grxvebcnes

[grxvebcnes]

📍 main streets, hell town ;  🌲 ft. ??? [ open starter ]

On a mission to kill or be killed, Roux had waited until the sun had vanished long enough to count to five thousand — twice, at least. A renewed reliance on something as antiquated as numerical order brought temporary comfort, neutralising opportunity to think of any tangible objects. It was precisely that maddening temptation she sought to expire, permanently. Time had lost effect. Grains of sandy ephemera replaced the value of lived experiences, each perception bleeding at the edges. Oversaturated watercolour puddles and bloodshot eyes and clotted wounds. Immediately after ( the haunt, the red, the carving, the homecoming, the burn, the gold, the fire extinguished ), she must have walked home. Warm. Cold. Warm. Cold. Her fingers had rekindled that familiar rigor mortis sensation in tracing the walls of the repaired radio station. A lasting imprint of fingerprints. Sweat. Salt. Blood. She had never said thank you. And she never would. A detached lull had cottoned her skull, like a fog or stubborn bruising. Through the cloud cover she could feel the sear of an unspeakable anguish, pressing closer to her skin with each moment spent suspended. In the place of numbed emptiness there would soon be clarity — memory, retracing, remembering. She would poison the ground before it could claim her body. They did not deserve more protest, nor fear, no curdling screams. They did not deserve an easy target. She understood now. There were never any decisions to be made, only different versions of departure. Acts of goodbyes. Indelible consequences.

Roux's shoulders throbbed in protest of the substantial weight slung around her body, bag strap taut and fraying. A physical mirror which resonated with the same incorporeal impatience gnawing at her insides. Visible through the gaps in the carrying vessel’s cordage, at least a dozen dirty bricks had been collected. Souvenirs from the radio station, still charred around the edges. Adamant the bounty had to be carried untouched until she reached the main street for maximum impact, from the empty building she’d once called home, Roux sauntered in total unafraid silence.

Last one dressed has to carry the kill back — a promise kept, now demanded its collateral casualty. Most nights, the strip of cement which defined downtown was transformed into the River Styx — haunted with misshapen bodies, borrowed faces, unhinging jaws, bloody entrails. Had Roux been paying attention to her surroundings beyond ensuring the ground stayed solid under her feet, she might have noticed how unusually quiet and awaiting it was. Her inscrutable expression would not betray any inkling of intent, her mind’s state only barely starting to visibly manifest in the shadowy impressions of gaunt cheeks and a pallid complexion. Only her eyes remained activated, occasionally catching moonlight; a chatoyant hardness. Two dark voids oil slicked by an untamed viciousness which shot an incendiary challenge in any direction aimed. An embodied dare, entrapment, and ticking time bomb all at once. The evening would end on her terms, in as much carnage as this godforsaken hell on earth deserved.

Eager to take matters into her own morbid hands, at the fringes of the central cluster of residential and faded storefronts, Roux finally snaked a hand into her bag. A potent cocktail of adrenaline and sleepless delirium contaminated her muscles with a taunting tremulousness, refusing to be willed into submission one last time. Tightly clenching her knuckles around the first rectangular stone, Roux’s wild eyes sought the closest house, only vaguely certain if it was occupied or not. As if it mattered either way. Lowering her arm, Roux swung the brick back then shot quickly forwards to lob a low throw in the building's direction. The first brick made contact with the porch, clattering dully, but only obliterating half a rotten bannister in the process. On her second swing, she had more success. The sound of glass shattering pierced through the stillness of the air with the effect of an electric crack. Emboldened by the hot flash of lightning it bestowed her aggravated nerves, the gunpowder of Roux's veins ignited and propelled her further. At a brisker pace, she continued ahead between intermittent throws, spraying glass, canvas, and splinters in her wake. Occasionally, she would retrieve the bricks, unblinking when destruction residue would leave gashes across skin. Unfeeling. Uninterrupted. Again and again, fury drove her relentlessly forwards until her lungs felt ragged with exertion and her voice ripped through a bellowed snarl: “COME ON, YOU FUCKERS! COME OUT!”

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

[grxvebcnes]

VICTORIA PEDRETTI as NELL CRAIN THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE | S01E05, The Bent-Neck Lady

[grxvebcnes]

Love + murder weapons

[grxvebcnes]

Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

[grxvebcnes]

Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

[grxvebcnes]

all things return to the fire || self-para Self-para for Hell Town. Word count: 5552 Penned by JJ, Roux characterization assisted by dia (@grxvebcnes) 

TW: Major character death. Body horror. Blood. Fire. Death. 

I. CHARLIE

The sun returned. Charlie wasn’t sure what she had expected. Maybe she had expected that the sun would rise and she would find herself where she had always meant to be. Maybe she would turn in her bed to snooze the ringing of her phone alarm, startle to a sitting position to find the last 10 years had been a bad dream and be filled anew with dread that she was late for work (something mundane that required folding the corners of documents when she ran out of paperclips). The sun returned, blinding in its announcement of a new day, showered her roommate from the skylight with a warm trio of golden colours. Looking at Roux, face relaxed (a break from its usual tension), dark curls splayed over the makeshift pillow of her bed, Charlie found that she was where she was meant to be. She had refused it too long, the thread woven around every limb that anchored her to Roux. Where there was space, there was Roux. The woman was more of a constant, of an assured thing, then even the promise of the sun rising every day. How could they live another moment denying themselves the inevitability of their collision?

It had always been Roux. First, as strangers, eyes catching and breaking at hunter meetings;  then roommates, companions in the fear of night, something akin to a friend, but not quite; to tangling limbs and breath and sweat (somewhere in the touching and the kissing, the flourish of friendship); and now this —lovers. For there was no other way to explain it. Charlie loved Roux, of this she was certain. And she knew, though it had never been uttered, that Roux loved her. This terrified both of them to no end. To love was to gamble with loss, to surrender trust to the winds of fate, to accept that the outcome is not written in the stars (as many lovestruck fools might state) but a sort of mutually assured destruction. In the end, someone always goes first.

Even if it can withstand the batterings of life (especially in hell town), love does not stop the turning of the clock, the passage of time, the aging. Love endures, but it cannot save anyone from their fate. It cannot prevent the end of all things that live and breathe and utter words heard long after they’ve gone. Something strange occurs in the aftermath of death with love —a sort of hurt that feels empty, that echoes painfully the presence of something that cannot return. Love roots itself in the body, the mind, the heart, and when violently pulled by the clutches of death or life (as it often occurs when circumstances enable the departure of one person from the love of another), the spaces that the roots occupy are a void, to be filled with this unimaginable sort of sorrow. In its absence love will always hurt.

It had never been a risk either of them had been willing to take. Yet, much like you cannot stop the passage of time, you cannot stop the force of love when it crashes into you. Undeniably, they were tethered to each other now no matter how much space they attempted to put between them. Charlie had been fighting so much for so long, to capitulate to her fondness for Roux would be as elating as coming up for air after years of burying herself in the horrors of her mind. Charlie wanted to breathe. 

She rose and padded over to Roux’s bed, knelt down and used her hand to gently rouse the other woman out of her sleep. Fingers curled around her wrist as Roux’s hand shot out to grab it. Blue eyes looked up at Charlie, so alert that she would have hardly believed Roux to be so deep asleep mere seconds ago. 

“Charlie?” It was said with surprise, though the grogginess in her voice betrayed her exhaustion. Roux sat up, relaxed her hold on Charlie’s wrist to something more tender. She was guarded, this much Charlie could see in the cautiousness of her stare. 

