#[smirke's 14] 🦠

[itchyeye]

a viral facebook post of a letter falsely attributed to charles bukowski | mag 32 hive | mag 46 literary heights | mag 89 twice as bright

[curlytheintrovert]

My Favorite Papa Joel Moments (Pt.5):

🦠 When, in the stables, he tries to act like he’s giving Ellie a choice in who she travels with. Bullshit. He knows he’s unable to leave her, no matter how hard he may have tried to force it. No matter how harsh he was to Ellie the night before he still can’t be apart from her. And Ellie is so so quick to accept him, it’s hysterical. The look he gives when she slams her bag into his chest…that tiny smirk, like he’s trying not to let it show how relieved he felt.

🦠 How once they get on that horse, their bond is out in the open, and breathing for the first time. Joel confirmed it the night before with “Course I do” and Ellie confirmed it with “Let’s go” She lovingly rests her head on his back, he’s smiling, Joel is actually teaching her things like a dad would and their banter is back. They are father and daughter now, for better or worse.

🦠 The look on Joel’s face when he gets stabbed at the university. My theory is that not once did he think of himself, even as blood gushes down his abdomen. The way he just stares at Ellie and nothing but her…I’m hurt which means Ellie is in danger. I failed her already. I’m not the strong hero she needed, and now she can see it.

🦠 In the basement when Joel is laying on the mattress, the way he grabs Ellie when she first puts pressure on his wound is strangely sweet to me. The dire situation is forcing him to rely on this 14 year old girl, and he’s not able to hide behind his gruffness anymore. She’s all he has. Followed then by weakly ordering Ellie to leave Joel is trying his best to get her safe, which is not with him anymore. How he pushes her away is meant to be harsh and to drive his point home, but you see in his eyes he hates having done it. Is this really how they’re going to part ways, possibly forever? Joel clearly doesn’t want her to leave but that constant nightmare fear won’t allow her to stay. Then when Ellie quickly does do what he says, and it appears she’s abandoning him, he’s sorrowful. They’re really parting ways and this may be the last time he sees her. She’s going to be alone and he won’t be able to protect her anymore. Did he even tell her how much she meant to him? That single tear down his face says so much without words and I’m crying too, damn it.😭

[itchyeye]

🦠 the corruption | just… disgust. rot, decay, infection. that feeling of your skin crawling or itching, being touched by something that might burrow inside you. swarming and hollowing you out. leaving you full of holes.

[itchyeye]

jane prentiss, the flesh hive | perhaps i’ve always heard it. perhaps the itch has always been the real me, and it was the happy, smiling jane who called herself a witch and drank wine in the park when it was sunny, maybe it was her who was the maddened illusion that hides the sick squirming reality of what i am. of what we all are, when you strip away the pretence that there is more to a person than a warm, wet habitat for the billion crawling things that need a home. that love us in their way.

[itchyeye]

mag 32 hive; statement of jane prentiss, regarding a wasps' nest in her attic

mag 88 dig; martin blackwood, archival assistant at the magnus institute, recording statement number 0030411, statement of enrique macmillan, given november 4th 2003.

i love that the "lower" entities, filth and choke, so pointedly hate the institute

i think part of it is the sort of entity color wheel that puts the eye in opposition to fears that thrive in obfuscation and darkness

but i also think it's a direct opposition to the sort of structure and process that beholding has... the institute and its sister sites are really the only organizations of their kind

even the dark with the people's church and the desolation with the cult of the lightless flame, they're organizations sure but they don't have the expansive formal structure of the institute

and it would make sense that the more "primitive" fears would be so totally opposed to that sort of structure, and would feel an innate need to tear it down

to return it to the dirt

[itchyeye]

i commissioned this jane for valentine's day a few years ago from null_backdoorho on twitter 🪱 🥰 reposted here with artist's permission

[tweet] [artist's twitter]

[itchyeye]

taking a moment this morning just to think about how much i love the corruption avatars... john amherst, jane prentiss, benoît maçon, sweet agape 🥰 all so fully consumed by what loves them 🐛🐌🕸🕷🪳🦂🐝🪲🪰🪱🦗🦠🐞

[itchyeye]

jonah + decay

He dreams of it often, and always the same. He knows it is his dream, and no one elses. He knows it because it never has the sharp, singular clarity of the dreams he watches in his Archive cycle. It is vague and shifting, produced by a human subconscious. And always the same.

A corpse propped against a stone wall, its decay spurred by the dark, dank air of its makeshift crypt, left rotting in a forgotten pocket of air a mile beneath the earth. Its leathery face shrinkwrapped around its slack jawed skull. Its ragged, empty sockets hollow and infinite behind its drooping eyelids.

Each time, Jon's dream brings him to its mausoleum and leaves him there to make his own choices. Each time he will draw near, stoop to his knees, take the blind death's head into his hands, and press his living lips to its. He will wake uncertain and afraid.

Something has marked him, he frets, given him this vision apart from all his others. The Buried? The End? What force calls to him so arduously from beneath the earth? What force waits nightly for his breath to pour over its cold, unfeeling lips?

He waits nightly for his dream to change. For spiders to pour forth from the corpse's mouth when it meets his. Or Filth to swarm out from its face and into his.

Most ardently, he hopes the death's head might one night wake beneath his lips. To tell him its secrets, give him its name, and kiss him back.

[itchyeye]

i love how many of the corruption victims have ocd because it's very apt, because of course when you are predisposed to repetitive/obsessive fear of filth or uncleanliness you are necessarily more susceptible to that dread power's influence and more appealing to it as a victim, since in some ways it has already taken root in you

[itchyeye]

i really wonder (not that it matters, i'm just curious about my babygirl) if jane's friend group cutting her out for being "toxic" was an actual consequence of her behavior or just a planned social exile/ostracization excused with internet therapy buzzwords

i say it doesn't matter bc that kind of total and immediate social isolation is psychological torture regardless of its validity, which would set her up for corruption's filthlove whether she was a narcissist or not

but i realized today when i relistened that i had always assumed it was a false accusation, and there's nothing in her statement that provides explicit clarity on that point. i had just always taken it as a given because of how neopagan communities Are

[itchyeye]

mag 68 the tale of a field hospital; statement of joseph russo regarding a book allegedly authored by sir frederick treeves. original statement given june 3rd 2003.

[itchyeye]