svgarkanes

[svgarkanes]

ACT I. ALL DEAD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT. EXT. THE WOODS BEYOND THE COMMON HOUSE - DAY Enter DIMARIA and NICOLAS. ( @baarra )

The song in her mind goes like this: a long, drawn out riff. The low percussion ushering the sound of the cymbals. A thrum at the back of her brain. The vibrations of cord and muscle in response. A tightly wrung neck where damp cloth should’ve been. 

She hums when there is no one listening.

It is a tender sound. It must’ve been. But it leaves her mouth all wrong; turned careful and methodological. Echoing a distant memory. It was a wedding song. Her grandparents used to dance to it whenever they had the chance, holding each other in embrace. They sway too slow, not quite meeting the tempo. They did not care for that detail. She runs her tongue through the inside of her teeth, checking to see if it’s turned forked after all. 

The song in her mind goes like this.

An absent tune that nobody knows to sing.

The thick of the woods sing it back to her, during the quiet in between the cicadas’  own. She stops, her bare feet sinking ever so slightly in the damp earth. The cross around her neck weighs heavy and warm against her skin. The trek is easy; it is everything else that makes it difficult. The skin. Her clothing. The invisible rope. It is the tethering that drives her to madness. Soon the trees will begin to thin out. The stumps overgrown with moss will remind her to mind herself.

The Common House stands just beyond the clearing, but she does not go any further. She watches it in the distance, painting shadows on the ground. All of those faceless hands digging into the earth. She pulls back, hand slipping the sandals back to her feet just in time for that empty rhythm. A shift in the air. Prickling at flesh. The gears wind tightly back into place.

A knowing look.

“I don’t appreciate your tardiness.”  Her hand wiping the dirt off at the hem of her skirt, though not completely. A slow breath out. There is never a rush. Nicolas is only a few steps away, and she moves closer, bringing her hand up to smooth out a crease that did not exist. It stains in the shape of her fingers. “Let’s try to be on time from now on, hm? You look well.”

[svgarkanes]

"I`ve lived to bury my desires…", Alexander Pushkin (translated by Maurice Baring)

[svgarkanes]

⸻ rhian ramos, 34, female, she/her; ] … the photo on the missing poster is of DIMARIA “RIA” KANE. they are THIRTY-TWO, and have been missing for FOURTEEN YEARS. when the sun rises, they work as a FARMER / TRADITIONAL HEALER. rumors in town say they can be INSINCERE and DUTIFUL. they chose to live in THE SETTLEMENT, and have an uncanny resemblance to THE ENCHANTRESS (Suicide Squad), Lottie Matthews (Yellowjackets), AMY DUNNE (Gone Girl). can they survive another night ?…⸻ your mother tying your hair up too tightly, dew on the leaves on a grey morning, swimming in a cold lake. [ ⸻ fey, 23, gmt +8:00, she/her, none ; 

SEE: wanted connections.

&&. FILE NAME ;

name: dimaria solenn kane /di-ma-ree-yuh/

age: thirty - two

birthdate: june 20th

gender & pronouns: female. she/her.

romantic orientation: panromantic.

sexual orientation: pansexual.

occupation: farmer, traditional healer.

general demeanor: courteous, hospitable, uptight

positive traits: dutiful, perceptive, helpful

negative traits: cold, serpentine, resentful

moral alignment: chaotic good

jungian archetype: the caregiver

myers-briggs personality: intp, the logician

themes: nsfw, sexual, depersonalization, trauma, emotional abuse, child neglect, murder

&&. TL;DR ;

The longer you spend with her, the more you realize there’s something about her that’s just quite.. wrong.

&&. BIOGRAPHY ;

BEFORE TOWN, Dimaria was the mayor’s daughter. Pampered, adored. The Kane’s initially detested her father’s choice in marriage, thinking a pretty face was meant to be just that: one stupid night, cash thrown, and no strings attached. But he was young and inlove, and Dimaria’s mother— beautiful and cunning— had been waiting for someone like him to sweep her off her feet and take her out of that little pond of a town that she grew up in. Dimaria was an easy child, too, as if she’d been born knowing her place in the world. She knew when to cry, what to say, how to twirl in her dress just right that people could see her halo. A perfect addition to that picturesque family who smiled at the cameras and kept their witnesses quiet and their skeletons locked in the closet. A stifling, disgusting life that suffocated Dimaria but, well, that was life. 