“What’s wrong?” Two words —three, if you counted her name. That was more that had been spoken between them since Roux had moved back into the radio station. Charlie hesitated then leapt headfirst into the whitewater of their relationship. She leaned forward and brought her lips to Roux’s, a tender kiss that was met with a warm sigh, as though Roux felt just as relieved as Charlie that their physical separation was over at last. Charlie pushed up and swung her leg over to straddle Roux, hands anchoring her to the woman’s face so that she never broke the kiss. Around her waist she felt the warmth of Roux’s hand as she wrapped her arm around Charlie. After a moment, Charlie pulled away, found Roux’s eyes searching her face. It was a familiar look as of late, one to see if Charlie was there mentally. 

“Hi,” Charlie said. 

“Hey,” Roux whispered back. Her shirt had ridden up and at the small of her back, she felt Roux’s finger gently tracing the exposed skin. It sent goosebumps up to her neck and Charlie leaned forward until her forehead rested against Roux’s.

“The sun is back,” Charlie said lamely.

“It is.” Her eyes stayed on Charlie. 

“I was thinking,” Charlie started softly, eyelids closing in a moment of tranquility before she pulled away, dropped her hands to play with the collar of Roux’s shirt, “that we should go hunting.”

There was a pause to linger in the warmth before Roux nodded and then pressed forward to kiss Charlie again. Her hands gently tapped the side of Charlie’s thighs. It was as if to say best you get off of me if you want us to go anywhere. Charlie complied, broke the kiss to stand with a smile on her face.

“Last one dressed has to carry the kill back.”

************************************************************************************

Roux let her win. At least that’s what she’d claimed while doing a balancing act of bouncing on one booted foot while hopping down the stairs of the station and zipping up the other. Charlie contested it with whatever helps you sleep at night and then they had begun their walk out of town and into the forest that was so familiar to both of them.

They had never been big talkers and neither would bend to the unspoken things that remained between them. They were safer that way, the little affirmations of feelings protected in the shawl of silence. Still, Charlie found she could hardly keep her eyes from the back of Roux’s head as the woman led them both through the forest, felt the way her heart spiked everytime Roux glanced over her shoulder to confirm that Charlie was still there, still with her.

They set up a temporary camp in a clearing and took the opportunity to recover from the hike by splitting a granola bar. Their quiet contemplation was scored by the melodic tweeting of birds who, like them, seemed to be enjoying the warm return of sunlight. The trinkling of a nearby stream, melted snow following the crevices in the ground in obedience to gravity towards a larger body of water, was like bells chiming. In the trees, branches clattered against each other every time a gentle breeze rolled through. They were careful not to disturb the immersiveness of it all. They had talked once, years ago, about how much easier it was to pretend they were anywhere else in the world whenever they were here.

A branch cracked in the distance, pulling their attention to their purpose: hunting for food. Carefully, Charlie grabbed her bow, Roux her knife as both visually sought out the source of the noise. About fifty meters away a deer munched on the ground where, no doubt, the snow had thawed to reveal something worth eating. Charlie and Roux exchanged a look and then nodded. They stalked closer, Charlie preferring a distance of 30 meters to accurately shoot. She felt Roux’s eyes on her as she pulled an arrow back with her compact bow, her body turned towards Roux but her head turned, eyes laser focussed, towards the target. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to find the perfect moment to fire. On the next inhale, she held her breath, felt her index and middle fingers slowly releasing their pressure, and waited for the inevitable whip-like sound that was the hemp fiber slashing through the air. 

“I do love you,” Roux said. It was unexpected. Her voice startled Charlie, whose fingers slipped so quickly that the momentum threw the bow off its initial heading. The arrow flew well past where the deer had been (the sound of Roux’s voice having long caused its rapid sprint away from them) and somewhere into the woods. 

Charlie stared dumbly at Roux, who stared back with an unreadable expression on her face.

“You missed,” she stated, like it hadn’t well been her fault that this fact had occurred.

“What?” Charlie felt herself saying. 

“The deer? You missed it.” 

“No, before that.”

“Oh that? You knew.”

“I did– I do.” Charlie swallowed, let the hand holding the bow fall limply at her side. “It was just… nice to hear, that’s all.”

Roux stalked towards her then, closed a distance Charlie had felt immensely suffocated by. Her eyes dropped to the permanence of Charlie’s injury, to a memory they shared where the confession of their feelings had been swallowed up by the enormous jaws of insanity, the teeth of which had dug themselves so deeply into Charlie’s skin that they tore through flesh and left indents in the sinew of her muscles. What was left of the admittance of their desire was the absence of Charlie’s pinky. Roux’s hand followed her stare and she grabbed on to Charlie’s hand, thumb stroking gently the skin above where her pinky should have been. The wound had healed, but had they?

“If you want something from me, Charlie, you just need to ask.”

Charlie exhaled. They were not the kind of people that would demand love from each other. They had survived this place for nearly a decade and their relationship was forged from the small moments of intimacy and care that had occurred in spite. 

“I don’t want to waste any more time,” she started, feeling emboldened by the heat of Roux’s touch. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and wonder why we didn’t do this –” she squeezed Roux’s hand, “– sooner. For years now I’ve been denying myself this, and I can’t anymore.”

Roux did not reply immediately, but Charlie could see a smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. 

“Alright,” the brunette answered casually. 

“And you can’t,” Charlie swallowed, “you can’t go months without talking to me, okay? It’s torturous.”

Roux looked at her then, hardened her eyes. 

“I can’t follow you, Charlie,” Roux stated. “Where your mind goes. I can’t follow. So if —when it happens,” It was inevitable after all, Roux understood that about Charlie more than anyone else. “I’ll let you go, and I won’t go with you.”

There was a moment of silence as it sunk in. Roux would not watch Charlie amputate another finger, she would turn her back to insanity and would not suffer the hurt of losing Charlie to her mind. The birds chirped. 

“And when I’m here?” Charlie asked then, gentle.

“When you’re here, I’m here.” It was accompanied by the gentle squeeze of Charlie’s hand. 

“Okay, deal?”

“Deal.” Their lips met again, sweeter this time, yet less soft. It was a promise and an apology and an I love you wrapped up and delivered with heated ferocity. For Charlie, it was the commitment to be better, to be present, to fight the things that tried to bend her reality. For Roux, a fealty to protect, to care (even if it was difficult), to make a life where the universe tried very hard to break it.

It was unclear who was the first person to break away from the kiss, but Charlie found that their time hunting had run its course. There were things to do, warmth to be sought out, fingers to get reacquainted with. She wanted to fall onto the mattress of the radio station that never played and make their own music. 

The only thing currently in the way was the sense of duty that had been fletched and knocked somewhere in the surrounding forest. Charlie considered leaving it, but resources were scarce as it was. She would find later that she had wished she had abandoned it. 

Wordlessly they started looking for the missing arrow, starting from similar points and fanning out in different directions. Occasionally, she would seek out Roux through the trees and find those piercing blue eyes already on her and she would smile. As she walked, she thought of the symbolism of arrows, of cupid who had struck her so severely with one of his that she could barely stomach being apart, of knights who were felled by an arrow at the knee in their declaration of love. She thought of Apollo, a deity of light, disease, and prophecy, and she thought of Artemis, the Goddess the hunt and wilderness, and of their bows, how they symbolized life and death. She thought—

Her mind cleared. Around her a dense fog had settled so quickly that Charlie had missed its introduction. It was a plume of thick grey air that had seemingly deafened her to any other noise. Instinctively, Charlie’s eyes sought the last direction she had seen Roux, a futile effort in the heaviness of the air. She lifted her right hand out in front of her and could not see past the tip of her four fingers.

