yourself a steak, but it’s not enough. why isn’t it enough? instinct tells you to seek out a person. that familiar taste of flesh. raw and screaming and painful. it makes you sick.

✞ you’d only been living here for eight months, and this is what you get yourself into? you can hear the blood running and pulsing through the neck of a nervous seventeen year old girl. she is staring at you, eyes big, embarrassed but captivated. you squint at her, trying not to breathe, you don’t want to know her scent. you quickly leave the store before something worse happens. you find yourself stealing from blood drives, making deals with crooked hospital employees just for a bag of it. you felt like you were some kind of addict. you felt wrong.

✞ when you tried to stop, when you tried just using goat’s blood, it didn’t work. of course, it didn’t work, not with your luck. after a month, you could sense yourself feeling crazed. out of control. you killed, you ate them whole, you lost yourself. you felt disgusted, you felt cheated. why? why you? consume, consume, consume. you feel humiliated and mortified, you would have killed yourself if you knew how to. can vampires die? it’s as if you are at the end of your rope. you are hanging on by the thread. oh, god, don’t let go.

✞ it takes a few more months for you to come around. for things to get back to normal. you don’t really flaunt the vampirism. you’re rather ashamed of it, honestly. you feel visceral, uncomfortable, upset. reality is upsetting now. it took away your pride, you have to hide. you’ll be hunted, you’ll be hung up to dry, you have to act normal, even though you don’t feel all that normal. you’re grasping at straws, trying to get back to where you once were. growing up had been easier than this.

✞ you were born on a farm in the middle of sweden. your parents were both from ireland, and they gave you a name any bold-blooded irishman would be proud of. growing up, you didn't have quite an irish accent, but it wasn't particularly swedish, either. a good mixture of both. when you became an adult you inherited the farm, and you were making a good living, a happy living. that is, until a stroke of bad luck hit, and your crops died and some of your livestock fell to sickness. you were forced to uproot, sell the land and move away. you figure, well, if you’re moving, why not go to america? you go and see the pacific ocean, you find a nice, homely town, called birch bay. it seemed pleasant enough.

✞ oh, you shake your head. none of this has taken away from your personality, only added to it. you have a tendency to reduce yourself to charming movements and witty remarks. you remain sharp, static, and observant. you would never cast the first stone, you would never claim that you were free of sin. but your disposition is drawing to others, like flies to honey. but you never caught them with sour smell of lemon. just a constant movement, one big, flowing embrace. there is an air about you, magnetic, compelling, alluring. if you did, prey would be easy to find, easy enough to catch. but you don’t, it repulses you, but you love the taste. it makes you shudder.

✞ when you break, you kill, and even if they tried to outrun you, they can’t. consume, consume, consume. you don’t have to chase them, though, you barely even have to corner them. you can trick them into your sheets, or behind a building in the dark of the night. for the past ten years, every other month, you crack. you only kill men, you stay away from the women and children, you can control that much. you try to keep your record clean, you’ve made changes according to your new… diet. if you could call it that. you have a steady dealer, and two that you use if you need to. you’ve started volunteering at blood drives just to snag a few bags. you’ll do anything to keep from killing again. your diet consists of meat and beans. you never get anything but rare steak at restaurants. maybe it makes you look suspicious? you don’t acknowledge it. you flash your smile and avoid the topic.

✞ you are bustling with energy, full of personality, you miss making friends, but you want to hide yourself away. when you aren’t paying attention, you find yourself listening to the heartbeat of strangers. bad things seemed to follow you everywhere you went. if you have vampy friends, you don’t know, because you don’t show it. you ignore it, you reject it, and you’re sure some day someone will approach you and tell you you’re doing it all wrong. you don’t want to meet your sire, you don’t want to feel cannibalistic. because that’s what you are, as far as you’re concerned. a goddamn cannibal. and you don’t want to accept reality.

[funtimes-inbabylon]

seth b. frost iii

It was a warm weight, cold breeze that followed through the broken window. Its slender fingers touched the hair that wasn't matted by the blood.

His murderer had already fled, I saw as he sprinted into a hooded forest, haunting pines that reached toward him and ushered him under their needles.

Now hidden by the branches and brambles, dead deer and the veil of darkness, he'd disappeared without an inkling. I tore my gaze from the horizon that those same pines crowned. Took their spires and bathed them gold in the setting sunlight.

He was done bleeding, I had watched the last of the ichor flow from the hole in his head. I had watched as his killer brought the claw of the hammer down on-

His name? What was his name? Seth lifts his fingertips from the keys, reaching to page through a clipped stack of papers beside his typewriter. An attentive index finger glides down a list, hollow eyes searching, a noise of acknowledgement and recollection is uttered from his lips-

Peter's skull.

He brings his shoulders up, and then circles them back down, rolling the muscles, testing the strain of what was left of him. The see from which we sat, the middle of the strong-held diocese, cut less black zircon more holy, the reflection of light's spectrum, the rungs of the prismatic ladder decaying.

--------------------------------------------- 

Trust me, I will.