She only truly longs for the summers that she spends with her maternal grandparents in the province, far away from the city where she was raised. She felt alive in their embrace, sharing in their practices, their beliefs, their superstitions. She’d watch the sun rise with her grandfather while he drank his bitter, brewed coffee. At night, she would sit by the lamps and watch her grandmother’s rituals, ridding their little village of “curses” and spirits. Simple and provincial. Real.

IN TOWN, Dimaria was one of the many unfortunate people who were stuck. Unable to return to the life they left behind and “wasting away in this shitty town like the rest of these sick people,” as her father liked to put it. Her family never stopped wanting to escape, so Dimaria never told them that she almost preferred this life anyway. It was funny and cruel; their money was no good here, and she held a quiet pleasure in watching the town turn her parents into laborers. Everything that made them special and held them above men no longer existed. Still, she played the good daughter; she got along well with the townspeople, did her part, and never complained. She lived in that godforsaken house that her parents hated and often visited her grandparents in the communal house. Until, ofcourse, the night that her parents made the mistake of letting Them in, and the smell of their remains never quite washed off the floors, so Dimaria stopped living in that house altogether. Then, years after that, came her grandfather’s heart attack. And, after that, her grandmother decided she’d lived enough as well and it was time to follow him, fading in the night. 

And, now, it was just Dimaria, with no one to pull her strings. Spiraling down and down until she’d decided to embrace whatever that was that gnawed inside her stomach. That which craved the rawness, the insanity of the unknown. On most days, she is still the same Dimaria: perfectly courteous, helpful, kind. But on the others.. well, it was good that she no longer lived in town.

&&. INQUIRIES ;

How did your muse spend their first night in Arcadia, and where?

THE GODFORSAKEN HOUSE.

When the Kane’s finally, tentatively, begrudgingly accepted their fate, the Sheriff pointed them to an empty house in town— its faded, chipping paint and dust-covered furniture housing them for the night. Two bedrooms up the stairs and loaned mattresses on the living room. With them, the sheriff and a woman whose name Dimaria doesn’t remember. She could recall if she tried enough, but it was a very long time ago and her name doesn’t matter much now after she died. Leann, maybe. Loraine. Luanne. Her name was a dance on the tongue. (Dimaria remembers where her grave was, though.) 

She remembers everything else perfectly well. How stern the townspeople had been with them that first night, expecting perhaps a panicking family out of their wits. But her family was much too proud for that; they sat quietly in the living room, listening to the sheriff explain what was expected throughout the night— Dimaria explaining for her grandparents in the native tongue— and keeping their disbelief to themselves. Her family was provincial, after all; they had their fair share of demons and superstitions back home. Only her father seemed particularly irritable, muttering about “this godforsaken house” when he thought nobody could hear him. 

They came at nightfall, just as their hosts said. Wearing familiar faces, echoing familiar voices. Family and friends knocking at the door, begging to be let in, begging to be heard. Dimaria couldn’t explain the allure of doing as they asked, something compelling her to let her dearest aunt inside. Her fingers were cold and her chest filled with terror, and.. something she wouldn’t ever name. But she doesn’t move, because Dimaria was very good at doing as she was told. She only put her hands together, watched her father make a fuss about how preposterous this entire night was, and listened to her grandmother Isabel curse the wretched things outside the door. Still, the door stayed shut, and eventually the voices faded, and the exhaustion forces her family asleep. Dimaria didn’t sleep at all that night, only staring at the lamp then at the window every now and then, as if expecting a face to stare back at her.

Just like that, the first night passed.

Why did your muse choose to live where they do?

THE FAMILY.

It was that godforsaken house, at first. Dimaria didn’t choose that; nobody will believe her if she says that house was haunted. Not by some brittle remains in the floorboards or a spectre trapped in the walls, but by its inhabitants. A screaming mother echoing in the foundations, like a spirit to be appeased. A father drowned, with blood on his hands. Their undead daughter who was put together the wrong way. An old house that was entirely too small for the skeletons they brought with them. But the Kane’s have always been very good at playing out their picture-perfect fantasy, even out in the old dirt.