“Roux?” she called out, quietly at first and then repeated slightly louder. Her hand dropped as the other tightened around the bow. It was futile, she had left her bag and the arrows in the clearing. The clearing. Charlie turned to retrace her step. This too proved to be the wrong thing. The disorientation hit her so strongly, pulled air to and from her lungs in staccato breaths. 

“Roux.” It was repeated louder, sharper, wrapped up in the panic that tore through her. From the distance and through the fog, Roux called back. It carried a tone with it that Charlie had never heard from Roux, even months ago when she had wrapped her hand around Charlie’s amputated pinky to stem the flow of blood and had had every reason to feel it: fear.  

CHAAARLIEEEE. 

Charlie didn’t think. She took off. Her feet struggled against the mixture of mulch and snow. She stumbled through branches as they whipped at her face, unseen in the fog, shouldered into the edges of trees she attempted to divert from in split seconds, stopped only when the echo of Roux’s voice faded from her ears. She called Roux’s name again, and heard her own echoed back in increasing agony from another direction. There was a part of her, small and insignificant in the urgency, that questioned how Roux appeared to have changed direction. But the fog was so thick, and it was possible Roux was moving all the same trying to get to Charlie. She ran and slowed only when the snow beneath her feet became wet. 

“What the…” she let out as she looked down to find her boots submerged in water. The grass was vividly green, moved by a current that went unfelt. The water, oddly… warm. Her name boomed through the air, bounced against the trees, so close that Roux must have been mere meters away. Charlie splashed through with haste. And then there was no water and no snow, and nearly no ground for Charlie’s foot to catch. She fought to keep balance on the edge of a drop that she’d nearly bolted from. Beneath her the chasm echoed her harsh breathing. The vertigo caused bile to build at the back of her throat. The fog poured down and disappeared into the chasm. 

“Charlie.” It came from behind her. The voice (recognizable). The smell of smoke (intimate). The crackling of flames (familiar). Charlie pivoted and came face to face with herself. The fire consumed her, flames licked up her body, turned her blonde hair to hues of orange, made embers of her eyes. “It’s time.” When she spoke, black smoke poured from her mouth. It was a horrifying mirror to be met with and fear took hold of her body. 

“You’re not real,” she breathed out. She shut her eyes and held them shut as she counted backwards from ten. When she opened them again she was still there. Charlie diverted her eyes over her shoulders and tried to focus on things that were there, things that were real. Name five things you can see. Grounding techniques only worked if reality wasn’t rotten. 

“I’m always with you, Charlie.” It, she, walked, closing the distance until her own face was inches away. The fire was roaring up close. Charlie wanted to scream but found that her throat was tight with terror and struggled with the simple act of breathing. She thought then of Roux, and where she was, and if she would find her on time, or if the screams had been real and she too was facing the horrors of her own self. A burning hand reached out and stroked the side of Charlie’s face. It singed her skin though she could not feel it. 

“Don’t be afraid.” She leaned in and their lips touched and Charlie felt herself lit aflame from the inside. “All things return to the fire.” A push, one so gentle it hardly would have done anything at all if Charlie hadn’t already been backed to the edge of the precipice.

They say when you fall you have time to think about the fact that you’re falling. But one second Charlie was on the cliff, and the next she wasn’t. A crack of a tree echoed through the chasm as she landed and her vision went dark. 

*******************************************************************

It pulled her to consciousness, the searing pain in her abdomen that caused groans and wet harsh breaths to cross her lips. Her head pounded. She tried to sit up but the pain sharpened and forced her back down. Charlie blinked up, tried to inhale, saw the height she had fallen from and wondered how it was that she was still alive. Her hand reached for the pain and met a wet coarse texture like tree bark. No, not like tree bark – actual tree bark. Two things became immediately clear to her. The first was that her fall had been broken by the carcass of a fallen tree, its extending decaying limb slowing her fall by piercing her through the stomach. She laid suspended, a little unnaturally, a few inches from the ground. The second, which really came when she attempted to lift herself off of the branch, was that Charlie could not feel her legs. Not even a little bit. 

Oxygen returned to her lungs like she had just surfaced from a thunderous swell, panicked and gargled like she was about to be submerged again. Her lungs expanded and on the exhale a sound so inhuman Charlie hardly recognized it as her voice rang out through the chasm, echoed up against the rocks into the forest air.

“ROUX.” 

II. ROUX

Something felt wrong the moment the fog wrapped itself around her. The forest, a moment ago so full of noises (birds, wind blowing through branches, the creaking of old trees, Charlie’s heavy footsteps, having long abandoned the pretense of hunting, on mulch) and of colour (vivid against the white of snow), dulled to quiet ashen gray. Immediately, Roux changed course towards where she had last seen Charlie, did not let panic grab her though she knew in the tight part of her stomach that something horrible was unfolding but, much like with the fog, Roux could not wrap her hands around it to stop whatever forces were at play. Charlie’s name died before it could cross her lips, shackled to the silence like breaking it would solidify the situation. 

Charlie’s voice called to her then, gentle and calm, but not from the direction Roux was heading. It came from her right, and slightly behind her. There was no way that that was where Charlie was, and yet it made Roux pause in her steps. She had seen first hand the sinister way that this place could play games with your head. As hard as she tried not to let it, a fear began to seep in: She could see this facade for what it was, but she knew Charlie would not. 

“Charlie,” she called out, an edge to her voice. She felt it swallowed up in the air, as though she was in a soundproof room. Roux closed her eyes and tried to listen for any sound that would indicate where Charlie was. 

“Roux,” she heard sweetly from behind her now. It went ignored as she pressed forward, tried to call out again. 

“CHARLIE.” Louder. Unanswered. She became acutely aware of the loud way her blood pumped in her ears. 

The silence grew on her until it was violently shattered by her own voice screaming back at her. CHARLIE CHARLIE CHARLIE CHARLIE. 

Then from further away, like a bullet piercing through the air and cutting through the fog like a blade, her name shrieked in such anguish that her tongue hit the back of her throat from the sheer way it startled her. Charlie, she thought. Roux committed the source to memory and began running in that direction. The fog around began to dissipate, the same way dreams did the moment you woke up. This was not a dream though, it was a nightmare. 

Roux ran until she broke the tree line and reached a ravine. At the edge of it Charlie’s bow laid on the ground. 

“CHARLIE?” she called out, knowing very well where the answer would echo from. It should have been wrong to feel any positive emotion right now, but when she heard her name screamed back at her in torture, relief emptied from her lungs sharply. Charlie was alive. She pushed past the way panic had cemented her legs and walked to the edge before peering down. At the bottom of the chasm her eyes caught the flash of a familiar blonde. Roux wasted no time, ran to the closest drop that could be trekked down, felt the sting of flesh ripping on her hands as she skid down to the bottom, footing uncertain on the mixture of snow and bedrock, and then ran over to Charlie’s body. 

What she saw made her halt in her steps. It took everything in her not to pivot and run the other way, where she wouldn’t have to deal with this. Roux thought now, of the beast that this place was, with its tree branches in place of teeth, sunless days in the place of eyes, breath as chilly as a winter storm. And here Charlie was, caught in its mouth, and Roux could not see a clear path to pulling her out. The helplessness manifested in the pit of her stomach, afraid and sad, built up, moved through her chest where it turned to anger and burnt her esophagus. Roux bit her tongue to hold back the rage she felt towards Charlie. Could she be pulled off the branch? Had it pierced anything important? 

It had, undeniably, saved the blonde from a more painless and quick death. But Charlie was alive now, and Roux would do whatever she could to keep it that way.

“I’m s-sorry, Roux, I’m sorry.” The anguish in Charlie’s voice pulled at her heart. She had stilled it, ten years ago when she’d set foot in this place (perhaps even longer if she really thought about it). It had been Charlie’s incessant presence that had re-animated it. For that, Roux hated her. 

