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pin-k-ink · 24 days

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hollow // chrollo lucilfer

tw ⇢ graphic descriptions of physical violence, torture and mutilation, psychological abuse/mind-break, implied sexual content, obsessive/delusional behavior, reader is catatonic, depictions of bodily deterioration/decay

wc ⇢ 4.9k

The rhythmic dripping of water echoed hollowly down the dimly lit hallway, each drop hitting the stained floor with a soft plop. Chrollo's footsteps were cautious, familiar with every creak of the warped wooden boards beneath his feet. His gaze traced the peeling jungle green wallpaper, faded and curling away from the walls in long strips. Small holes pitted the popcorn ceiling above, remnants of who knew what past damage.

It was an all too familiar sight - this decaying hallway that he had walked thousands of times before. The musty, dank odor of rot and mold hung thick in the air, assaulting his senses in a way he had long since grown accustomed to. Chrollo could have mapped every discolored water stain, every flake of crumbling plaster from memory alone. His eyes lingered on the dark, rust-colored splatters streaking the wallpaper - unmistakable bloodstains that raised no alarm.

His hand trailed along the flaking paint as he approached the last door on the left, the bedroom. The door stuck briefly when he tried the tarnished knob, requiring Chrollo to lean his weight into it before it gave way with a groan of protesting hinges. As it slowly swung inward, his lips curled into a small, practiced smile.

"Good evening, my darling."

Chrollo's smooth voice seemed to caress the stagnant air as he stepped over the threshold. In the shadows of the dimly lit room, your silhouette was motionless, a solitary figure framed by the broken panes of the drafty window. You didn't so much as twitch at the sound of his voice, your distant gaze fixed through the grime-streaked glass.

Closing the door behind him with a soft click, Chrollo followed your line of sight beyond the confines of the cracked, spider-webbed window panes. The same stark view opened up before him - a dead tree, its twisted, gnarled branches reached up in blackened claws towards the perpetually overcast sky. The rusting black metal fence lined the property, separating the derelict house from the decaying remains of its abandoned neighbor.

Your eyes seemed almost unseeing, pupils trained on some invisible point far beyond the gloomy view. As if you could pierce past the decrepit scenery to something only you could perceive. The distant, glazed look was one Chrollo recognized.

With a soft huff of amusement, he stepped up behind you, his hands sliding along your upper arms before gently grasping your biceps. His fingers caressed your cool skin as he pulled you back, away from the broken window and the dead world beyond its panes.

With a tender grip, Chrollo eased you backwards, guiding your motionless form away from the shattered window. You offered no resistance, your limbs pliant, feet dragging slightly as he maneuvered you across the stripped bare floor.

The weathered bedframe groaned when he nudged you down to sit on the sagging mattress. Dust motes swirled lazily in the pale slivers of light slicing through the gaps in the curtains. Chrollo knelt before you, his movements slow and practiced as his eyes raked over your features.

Your face was a porcelain mask, devoid of any emotion or flicker of awareness. Eyes dull and unfocused, the usual warm depth you once regarded him with had long since turned glassy and distant. It was as if you had retreated so deeply inwards, tucking that spark of life away where he could no longer reach you.

A melancholic fondness played across Chrollo's expression. With deft fingers, he reached up to tuck a stray lock of lank hair behind your ear. The strands felt coarse, dirty - a reflection of your deteriorating state that he chose to ignore. His palm cupped your cheek, calloused thumb brushing the hollow beneath your eye.

You didn't lean into his touch or blink at the contact. No minute reactions registered on your vacant features. But still, Chrollo leaned in close, lips brushing feather-light against the throb of your pulse point. He lingered there, feeling the faint flutter of your heartbeat against his mouth before peppering a trail of whisper-soft kisses along the elegant column of your throat.

Each press of his lips was unbearably tender, an intimacy he reserved only for you. But you remained unmoving, unseeing, disassociated from the present as a thousand-yard stare bored through him. With a resigned sigh, Chrollo rested his forehead against your bony shoulder, curling himself around your petrified form like a wilted plant seeking warmth from the sun.

Chrollo's lips brushed reverently over the pale skin of your knuckles, tracing the delicate bones of your motionless hand. Each gossamer kiss was featherlight, almost worshipful in its tenderness. He found himself sinking into the memories evoked by your touch, letting the present recede.

His mind drifted back years, to the first time he had laid eyes on you. That crisp autumn day when you had quite literally fallen into his world...

The towering shelves of ancient tomes seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction of the library's echoing halls. A reverent hush blanketed the cavernous space as Chrollo trailed his fingers along the gilded spines, searching...

There. His hand stilled on the tooled leather binding, the familiar title raising a faint smile. As he slid the thick volume free, a voice suddenly piped up from his elbow.