Then Dimaria found herself, years later, beyond the town’s clutches, barefoot and crazed. In a home much smaller than the one she left, but one that was all her own. It was frightening even to her how easily she settled into this new life. But there wasn’t much she could do but move on after her parents’ deaths; the creatures in the night were equally unforgiving, after all, and by the time Dimaria made it back to the house from her grandparents’, the blood had dried and there was nothing else but their bones and some flesh scattered across the wooden floors. It filled the house with the stench no amount of cleaning could remove. The grief, the images engraved into the back of her mind, the relief, her guilt, and the freedom, finally, would tear into her all at the same time. Then the world would spin, and she’d remember spiraling down, down, down, until she could swear she was staring down at her own pitiful self on the ground. What was she to do now with all of these beliefs, and thoughts, and curiosities once expertly woven underneath her skin? This shape of a woman existing solely for her pretentious family’s idea of what a daughter must be? 

When she came to, it was already too late. Dimaria couldn’t seem to fit back into that godforsaken house nobody even liked. Nor could she belong to the communal house with her darling grandparents, with all of those eyes on her. She couldn’t bare the constant close proximity, of always being known. Of always having to perform. Dimaria had always craved something raw. Something wild and unknown. Something that terrified her to the point that she could not resist. What a dangerously delicious thing it was, that freedom.

What was your muse doing when they came across the tree?

STICK IN THE MUD. 

There was laughter in the car. Dimaria remembers the sun shining through the trees, the view blurring as they drove past them. Her father driving, her grandfather in the passenger seat. Behind them: her mother, her, then her grandmother. Tapes of beloved songs played through the stereo, thanks to her mother bringing them along for the trip. Dimaria never had trouble with carsickness, but her grandmother rubbed some homemade balm on her temples anyway, and so all she could smell was eucalyptus. Her family spoke in their native tongue and made easy conversations: stories comparing how much her mother had been a difficult child compared to her, and how she was faring at university, if she was having a hard time, how the produce always tasted better at her grandparents’, how they were missing food from home already. Only a few hours left until they reached her family’s house by the lake.

Dimaria was as happy as she could be, right up until the tree.

At first, they tried to push it out of the road, to no avail. Then they drove, over and over again, the conversations shifting worse and worse each time they tried to find another route. Raising voices and chipped arguments about the map. Her grandmother even made them wear their clothes inside out— an old belief about spirits that liked to play tricks in cursed roads. But there was nothing; just an odd town with even odder people whose answers increasingly frustrated her father. Just an odd town that told them they would not survive the night if they kept trying to leave.

Arcadia frustrated her father for years, right up until he died.

Has your muse left anything behind that they are desperately trying to return to or escape?

ANGEL.

Dimaria almost doesn’t remember what her life had been before the town. It almost felt as if it was an entirely different lifetime ago. Her family liked to reminisce about the lives they left behind. She knew her father itched for his wealth and his politics, always believing he would return to it soon enough and spin some story about how they’d been stranded for the news. Her mother was simpler; though she fit into her new-found role in town much easier than her husband, Dimaria knew the labor was slowly driving her insane. After all, she didn’t marry into wealth just to wind up in another small town. Her grandparents, at least, found their place in the Common House, belonging right back in the farm work and their expertise in medicine and survival. But even they would talk about their beloved old home; how the coffee tasted better and the people, their people, must be looking for them now.

But not Dimaria. She herself doesn’t even understand why. She had this whole life before Arcadia, after all; family, her friends, her boyfriend. All of her belongings just sitting in her room back at home, gathering dust. All of her old collections. A camera she just bought. She missed them, but only in the way she’d miss her favorite shirt if it ever went missing. If she thinks it over some more, her mind circles back to one of her mother’s friend’s house outside of the city she grew up in. She went there once just to visit, and this small angel figurine in the living room caught her eye. Dimaria stuffed it in her pocket and placed it in the middle of the hallway upstairs. She doesn’t really know why; she must’ve found the idea funny then. If she were to ever escape town, she’d want to return to that house, take the angel, and place it somewhere else. Maybe in the bathroom sink, or the drawer where they kept the knives.

Or perhaps just keep it for herself.

[svgarkanes]

—Sylvia Plath, "Apprehensions"