“Shut up,” she gritted out through clenched teeth. 

“I can’t feel my legs.”

“Shut. Up.” This was snarled and she came to Charlie, dropped down to her knees next to her so that she could slip her knees underneath and take Charlie’s head into her lap. The woman leaned into her warmth, and it made Roux swallow the knot building in her throat. She reached out and covered Charlie’s hand, the one wrapped at the base of the branch, where it seemed to sprout from her torso.

“You’re going to be fine. I’ll just,” She looked up to the sky, assessed the amount of remaining daylight. “I’ll just get you to the clinic. It’s fine.” 

Charlie laughed then. It was distorted, gargled, pained. “I think this is one miracle that can’t be performed.”

Roux ignored the way Charlie’s eyes stared at her. “Shut up, okay? Shut up. I’m going to pull you off, and we’ll… I’ll carry you back. Just, stop distracting me.”

“Roux,” Charlie said quietly, “it’s not–”

“I have to try, Charlie. Please.”

The blonde nodded. Roux adjusted her position, moved so that she could put one hand below the small of Charlie’s back and the other underneath her knees. She didn’t bother counting her in, tightened her muscles to lift up. It wrenched a noise from Charlie’s mouth so agonizing Roux nearly faltered her hold. Roux felt Charlie’s hand as it dug itself into her shoulder. There was resistance in the bend of the branch. 

“Roux, stop,” Charlie cried, wracking sobs causing Roux to abandon her attempt. From the wound in the torso fresh red blood poured out. 

“Charlie, I have to pull you off.” As she said it she knew: Pulling Charlie off was necessary to save her life, but it would also undoubtedly kill her. Leaving her on it would kill her slower, but would it be gentler? And would it happen before nightfall? Would death beat the coming of creatures who would no doubt torture Charlie? No. Roux would not leave as long as Charlie was alive. Pulling her off the branch would kill her quickly, but her last moment would be excruciating. Whether she had wanted it to or not, the realization that Charlie would die had cemented itself as the outcome of the situation. Charlie’s cold trembling hand on her face broke her from her thoughts. In the green of her eyes Roux saw the same acceptance. 

“You s-said that you would let me go.” Roux shook her head, even as Charlie’s stare went past her shoulder and towards the sky. “You said,” Charlie said, snapping her head back towards Roux with the last of her strength, “and I’m holding you to it. You should go back, b-before it gets dark.”

“I’m not leaving you here.” Alive. She moved herself so that she was sat behind Charlie, head and upper back cradled carefully in her lap. They had never been gentle with each other. This place had demanded the callousness with which they handled one another. Roux wondered what they could have been if the pretense of tenderness had been expressed more. She gently brushed away the tears from Charlie’s face with her thumbs as they sat in a silence occasionally broken by the pained inhales from the other hunter. Her eyes had closed, brows furrowed in pain. 

“They were never wasted,” Roux heard mumbled. Charlie’s eyes opened again. “All these years with you, they were never wasted.”

“They weren’t,” Roux affirmed.

“I don’t want to die here,” Charlie cried softly. Roux shushed her. 

“I know.”

“I’m going to die here.”

“I know.” 

“I’m glad it’s with you.” Her brows furrowed again and when she blinked, tears fell from her eyes. She whispered, “Roux, it really hurts.”

There it was again, that feeling of helplessness.

“Can you make it stop?” The meaning was not lost on Roux.

“Charlie…”

“You said… if I want something from you I just have to ask.”

Anger flared up again. How Charlie could ask something like that from her was beyond the scope of Roux’s understanding. But then she thought of what she would want, if the roles were reversed, Roux reached a similar conclusion. But she would slice her own throat before she asked Charlie to do it for her. Then again, Roux had not suffered the onslaught of her mind the way that Charlie had. 

She thought then, of how much Charlie had suffered at her own hands, how volatile her mind had been the last year, how she had raged against the hand of this place as it had held a blade to her throat. Roux killing her gently would be a mercy nothing else would offer. 

“Where?” she gritted out softly. 

“I can’t feel my legs.” Roux looked down, past the branch and to Charlie’s legs. In her time here Roux had bled out enough animals to know the conditions for it were perfect. Charlie was already stunned and would not feel the slice of a blade into her thighs. The loss of blood would lead to shock, and she would feel no pain, and it would be quick, and Roux would never forgive herself. 

Roux grabbed the knife tucked into her belt. She reached down and placed the knife in the palm of Charlie’s hand. Charlie looked up at her then, watched as Roux pulled at the collar of her own shirt to expose the skin where her heart was. It was an unspoken request. She watched as the cogs turned in Charlie’s head.

“Oh,” the blonde let out. Roux traced a C with her index on the skin, helped Charlie bring her bladed hand to it. There was hesitance on Charlie’s behalf, but the negotiation had already occurred, and Charlie had nothing left to offer. She silently carved a C into Roux’s chest as they kept their eyes locked on each other. It was deep enough that it would scar, but not deep enough as to fatally wound her (though a part of Roux had wished briefly that it had). 

Roux pulled the knife from Charlie’s hand and placed the hand back across the woman’s chest. She leaned forward then, concealed the trembling of her limbs and brought the blade to Charlie’s thigh. The knife cut through the fabric and then just as easily into the flesh. Charlie did not wince, for she could not feel it. Roux made an incision on each thigh, nauseated at the redness of the blood, Charlie’s blood, that came from the femoral arteries she severed. She sat back, dropped the knife and kept Charlie’s head in her lap. 

There would be no going back now. Charlie grabbed her hand, intertwined their fingers. 

“Thank you,” she said quietly. They would not taint the memory of their last kiss with this moment. They would not profess their love for each other because it had always been unspoken. They sat in the silence, as the colour of the world returned while it faded from Charlie. The birds sang again. The stream chimed. The branches up above clattered. Charlie paled, and her breathing slowed. 

“Roux?” she mumbled with closed eyes.

“I’m here.” She squeezed Charlie’s hand. Those eyes she had grown to know looked up at her now, more grey than green. 

“I have been afraid of fire my whole life,” she struggled, Roux thought, to find the words. They slurred together. “I don’t want to stay here.” Here in this place. “Will you burn my body so I can be with my dad again? So I can stop being afraid?”

“Okay,” Roux said lamely. There was nothing else she could say. It was always meant to end like this, she just hadn’t thought it would happen so soon.

“Roux?” So quiet. So faint. How gentle death could be, like falling asleep in the middle of a movie. 

Her throat was tight. Charlie’s hold against her hand slackened. She cleared her throat. “Yes, Charlie?”

But Charlie never spoke again. Her chest stopped moving. Her hand grew cold. The colour had drained from her face. She looked at peace, and Roux thought that death suited her the way that life had ceased to months ago.

****************************************************************************************

It’s summer time in California. The heat sticks to skin in a permanent layer of sweat. The door opens to a house. It’s familiar. Charlie walks through, traces the faint outlines of crayon on a door frame where height was immortalized. Dinner is simmering on the stove, abandoned to the gleeful screaming from the yard. She exits, stands on the deck overlooking the garden, watches a little blonde six year old swinging a stick at her father who collapses in exaggerated movements: A monster slayed by her blade. Her mom laughs, cheers at the pretend death, proclaiming to be rescued by a brave knight. Then her dad stands, young Charlie squeals as he grabs her by the ankles, lifts her up and swings her around. Her pigtails bounce. She giggles loudly. He pulls her back into his arms and hugs her, her mom joins in. And there is warmth. On the horizon, the sun sets. Charlie closes her eyes to the last of the light. This is what she remembers as the world fades away.