"Ah, one of the great paradoxes. Interesting choice."

Chrollo went still, sidelong gaze catching on the petite figure who had materialized beside him without a sound. You didn't so much as glance up from examining the book's cover with an appraising look.

"Though I always found his theories on the duality of truth to be rather paradoxical in themselves." You tsked softly, plucking the book from his grip to flip it open. "Take this passage for instance..."

Slender fingers skimmed down the aged pages to tap at a paragraph of dense text. Looking up at him through the fan of your lashes, your lips quirked in a half-smile. "He spends multiple chapters expounding on the inherent contradiction of subjective experience muddling objective reality. But then doesn't he fall into that same trap himself by attempting to define an absolute truth?"

Chrollo found himself caught in the spark of wry intelligence glinting in your stare. You presented the mild critique with such matter-of-fact certainty, unburdened by pretense. It was...refreshing. And more than a little intriguing.

"An insightful observation." His voice was neutral, but something about your easy confidence piqued his interest. "You're well-versed on the subject matter."

"Oh, I've practically lived in the philosophy section since I was a kid." You waved your free hand in a careless gesture, as if dismissing the notion of erudition as commonplace. "My coping mechanism for insufferable questions has always been to counter with even more insufferable questions."

There was a teasing lilt to your smile then, homr truths offered with a self-effacing humor. Chrollo couldn't resist the curve tugging at his own mouth in response. You hadn't cowered from his scrutiny or blustered with feigned modesty. Instead, you simply met his gaze with composure and clever irreverence.

Yes...you were shaping up to be a captivating anomaly in Chrollo's experience. One he found himself abruptly keen to unravel.

Extending his hand in an unhurried motion, he re-claimed the book from your grasp - though made no move to extricate himself from your proximity.

"I'm Chrollo Lucilfer."

The memory dissolved like smoke on the wind, and Chrollo found himself abruptly drawn back to the present. His mouth was still brushing over the bony ridge of your knuckles, lips whispering across your motionless hand.

He pulled back slightly, dark eyes roving over your vacant features. The life and clever spark that had so captivated him that very first day was utterly extinguished. Your gaze remained glassy and distant, as if staring inward at some unreachable abyss that had swallowed your brilliant essence.

For a long moment, Chrollo simply studied your hollowed visage, taking in the sallow tinge to your skin and the sharp jut of cheekbones. Your wrists protruded like delicate bird bones from where they lolled in his grasp - a cruel facsimile of the vibrancy you had once exuded. And yet...not a flicker of remorse or guilt flickered across his expression.

If anything, there was a strange tenderness limning his stare, suffusing the pad of his thumb as he stroked along the raised veins of your forearm. His other hand smoothed stray strands of lank hair away from your brow in an almost doting caress before he leaned in closer.

"Do you remember, my love?" His voice was low, hushed with the weight of recollection. "The day we first met in that musty library, surrounded by the books you adored with so much passion?"

Chrollo's lips brushed your temple, callused fingers curling around your nape as though to tether you to his words. To draw you out from the depths you had retreated within.

"You were a paradox unto yourself then - keen and irreverent, brilliant yet disarmingly self-effacing. A rare mind unbound by the pretenses I had grown accustomed to." His mouth trailed lower, warm exhale ghosting your cool cheek. "You captivated me from that very first quip."

His nose nuzzled along the sharp line of your jaw before he nestled into the crook of your neck. Tension coiled in the lean muscles of his shoulders and back, yet Chrollo did not loosen his embrace. Instead, he coiled himself more tightly around your unresponsive form, clinging to the impassive shell of what had once been his greatest obsession.

"I knew then that I had to unravel the enigma you presented. To unlock those complexities lacing your mind and make you wholly, utterly mine..." A tremor rippled through his voice, baring the faintest hint of strain beneath its veneer of devotion. "And so I did, didn't I? Through my own particular...persuasions."

Chrollo fell silent then, simply breathing you in - the lingering hint of your natural scent still clinging to your pallid skin despite the omnipresent reek of decay and mold shrouding this place. His haven, his sanctum where he could revel in the spoils of his conquest. No matter that the light had long since dimmed behind your eyes.

For though your corporeal form had withered, the essence of who you were remained eternally preserved - a prized butterfly trapped in amber, yours to study and revel in at his leisure. You may have drifted irrevocably out of reach, but at least here in this sanctum, your brilliant mind would never escape his grasp.

The silence stretched, weighted with half-remembered moments replaying in the recesses of Chrollo's mind. His cheek nestled into the curve of your neck and shoulder as snapshots of your earlier encounters together began flickering through his thoughts.

One particular scene coalesced, vibrant and stark…

The bustling cafe was alive with the rich aromas of espresso and freshly baked pastries mingling in the air. Chrollo's gaze cut briefly over the clusters of students and professionals huddled around the tiny tables before settling again on you.