With her shoulders against the floor, hot like a Roman hypocaust beads of condensation seated atop her silky skin, she is gazing hard at the flat kitchen ceiling. As if her flesh were hydrophobic, the moisture rolls off the soft surface of her forehead. She glistens, and he gleans the gemstone seeds from the Venetian red husk of a pomegranate, fingers nimble with the point of his utility knife.

He is sat at the table, and she is sprawled: spine stiff as if her elbows are pinned, as if she were pressing back against some invisible force. Her hands pleading to a praying poistion, to release her from this seizure of her soul, spirit, bone and precious thought.

He crushes a seed between his gravemarker teeth, the juice of it sweet while she struggled with her last breath. She’s looking at him now, the will she was writing into the ceiling fading, no last words to be heard, the muscles of her neck and jaw contracting, tight, painful.

She is looking at him from the corners of her eyes (rolled so far that the veins are hard lines mapping, spotted red and watercolor carmine he could gag, his hands itching to press the rest of the life out of her), unable to turn her head, her glare furious and obstinate –

FAREWELL, SISTER, Seth examines the ruby red meat of the fruit, a wet seed held between his finger tips. His tone is flippant, the words riding on an exhale, though the particular delight he took in this was palatable in waves, tasted sweet, like the pomegranate in his hands.

 ------------------------------------------------

Where it comes full circle, the prophetic shape of the moon, lunar foretold of opalescent scars, bubbled and shining over porcelain skin. In patterns of fours, coupled crosses, dressing the ribs, like a silk slip. An image of caressing, peaking and swallowing, dipping ridges unfolded and reaching toward the heavens. 

Hands grasping, teeth gnawing, legs kicking and thrashing, flowing open and releasing a new anger. YES, my soul is an infinite loop. Yes, my entirety is circular, the echo of a pulse, breathing heated breaths tinted green. YES. 

--------------------------------------------------------

- Seth Barnaby is the third Seth Barnaby of his family, the second to inherit his father's company, and the only one of his family left alive. The word alive is used loosely here.

 BACKGROUND To establish the setting: it is 1978 London, it is a March evening, Spring had yet to root itself and the bone chill of winter still lingered. There is a figure standing above a body, sitting up, slumped against the wall of a brick building. Their silhouettes cut by the single street lamp, the shine of a stream of blood is visible on the concrete.

The standing figure wills a tall, gleaming scythe into being, gripping it tight and bringing the heel of the snath down on to the pavement with a loud clap. The force of it sends a rush of air gusting, and with that the man who had been dead on the ground takes a sharp breath inward and rolls his eyes.

Seth had been shot by his elder sister Sapphira, outside of a pub, in the middle of the night. She had shot him in the chest, twice, and he had fallen against the wall, half-dead as he slid to the ground and Saph briskly walked away.

She had killed him out of fear of losing the inheritance of their father's (technically, grandfather's) salt company, and the 550,000 pounds promised to the both of them upon their father's death.

Isaiah is the name of the reaper who turned Seth, having sought out Seth's name after having heard that his time was up. Seth embraced the position rather quickly, and actually quite enjoys it.

Seth did the same when he heard that his dear sister was due to meet her end, and surely he had to be there to enjoy the show. Though, he did not initiate Sapphira, instead smiled as a light faded. And he was there to find/steal the certificate of the ownership of Frost Salt Mine & Co., naturally.

CHARACTERISTICS Seth was a healer when he was alive, and has been in medicine since then, considering it an importance in his life. He is fascinated by biology & medicine, the advances of modern technology, diseases, infections, etc. He has a lot of medical books, though his genuine thirst for knowledge does not stop there. Other fascinations include: herpetology, ornithology, Greek, Roman, Egyptian mythology, knives, taxonomy, embalming/cadaver preservation, human experimentation, mass tragedies, etc.

He is very serious and very organized. He lives by himself in a very big house, he has two ravens, one leucistic, named Ptolemy and Brutus, respectively. He also keeps a number of snakes, finches, and doves.

He's quiet, very quiet, and observant. He keeps spectacularly clean and in shape (he has a routine). He is always prepared for every outcome.  He speaks delicately and with balance, with a rhythm that he times, every move he makes is deliberate, every word he says he means. He ALWAYS thinks before he speaks, and if he has nothing novel to say, he usually doesn't speak at all. He's clever, and can be cunning, but isn't necessarily malicious. He is more of a background character, which he's been his entire life ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

He can be disconcerting and uncomfortable to be around, which isn't really his fault (ok partly it is), he is a reaper after all - but he's also a very uh? tense. person. He's cold as ice, stoic, hard to read, and to the point. He has no friends, only coworkers/acquaintances/etc. He has never been married. He's violent, but only when he's told to be. Being good at his job is what is most important to him, and then everything else comes second. Most people are put off by him, honestly.

He can also be very curt (re: RUDE) and to the point, he deadpans a lot and is rarely emotive unless something is triggering his anxiety.

 TL;DR He's a quiet boy who likes dead things! And he's also dead!