[grxvebcnes]

I promise I'm usually better than this And now I can't even recognize myself anymore You turned me into this Please, give me something to Convince me that I am not a monster

[grxvebcnes]

Watching Jude work through the ministrations of a mundane rancher task was a welcome distraction, as fleeting and sparse as the elements of the picture was. Until reality's ugliness spliced through the present with memories so fresh, the fallen impressions were still covered by two inches of snow less than the ground cover. Special. Roux tested the weighted term against her own limited speculations of recent hauntings. Barring the inescapable prison her slumbering skull had designed for the unwilling passenger of her body, acknowledging recent structural damages had been the most aching truth to palate. The timing of the handful of environmental catastrophes fell too conveniently astride with the torture-by-poetry harassment scheme, as if They — them, the town, its ghosts, old fears, impenitency — had intended to strip everything away all at once, challenging any development tender enough to be trampled and mangled by pressure. Moving targets; resident playthings sentenced to live or die, staged to perform as it was always divined. A sliver of Roux wondered, idling in that inky infinite dark of unpinned sentiments, if Jude had been indoors during the first collapse. Had heard overhead beams crack and felt overcome by fear or relief. Had preferred it masqueraded as a dream or nightmare. Roux could only speculate from being absent from her own abode during its destruction, trapped in the ice box of a faraway cabin with company just as prickly. A regretful occasion dominated by a frost bitten concern’s beastly presence, pacing and snarling about until the daylight confirmed exactly that which had been reduced to rubble. The radio station. Wires, circuit boards, glass, brick, mud. No bone. No blood. Unable to comment any rhetoric that didn’t revolve around some droll or wry wit, harebrained commentary, Roux frowned at the undesirable peripheral problems Jude's prompt had reminded her of instead. 

Her heels dug into the firm ground beneath, anchoring her in place and distracting the urge to skitter elsewhere, forget this half-hearted investigative effort entirely. She felt like a ghostly apparition herself, hanging by the sidelines yet tethered to earth by all still unfinished. The blanketing boundaries of silent lulls were merciful, made it almost tolerable. Roux: a frog in tepid water awaiting for an imperceptible inferno to swallow her whole. Oh, to be so lucky. A better fate than having to express any hint of heartache on her quest for an antidote. To be forthcoming was exhausting. Honesty was a curse she’d enjoy sooner swallowing the poisonous affliction of than offer like honey, slow and sickly concentrated. It was only Jude’s choice words which kept the faucet turned, open and slowly thawing. Too: a solidified fact, however their specific manifestations differed, her sufferings were not bestowed in solitary. “Mhm,” she murmured, “violence, with a vengeance, and poetry... weirdly. That's new. The bloodbaths are usually fine—” a word generously used in lieu of typical; not desirable, but a common thread in the natural order of every night, just as the moon's rise and fall, “—but it’s not like…” Roux’s fingers twitched at her sides, lacking the eloquence to describe the sensory imprints dredged from a reanimated past nor sensitive enough to deliver any heartfelt admission. Instead, she begrudgingly rolled up one of her coat sleeves to submit the angered skin beneath, mauve and plums swirling like overcast clouds in neatly portioned cuffs. The uncompromising grip of much larger hands or shackles; chaffing friction beneath a vice grip. Up for interpretation. Allowing only her forearm a taste of the cold air, the gist of it was enough to imply what remained hidden snugly beneath further layers. “The pain's not staying up here,” she concluded, as she worked the fabric back into place, raising a hand to roughly tap at her temple for emphasis. The intellectual projections were a cause of another unique form of pain. I grow until the day I die. “And I sure don’t fucking think in poems. You get any of those, too?" You’ve seen me once, "They're like lyrics, but not from any real song or jingle…”  If you don’t see me now you won’t survive. Frustration fissured the cracks of her composure, despising having to acknowledge the onslaught of it to move through the excruciation. Was that the surprise? The point of the town’s taunting and face borrowing monstrosities — to occupy an unfulfilling life until it became better, then suffer any remnants of satisfaction torn off the bone. God, she hated to contemplate. Hated the world for making her do it with a witness. “Every time I wake up, it’s all that’s stuck in my head. The same bullshit lines. I don’t want them, I don't know them, but They want me to.” 

With every shift of limb, a hastened truth was threatened with disclosure. A spill—fierce and unsightly. It had been retained since the first night when the nightmare had made no difference of the darkness from the day. Both marked by torment. Herself kept under layers of cloth worn by toil and the years for every moment since. Stowed away from glare of the sun that sat low in the sky, for once, thankfully swallowed all too soon. The nights that stretched on, where the secrets could be harboured more skillfully. The deceit nearly effortless, contained by the conceivable demands of a profession—a facade stony and practised in holding distance. A hidden swarm of bruises, damson and bloodied, disseminated across the cracked bone near a jutted clavicle, lower still to the rings of red that had bloomed violently on grabbed ankles. Scars that stung now, as Jude took to her work with haste. To not linger in the jab of a cold wind that made its way through rotten slat. The barn had held, unsettling in its solidity after the storm. Not brushed by tree or wound—weathered without splinter. It was moved through without regard, motions unaffected by the presence of another. By Roux, who she glanced at just once. Only a pinprick in the small hairs on the back of her neck, the weight of the observation. Silent, still. She had never been inclined to volunteer her thoughts, conversation only alleviated with some flow once the intent became evident. Instead of address, a gate shifted out of place, animals that remained huddled away from the stark expanse. Instinct that preserved life in a way that could not be emulated. No appetite to search for pasture unthawed and lifeless. Feed, dwindling now, spread over the ground, mouths more cautious and reluctant to approach. 

Would you say this place is more sick and twisted than usual? Only then did Jude cease. Stilled the work of hands that had never been driven by ambition but a necessity for distraction. The exertion of muscles pulled and recoiled in dirt and sweat. Not what could be taken from her body—pilfered—but what it could construct and maintain. The drudgery of a life that carried rather than left anything behind. The rancher straightened her spine. A question narrowly considered, one that prompted another. “You have seen the state of my roof?” An exhale through the thin line of her mouth, stagnant and resigned. A fury that had burnt tersely to slither, now, under her skin. Scarred and open, gleaned in the brutality of the days. Everything seethed. Threaten to boil over with any small shift or inversion. If only to collapse at her own door every night, crumpled into a surrendered and gentle thing at the sight of the ruin that had stayed. The doctor wounded, still, confined to a bed she had vacated. The sky that had lacerated through something unassailable. Only ever cautiously kept and taken in a second of clamorous air. So ruined for them, the exhaustion had hollowed her out. She gestured over her shoulder, through an open barn door—as if the roof, slumped like shattered bone, could be omitted even in the stifle of filth and snow. More sick and twisted. It could always get worse. More personal, no doubt, when They had only scratched at her before. When it had meant nothing, the thinness between life and death. Nothing wanted or waited for. 

“Maybe this shithole has got something special planned.” A glint in the eye, too brief to be memorised. It may have stayed before, in derision, when Jude had understood too well that she would have gone to the soil laughing in the face of whatever pushed her there. She had not quite learnt how to live without making a mockery of what she had been rationed. It died briskly, now, massacred by the thicket of dread it sunk into. The trepidation that what had been touched and harmed could be found again. Where there had been blood there could always be more. She almost choked on the thickness caught in the throat, turned away to tend to it away from any examination. The callousness in her too much like her mother’s ghost, alone in the world in life, even when she had yanked a small suffocated thing into a day blue and frozen. The laugh reverberated in breeze even as day lurched its way over the land, the claws had dug and remained. She turned away from the trepid light. 