Even seated across from him amidst the crowded atmosphere, you seemed completely at ease - blissfully unbothered by the cacophony of clinking dishes and murmured conversations surrounding you on all sides. With one leg crossed over the other, you lounged back in your chair, slender fingers wrapped around the ceramic mug cradled before you.

The soft furrow of concentration furrowing your brow was the only indication of your focus as you pored over the battered paperback novel propped open before you. Sunlight gilded the flyaway wisps of hair framing your face, casting deep crevices in the hollows beneath your high cheekbones. For a suspended moment, you looked almost ethereal - the embodiment of a tragic gothic heroine plucked from the very pages before you.

Chrollo found his stare snagging on the elegant drape of your throat, tracing the faint throb of your pulse fluttering beneath the surface before dropping to follow the enticing vee of cleavage peeking from your blouse...

You must have sensed his heated regard. Without even glancing up, your lips twitched in a knowing smirk as you reached for your mug. Bringing it to your lips, you took an unhurried sip - holding the scalding liquid on your tongue for a calculated beat before swallowing with a soft hum of contentment.

Only then did you finally lift your eyes to meet Chrollo's hooded gaze from beneath the fan of sooty lashes. "Something on your mind?" The deceptively innocent query was undercut by the simmering spark of challenge glinting in your stare. "Or are you just enjoying the view?"

The shameless quip and utter lack of self-consciousness should not have been so utterly enthralling. And yet...Chrollo could practically taste the thrill sparking down his spine at the bold implications lacing your tone. You somehow managed to come across as both deliciously inappropriate yet well-bred in the very same breath.

Unable to resist leaning into the tease, Chrollo allowed the barest of smiles to ghost over his lips as he mirrored your casual pose - elbows braced on the table's surface, chin resting atop steepled fingertips.

"Perhaps a bit of both," he mused in that low, dangerously warm timbre. "I do so enjoy seeing that wit of yours in action..."

His gaze was all too knowing as it dropped momentarily to your mouth. "Among other things."

The words hung in the air, rife with unspoken suggestion and subtle challenge. You regarded him evenly, holding his stare without a hint of the flustered demurring he typically encountered. For a protracted beat, the charged silence stretched taut between you as the clamor of the cafe faded to mere white noise.

Then, eyes glinting with newfound determination, you slowly reached for the bundle of pages resting abandoned on the tabletop beside Chrollo's arm. Never breaking that heated eye contact, you brushed your knuckles deliberately, intentionally, along the taut cords of his wrist before claiming the sheaf of looseleaf papers.

Lips still curved in that private, enigmatic smile, you reopened your novel - effectively ignoring or accepting his suggestive flirtation in one fell swoop as the embodiment of effortless poise.

It was subtle, masterful even in its nonchalance. And abruptly, Chrollo found himself well and truly enraptured by the delicious paradox of barbed wit and refined composure that you presented...

The memory ebbed away, siphoning back into the recesses of Chrollo's consciousness until all that remained was your pliant form coiled against him on the sagging mattress. He nuzzled deeper into the juncture of your throat and shoulder, chasing the lingering remnants of your essence still clinging to your pallid skin.

"Do you recall that afternoon, my love?" His words were a rumbling murmur against your nape. "How you matched me tease for tease without ever losing that practiced decorum society expected of you?"

A wistful sort of yearning bled into his tone, tempering the ravenous edge. "You were diabolical - all coy propriety deftly wielded to entice with just the faintest indecencies lurking beneath. Like some Wildean libertine in another skin..."

Chrollo's free hand curled into a fist where it rested on the mattress beside your hip, as if to anchor himself. There was a fevered sort of hunger simmering in his voice now, trembling with the weight of rapturous recollection.

"I knew then that I could never be content until I'd unraveled those contradicting layers shrouding your core - no matter how far into the abyss I had to descend in pursuit."

The arm bracketed around your waist cinched tighter, knotting you flush against his chest. It should have been suffocating, possessive...Yet Chrollo somehow imbued the crushing embrace with an unsettling sort of devotion. He was fastening you to him with that same ravenous ardor as one might clutch a cherished, half-coveted treasure.

His thumb traced the sharp ridge of your collarbone over...and over...and over again. "And you let me plunge into those depths so willingly - your brilliant mind falling open around me until I could see...everything."

A shudder rippled through his lean frame, momentary loss of control swiftly reined in. When his sable gaze finally lifted, there was a peculiar desperation simmering behind the usual impassivity.

"Don't you see, my love? This..." One calloused hand slid up to frame your face with infinite care, thumb caressing your lax cheek. "This hollowed essence is what you were truly meant for. An exquisite lapse of mortal confines into something sublime..."

Chrollo leaned in then, parted lips a scant breath from yours as he searched your vacant stare for any resurgence of vibrant awareness.