[funtimes-inbabylon]

Literally none of my story ideas come with a plot, ever. WITHOUT FAIL, it’s always just an Aesthetic, like two and a half characters, some very, very vivid settings, and a weird concept. Never plot. Not even an inkling of a plot. My brain tosses me this cool stuff and is like welp i’ll be back in 4-5 business months 

[funtimes-inbabylon]

so you want to write? everybody thinks they can write. carry that weight and call it a talent, call it something cultivated, a sadness groomed. Sure, you can write, but does anyone want to read it? Taking the words and stuffing them, what do you want to write? Write about how sad you are? How your chest feels cavernous, like someone had taken their fingers and scooped your insides out. You'd make a beautiful decoration if you could just smile.

Is it sadness, or the absence thereof? The void's fingers are cold, though: rough in your throat. You want to write but you don't want the sadness that comes with it, that yields itself behind the prose and hunts you in resplendent diction and rhapsodied syllables. Right? You don't want that abysmal ghost tailing you, pitch in its blackness and its teeth are white, a crescent against the night sky that hung so low. You don't what that all-encompassing darkness that comes with the poetry.

Sure, you can write, but will it mean anything? Why? So you can tell everyone how sad and sorry you are? For what? For your shitty little feelings?

Is it important? What you have to say. Take your hands and put them around my neck. Is it important? Feel it squeeze. Is it important? Does it matter?

Sure, you want to write, but who cares?

[funtimes-inbabylon]

Like hands roving over the hills of a body, where his rib cage rested beneath his skin, forming his chest, where he might knock on the bone, ask to be let in. His heart a sparrow, his lungs trees that branch, reach far with their knotted wood. Pulls his arms taut, feels the muscle there, ligaments of a rudimentary body, broken down to be compared to the spine of a snow-capped mountain range. Iron and sandstone, grey flint chipped and sparked into flames.

Follows the femur, bones splintering, imagines his body breaking and forming to meet his own, for bones to split cleanly and mend in different shapes. Lets himself carve paths through his arms, the tender touch of his forearm, the sweet spot of his inner elbow. The thin skin there, stretched so neatly, so vulnerably, as if asking him - kiss me, kiss me. Similar to the way the flush of his clavicle spoke to him, where it rose to meet his neck.

Fingertips to glide over skin, to let his digits rest easy on his freckled shoulder. As if from his mouth the ocean poured. Flowing between consecrated lips, glossy and pink, and where pearls rested on his tongue. Shining lustrous and iridescent in their bed. His tongue an iris, his mouth ripe fruit. Birthed from the sea like Venus herself.

It begins in a garden, young tendrils of ivy stretching across him, wrapping around his arms as if he were an ancient statue to be admired. Made of silver-veined marble, painted eyes and stony breaths. Sirius might write epics in his place, spun tales of two bodies woven together. No words could describe such loving touch. Delicate features etched in gold, in emerald and precious metals. Clay smoothed with expert fingers, a practiced means to an end.

Tense, instinctual, teeth on skin. Canine, a lupine experience, flesh pillowing between tight string. Aching muscles, tender ligaments broken in through the easing arc of the spine. The way callow fingers felt on raw, cracked lips, between formed teeth, a jaw squeezing gently, salt on his tongue. He smells like moss, earthy and sweet, like pine and peppermint. He smells like cypress, like rain-soaked dirt and dew and morning grass. Elemental fire and the strong pull of the tide.

[funtimes-inbabylon]

By the time his feet hit the ground, he’s running. Faster and faster in stride, arms up in movement to match and the arc of his back outlining the horizon behind him. The kinetic energy that drove him onward danced sparks against his skin, stirred the wheel of his hips and brought his legs forward in their twin locomotion. He laughs-

with what air he could breathe or wings he could sprout, tender wax feathers of a sun too close, sky too vast, head too high. These are timed breaths, each step on an inhale, he knew the concrete compacted his spine as each foot came down, tensed his knees and took a hammer to the vertebrae. Yet Sisyphus couldn’t stop the boulder from ceaselessly rolling down the hill.

Had he been kinder to himself, maybe it wouldn’t have grown into this: that misshapen silhouette and her threadbare soul, it’s easy for you to say you’ll take it when it’s not yours. This long flight downhill, a sweeping green wind beneath him, the same wind that picked her up by her limbs and flew her away from him.

Deeper, now, further on the incline and there’s an end to this path, he knows. He can see it, where the pavement stops and loud waves echo their promise in great claps, hard against stone shaped liked teeth stacked tall.

 This resplendent mouth held open for him, the world on its knees while he ran to greet it.

[funtimes-inbabylon]

It wasn’t that you couldn’t feel the breaking of his bones for you – crunching and shaping marrow to malleable to fired clay. How he labored, toiled face to soil its poppy seeds sprouting yet unable to take root.

 The red petals take flight on the low breeze and scatter the sky, honeycomb it a shade too light to be considered crimson. Overwhelming cherry red and its terrifying noise of a color, cloaked him carmine and gave him a voice.

 How the pendulum ruled fated union, encircling, kinetic energy with a pinpoint. Your weight didn’t hurt my shoulders, he says first standing galvanized steel skinned and sighted.

 The soreness in your knees feels familiar, tensed and raw against the earth and her halcyon history fingers ringed and tied by thread.