The visitor remained. A purpose for such a presence had to be assumed and Jude would not accuse Roux of making a friendly visit. A mind more prone to absence since the cataclysm had snatched away any rest, she vacantly dipped her hand against the knotted fluff of a cow that had nudged at her with its head. Did not ask or consider further. A softness extended only to the tender heart of one or her animals, it would not be caught. Cold child. Her own mother had accused her of it. Arms left fragile against something so concrete. She pulled away only to tug at her sleeve, secure her wrists with the canvas caked in mud and parched blood that she would not determine the precise origin of. Young that had to be pulled from their mothers with force, delivered to nothing but the earth below in a season less still. Her own, inevitably, when something slipped and bit into her skin. It all bled. Untouched and unseen for now.  Deeper still, incisors that had sunk into the flesh of her arm, impaled into tightened muscle. A scar among others but hardly thought of as injury for life had been clung to by it. She chewed at her cheek. Long had she abstained from inviting herself into other’s lives. It pricked at her, that misery knew company. “You, uh—” Questions, none of them quite right, soon parted as her back met the frigid metal of the enclosure. She hummed. “Something fuck you up too?” A boot kicked and dragged against the floor, to kick at hay and avoid any pretence of demand—that she could do anything at all to rectify it. She had never been able to save anyone.

[grxvebcnes]

Arcadia had a way of swallowing normalcy whole, creating a ghostly imprint in its wake. All the predictable aspects of a typical life’s planning were torn apart and reassembled, Frankenstein style. The softness would be inevitably digested, dissolved by the abrasion of survival’s serrated pressure and dark humour, until only a carcass of a full experience remained. Roux found it easier to joke about in explicit terms, to tread with tongue-in-cheek sloppiness rather than tread lightly — nostalgically. An inaccessible past matched well with an empty future. Successful coping demanded neither were revered. The harsh environment's persistent changes demanded constant adjustment; a self-inflicted violence so brutal it competed with the shadows infringing upon the carefully constructed illusion — the town itself, a foolish act to create a beacon of hope. If pure humanity still existed, this conversation would not be one even mildly entertained. In its place, something bruised and tarnished lived on. Alive and dead had been impressed upon two sides of the same fated coin, cast into a finite revolution that cost every resident's grasp on reality. Roux would selectively enjoy the shallowness of desire and indulgence for however long that coin remained suspended.

Anywhere else — any other time — it would have sounded preposterous to admit that something as mundane as a wheel of cheese could qualify as a lifeline. Stranger things had happened, and would continue to. Content to tiptoe the line of being a guest and peace disturbance, Roux rolled her eyes at his perfectly decent and sensible choice. “You’re a far stronger man than I,” she attempted to joke, wry smile dropping in favour of a furrowed look of concentration as she stacked another cracker with an assortment of items, the only common link seeming to be that the entirety had to be able to fit into one mouthful. “Good luck with that. You're asking to fail, y'know.” Certainly, the thought of the spread would long outlive the experience itself. Nursing fond trains of thought was one of the only harmless hobbies left. 

ＥＮＤ ＯＦ ＴＨＲＥＡＤ .

“I agree.” Dayn kept up with the casual tone of it all - the trick was, he was learning, not to indulge too much in the horrible aspects about the town. The sooner it became “norm”, while it sucked, was a much more mentally sound option. If there was something morbid to be seen, he’d wait until he was in private to hear about it first. Luckily, he hadn’t seen any dead bodies since being here, so that was a nice sign of luck he was hoping wouldn’t run out on him anytime soon.

It was horribly morbid that they would wish for another unfortunate soul to be claimed by the town, dead or alive, to allow them a bit of a treat for themselves, but that’s what they’ve come to. That’s the kind of place Arcadia was. In some ways, Dayn hoped he never truly got used to things here.

“I might save the rest of mine,” he stated, then - thinking about this all too hard made him lose his appetite. Dayn could understand then and there why being a hoarder in situations like this was so appealing to some. He was no stranger to captivity, even if Arcadia gave him far more breathing room. He masked any rising unease with a smile, putting his share in the small refrigerator, the one that held cold beers once upon a time was now storage to the finds people brought him. “Well, this is about my whole day - I’ll be spending the next few thinking of ways to top the charcuterie. Nice job.”

[grxvebcnes]

Heaving a sigh that expelled nearly all the air from her lungs, Roux stilled mid-motion at the momentary lightheadedness the exaggerated flair punished her with. Gesturing a pointed finger towards him, or the vague direction at least, Roux's other hand secured around an upper rung of the exiled ladder. “There’s your problem. A roof that old's at least a three person job. You gotta get out there, network with local folks, figure out who to call when shit’s too fucked up. Know when to quit... know your limits, stay within it. Work smarter, not harder, etcetera…” It was bullshit, spouted by a bullshitter, but her sense of awareness was too far diluted to be completely soured by natural pessimism in favour of pseudo guidance, memorised motivational spiels from another life. An act of plagiarising positivity and reason she did not possess an inkling of herself. Roux could count on one hand the amount of occasions she had positively co-operated with others, most often refusing to learn names or deliberately avoiding newcomers to sever any potential attachments in advance. A lesson learned too late, for some.

Looking up at where he lay against the roof, her eyes narrowed. “You worry too much, wallflower,” she mumbled, beginning to tilt the ladder upwards using the momentum garnered from rising back onto her feet. It teetered precariously upright as she waddled it closer towards the building, one slow step after the other. “Full disclosure: I was gonna haul this back home with me, buuuut a) it's too heavy to be worth it… and b) you’re looking a little queasy up there by your lonesome, and gravity’s working against me here, so… die another day, I guess?”

ＥＮＤ ＯＦ ＴＨＲＥＡＤ .

She’s sitting down? Oh Lord, Emmett was not coming off this roof today, wasn’t he? It’s not as if this was a bustling town of people running midday errands, that could easily snap up and help with a ladder. Who’s to say Roux wouldn’t be there to take it down again? It was still daylight at least, and as far as he was aware, early enough in the day not to be worried about those creatures coming out while Emmett was stuck a little too high to comfortably get down.

“It probably could last awhile, if I needed it,” he said, the latter half of his sentence muttered a bit to himself. He was just trying to patch a hole in the roof, but that wasn’t how his day was going to progress, it seemed. Emmett got comfortable on his stomach, the heel of his hand propping up his head to look down at her while making sure there wasn’t too much blood rushing to his head - if he got dizzy and passed out off of his position, that could be ugly. “I don’t know who that is,” he admitted. “I’ve sort of just kept to myself. Tried to help people board windows, or fix roofs. Things I know how to do.” Emmett tried to keep his excitement down when she got up, elbows on the roof to get ready in case he needed to hoist himself up. “Be careful… whatever it is you’re doing.”

[grxvebcnes]

Even after years of practice, somehow dead bodies never got any lighter — an unfortunate fact of life Roux resented bearing so often. Any muscle mass gained from the physical labour of hunting ( all varieties ) had long ago plateaued from insufficient resources to properly replenish each strain, tear, and injury. Dragging the limp mass out of the cabins had been easy enough, built conveniently close to the forest and ensuring the unlikely pair would be out of sight within minutes. The freshness of the sudden kill left Roux stewing with only criticism and irritation, how sudden the circumstances had been. In truth, this could have all been avoided. She hadn't desired to leave the warmth of the hut until at least another week to fully defrost; to let irrational interests and hedonistic pursuits commandeer her displaced hours. Alas, playing house had not panned out as desired for reasons beyond her control. A puppet at the whims of Them, empowered and bloodthirsty. Intrusive inklings finally fed. Her former companion's previously golden locks now resembled a tainted strawberry blonde, streaks running from her hairline in streaks of clotted crimson. In an effort to not get carried away, Roux had made sure the bleeding was shallow enough to tastefully disfigure but prevent any weeping of a trail upon the snow. The fatality's cause was devoid of discoloured ugliness, merely adorning a ring of raw pink around her neck. A necklace worn too tightly, for the last time. 

Hauling the body towards the thick base of a tree, Roux appraised the bank of ice’s suitability as advancing footsteps crunched closer. She spared a sidelong glance, registered the unthreatening lack of alarm on her guest's features, then resumed attempting to solve her burial equation. The new arrival didn’t concern her, only stoking a flare frustration for the audience it granted. To be witnessed not in her finest hour, covert habits exposed by inhospitable weather. It was sloppy work, to hide traces of her violence in plain sight, but the frozen ground gave not other clean alternative. She hadn’t planned for this. A dream gone awry and an inability stop — some endings were destined to be inevitably messy.

And so, otherwise inclined to ignore wandering commentary, Roux allowed herself to be baited by the comment. “Trash, actually,” she muttered, using the heel of her boot to shove at the corpse’s hip bone, turning her over. Facedown. “Just needs taking out before it stinks.” Looking over the woman still standing, something about her language and disposition's indifference appealed as familiar to Roux’s judgment. An hour of sweaty work and she'd barely made progress, after all. Though her fatigued nerves protested the potential hinderance of a second body, help certainly couldn't hurt. “What about pulverised? Got any tips to turn fresh into fertiliser?”

that's interesting.

the same words had been repeatedly ringing in ashley's head for maybe five minutes now as she stood a good distance away from her current source of entertainment in the middle of the woods. she was well on her way back from disposing yet another bag of treats for them when a strikingly familiar sound of something getting dragged through the ground caught her attention. now, ashley usually made it a habit of stalking people — she had no shame in that — especially those who were in the mood to act all silly and walk deep into the woods without company. most of the time, following them would prove to be a productive choice, and ashley would trek further and deeper in the woods with a fresh catch, another aid in making sure she wasn't getting sloppy with her butchering skills.

this one, though— ashley almost found it endearing how this one was clearly struggling to drag a dead body through the snow, yet it was clear that it was not letting the combination of dead weight and the elements stop it from hiding that body under a pile of snow. so, not one of those people, then. her thumb curled toward her index finger, nail digging under the other for dirt that wasn't there; something funny began to stir within her— a curiosity that was begging to be satisfied, and as a smile slowly began to push at her right cheek, ashley eventually arrived to a decision.

she pushed off the tree with a quick glance at her fingernails— clean, as they should be— before making her way over to the scene of the crime. with hands shoved inside the pockets of her jacket, the right one loosely wrapped around the boning knife she always kept in it, ashley announced her arrival with shameless, heavy strides. no point in sneaking up to whoever this was, not when there's no remorse in the way it moved about.

"that dinner?" her tone was light, casual, like she was referring to a fallen deer rather than her own likeness. "doesn't look prepped to me." her fingers wrapped a little tighter around the knife's handle, drawing closer to center stage, simpering and all. the catch was blonde with a pretty face gradually losing its warmth. what a shame. not. "there are better ways to keep that fresh longer. need help?"

@grxvebcnes

[grxvebcnes]

It was the giving in that was the most satisfying part: the let down of guards to melt into Nika's embrace, to surrender her body when her mind resisted. Fighting it was pointless —the substance electrified every nerve ending until there was nearly nothing you wouldn't do to conciliate the desire to be touched. Nika had never tried as hard as Roux had, defiant even as she clung desperately to the blonde. The snarled fuck you was all the encouragement Nika needed to keep the furl and unfurl of her fingers, rewarded by the tensing of muscles and hitched breaths, warm against her cheek. Roux was her puppet and Nika was masterfully guiding her to her unwinding.

The next day, she would journal this encounter as follows:

Roux. Radio Station. 29. Such resilience to capitulation. She is anchored to radio station by loyalty to her heart —this she despises. There are cracks in her resolve that can be abused. With constant pressure she will shatter and give herself to the tree.

END THREAD.

[grxvebcnes]

VICTORIA PEDRETTI as LOVE QUINN YOU | 03.01 “And They Lived Happily Ever After”

[grxvebcnes]

That voice trickled into Roux with torturous precision; an icy rivulet frosting the edges of her mind and vision, cruelly narrating the fleshy void she openly stared into. Somewhere below her naval twitched and contracted, a stirring surface of quicksand and simmering oil converging into an all-consuming whirlpool. Any sense of tenseness only forged a deeper trap, burned a hotter flame. So she looked, could do nothing but look. There, she watched as rays of light emanated like haloes from the highlights of their cheekbones and shoulders and spines, rising and falling in a sensual synchronicity she inhabited much the same, somewhere on earth where she’d been left whilst her soul soared somewhere heavenly. She couldn’t stop, wouldn’t, shouldn’t — isn’t going to last. As much as Roux warred in vain against her hammering heart, her body was also the first to swallow each rippling sensation greedily through every bare surface; could only groan against the force it keeled her beneath, every unspent ounce of hatred and bliss passionately fucking their way through short fuses. A flickering clarity weakly threatened the pleasurable lair’s din, a beggar on her knees asking quietly for seconds: will this appetite wane or resurge? The pulsating thought hungered against the sleight of hand between her legs, ostensibly not her own but tenaciously claimed all the same. An inevitable yielding, a version of herself reacting far ahead. One whole decade of denial, undone.

An unsettled quake flexed the muscles of Roux's jaw, gasping for breath amidst the disembodied voice cascading over her. The air felt again too hazy, too salty, too thickened by body heat to fill her lungs without drowning her in the process. Charlie. Her chest hitched, eyelids fluttering as the dormant animal of her body latched onto the suggestible with bared teeth. Biting instead of retreating, her spine arched and her nails dug into the flare of something, someone, much softer. Linen. Skin. Sweat. Her slump descended further, losing her feathery grip on reality until she was nothing more than two splayed palms praying for mercy. Nothing more than a few grains of sand suspended in the current of a ferocious avalanche. “Fuck you,” an exhaled hiss, a barely enunciated threat, nothing more than steam escaping a vessel at boiling temperature. An unbridled giving over, wanton expletives whimpered into the void of two hard places.

Even as her clouded eyes sought to resist the altered perception of the naked trio devouring themselves, each ouroboros inch taken imperceptibly a part of her own undoing, returning her attention to the blurry smear of blonde at her threshold only enveloped her further within the trance’s folds. Roux could feel her everywhere, seen and unseen. Pale skin, blonde hair, disappearing fingers. A fantasy illustrated and actioned, finally. Colliding ideas made an impact all too convincing, gliding easily inwards and taking root. The projection continued still against the pinkness of her heavy eyelids, listening to the wetness of mouths and other openings spread wider still as ecstasy flooded hundreds of veins. Perhaps she tried to recoil before it was too late, though she would have failed. Discovered then that her pelvis had completely melted, insides too cavernous to be filled by solid matter, aching with each grip and drip; so near yet so far away. Where did she end? Felt the reverberation of echoes from every angle, radiant and searing. Entrapped by slowly ascending tendrils of hot tar, granted passage through a liminal realm where all that could be done was sink deeper into temptation's amorous embrace.

There was so much Nika would trade to relive the first time she'd ever ingested hallucinogenic drugs, the hypersonic travel to another dimension where everything just felt better. It flickered behind her eyes now; the strobe of lights, the feeling of bass coursing through her blood, the many hands and many faces that she'd lost herself in when she'd been younger, before this place, before order. It had been slipped under her tongue back then, patches with smiley faces that melted and made her lose her mind. Roux came undone in much a similar way, muscles relaxing as she slumped into Nika's hold, body heat so delicious as it rose between them. Her warm breath brushed against Nika's cheeks as the other woman fought (and lost) the way the substance wrapped itself around every part of her soul, body, and mind.

It would bend her to Nika's will, transcending the boundaries of every universe where nothing and anything could happen. As hard as Roux tried to fight it, in the end neither of them would exist on this plane, melded together instead in another universe where pleasure and insanity were the only languages. She used a hand on her neck, under Roux's chin to keep her upright, the girl's eyes locked on the tangle of naked bodies to their right before she slipped her other hand down the front of Roux's pants until the pad of her fingers reached their destination. "Nothing's real," she said softly in Roux's ear. She turned her head towards the throuple, the gleam of sweat in the light so enticing that Nika wanted to lick it. Their moans rumbled in her chest and she pressed her cheek to Roux's. "They're not real either."

Her fingers began to move in tandem with their actions. "They're just you. And me." A pause, her eyes finding Roux's face as she asked. "And who else, Roux? Charlie, maybe? I think you'd like that wouldn't you. Not to know where either of us in you ends or begins." She pressed forward harder, slipped in easily. "It's easier that way, to shirk the responsibility of feeling onto someone else, isn't it? Look at them, don't you want to know what it would feel like?"

[grxvebcnes]

Roux inclined her head, once. A half-nod of shit confirmation, committed to buckling down yet tired of expending energy on fusillades so easily nullified by sensibilities far more grounded than the shell of her own performance's outfit. The downturned corners of her mouth, leftovers of accusation, found no satisfaction in Shaw’s reply. Instead, hunching forwards over her stool’s perch, Roux leant her elbows onto the bar and intently fiddled with the neck of her bottle. A storm cloud regathering its rain, Roux half-considered other manners in which to poke at Shaw with greater reward. They had a knack for dodging questions and re-administering them so gently one might think it was an original pathway spun of an intuitive interest, a side effect perhaps of making a career out of exactly that. Time was of the essence, Roux reasoned parameters with herself; unwilling to spend a second longer fuelling her morbid curiosities once her bottle was emptied of juice and her stomach sufficiently bloated.

Palming the outside of her dwindling bottle, Roux's bottom lip pressed to the top of it and lingered there in the wake of Shaw’s news — brief and sparing of details yet, but it was something. Surprising enough to persuade her sourness to diffuse into something else, disarmed by the admission and what it alluded to. “Oh? That’s—” Mid-scoff, she pivoted and fed herself a small sip of courage as an excuse to pause. Her reflexive response was to diminish whatever not quite referred to as an outright lie, an avoidance tactic meant to dissuade further insult, though she hesitated to mull over the inference long enough to validate its potential. How foolish and questionable vagueness was at the end of the world. Never definite, never loud and proud — so like Shaw to manage to share without sharing. Or, moreover, so like the perfect illusion of them Roux had constructed in her head, perhaps more like this living breathing version than she’d given credit to. Even a little was a generosity. Surely if Roux pounced on the feeble admission, no more would ever be given. A fact which irked and left her too empty handed. “Congrats,” she muttered, her precisely non-congratulatory tone implicating any half-baked effort towards neutrality, “and my condolences. Hell get any better with a hot bed?” A smirk might have accompanied the probing jeer, if not for the uncomfortable other question which Shaw had tacked on. How about you? Roux’s lips parted against another steady flow of mead, halving the amount remaining in one gulp against unutterable knowledge. She was covered in bites from the beastly thing called care she had spoken so ill of a moment earlier, scarred from head to toe with invisible traces she’d sooner devour herself than submit for inspection. She willed the inward disorder of her mind into obedience; a clean, caged slate of detachment. Devoid of camping rolls and first aid kits. Long eyelashes and third degree burns. Fletchings and sweaty palms. Willed her eyes, scouring the edge of the bar top in lieu of somewhere to hide, to withhold behind hardness as her clenched teeth did. Urged the laugh she barked to ring out humourless and unstrained, as if entirely mocked by the mere idea. “No. Are you kidding? There can’t be.” Not in a place like this. Some mythical luxury she was not equipped to afford nor maintain. Abstained from, as if an insurmountable feeling ignored was any different than an experience surrendered to. No harm, no foul ��� no guarantee. “Just the pleasure of me, myself, and I keeps me up at night, thank you very much.” As her last hurrah, beyond a briefly mimed cheers thrust into the air, she made quick work of finishing off the dregs of her chosen poison.

A space blurred and filled in passing. That was what the bar had been for them for all these years. Had long looked forward to the quiet mornings when they would perch on a bar seat and simply take stock of the world and its players, as a butcherbird would through power cables, witness to the hunkering rectangle nests of cars as they sputtered through the road. Brake, accelerate, move on. There would be no such recourse of departure here. Only a temporal move that had stretched on and on. Here, the movement would always be so internal. The light spilled over the vinyl planks of the floor and the slats through the roofs. How the bar almost appeared smaller and smaller each time. A gradual thing swallowing them whole, the gap between the ceiling and the floor no longer quite pronounced but thinning. The town might have grown in its population but the longer Shaw had stayed here, the more constricted it became. People sank into them even as they attempted to sever them from their minds. They took shape anyway. Drowned in it. 

Roux, of course, was among them. She had been Sophie once. They might have been here for longer but what did that matter, now, when the world in which they twisted and turned could be written off as arbitrary. Here a calendar marked could only ever be an educated guess. Their ledger, too. However diligent the doctor’s attempts had been—people’s arrivals and departures, births and deaths—the most pronounced measure would only ever be the chaos people had survived. Days without incident and bodies left in the wake of the night. Roux a survivor. Shaw the same. In that juncture at least they still had some similarities. For certainly they had shared a difference in their respective regards for caring. The reaction hit the doctor’s ears, fast and hard and abrupt. A flicker of muscle at their jaw, a press of a sharp incisor against the inside of their cheek as an unnamable reaction came out of her mouth. They at least acknowledged it was somewhat distasteful. Then: her ensuing yes, the slam of the bottle. The words almost a torrent.

“Is that what you think of me, then? That I am full of shit.”

They would not drop their own drink so abruptly. Another generous sip of their beer. A few sips left to go; the strands of their patience had thinned just the same. Roux’s words were not statements they hadn’t heard before. There would not be any unraveling here. It was this exercise that would always confuse them, Shaw thought. Of people egging them on, as if a few words might release them from their dogged determination of care. Or to absolve the asker of their own indifference. They met Roux’s eyes, then, and drifted quickly to the core of her forehead. Lines that lingered there. A reflection perhaps of the ones that lingered in their own features, too, albeit more pronounced. 

A more rational part of Shaw could be persuaded to a concession. “I’m inclined to agree with you, but there’s just one error in your assumption—” a small pause, gauging the frankness of the admission, “—you presume no one cares for me. That’s not quite the case.” They swallowed, traces of the malted barley lingering in their throat. Thought of the earth, of grain, of rough-hewn wood. A bird half-drowned in the light cleaving through wooden slats. Inaccurate, perhaps, when they had always resolved to flatten care as desire. There was certainly no sureness in its reciprocation. A pivot, then. A half-truth. “How about you?” The question was lifted, but doing so was just an aching reminder of how far each had strayed from knowing about the other.

[grxvebcnes]

kaveh akbar, 'calling a wolf a wolf' // doc luben, 'love letters or suicide notes' // @/nutnoce, tumblr // 'my body's made of crushed little stars', mitski // @/ojibwa, tumblr // 'spring', mary oliver