"You are perfection..."

The scenes continued unspooling through Chrollo's mind, each recollection seeming to unfurl within the dimness of the bedroom. Another fragment soon took shape...

Amber liquor sloshed over the rim of the heavy glass tumbler as you tipped it back, downing the harsh burn in one defiant swallow. A harsh grimace twisted your features before smoothing into a morose blankness once more.

It was well past midnight, but the dimly lit bar showed no signs of thinning out. If anything, the press of bodies seemed thicker - a sea of desperation and vice-fueled oblivion swelling with each passing hour. Chrollo slipped through the throngs like a wraith, his sable gaze cutting through the smoky haze as it snagged on your lone, hunched figure at the far end of the polished oak counter.

Even amidst the drunken revelry, you seemed utterly cocooned in your own world of misery. One dainty hand painted crimson nails over smeared trails of mascara streaking your cheeks like inky rivulets. Yet you were oblivious to the ruined cosmetics - focus zeroed inward as you gestured blindly for another refill with your other hand.

Something very much like concern flickered through Chrollo's expression as he watched the bartender dutifully splash more amber poison into your upturned glass. Before he could reconsider, his strides had already eaten up the distance between you.

Distractedly, you swiped the fresh drink towards you - only to freeze when his fingertips materialized around your wrist, stilling its trajectory. Your bewildered gaze snapped up, all blurred crimson rims and swollen lids as you blinked at him in open confusion.

"Chrollo...?" His name slipped out garbled, thick, like you couldn't quite recognize him through the alcohol-soaked haze fogging your brain. Still, there was a reluctant ember of lucidity flickering in those depths. "Wha...?"

"Easy there." His tone was infused with a carefully modulated gentleness as he extricated the tumbler from your tenuous grasp. "I think you've had more than enough for one night."

For a suspended beat, you could only gape at him in wordless bewilderment - as if you couldn't quite comprehend that he was even real. Then all at once, your fragile composure simply...crumbled. A strangled sound, somewhere between a hiccup and a sob, gurgled up from your chest to clog your throat.

You were crying in earnest, shoulders quaking with the force of your abject despair before Chrollo could even parse your reaction. Instinct overrode reason as he sank into the stool beside you, one hand settling over the sharp jut of your shoulderblade while the other curled soothingly around the nape of your neck.

"Shh...just breathe, darling." His words were hushed, lulling as he pulled you against the solid line of his side. "Whatever has you in this state, tell me. Let me help."

Babbled, hiccuping gasps tumbled from your parted lips as you curled into the hollow of his shoulder and throat. You reeked of sour booze and salt, yet Chrollo did not recoil from your distress. Instead, he stroked the sensitive hairs at your nape in an anchoring rhythm, waiting patiently for the torrent of misery to ebb enough for intelligible speech to win out.

"He...he was with her! With that vapid little t-tart from his office!" The confession emerged in a wretched outburst, fraught with venom and betrayal. "After everything, he still...he was sleeping with her behind my back!"

Ah. So that was the root of this maudlin display - infidelity. Chrollo's lips pressed into a grim line as the pieces slotted into place. Of course some base, undeserving wretch would be foolish enough to wrong you so egregiously. To discard a brilliant mind like a banal plaything when they could scarcely begin to comprehend the depths of your worth...

His palm trailed in soothing strokes down the tense ridge of your spine as you heaved another juddering sob against the lapel of his coat. "Shhh...we'll make him regret the day he took you for granted, darling. We'll make this all go away, for tonight at least."

The rumbling murmur was laced with a conviction bordering on zealotry. Chrollo was utterly undone by your naked anguish - mired in both protective tenderness and dark contemplation over just how he might erase this slight. For you were meant for so much more than these kind of vulgar pains, this reductive mortal torment...

You reeled back slightly, eyes glassy and rimmed with clumped mascara as your brow knitted in confusion. But then Chrollo brushed the pad of his thumb along the swell of your lower lip - just a whisper of contact yet somehow searing with intensity. The hitch of your breath and instinctive part of your mouth was all the answer he needed.

Neither of you could rightly say who instigated the first crush of lips in that moment. It was needy and desperate, a frantic meshing of mouths tinged with the bitter fuel of anguish and something darker still. Chrollo's hand cradled the back of your skull as he angled closer, tongue lancing past your parted lips to taste the remnants of liquor and salt on your own.

There would be no gentle coaxing on this night. Only a frenzied tearing away of hurt and betrayal before the wounds could fester into something more insidious. A shedding of mortal flesh to reveal the brilliant essence burning beneath as you yielded into his possessive embrace...

The fragment drew to a hazy close, the visceral urgency of that encounter still pounding in Chrollo's veins. His grip tightened almost imperceptibly where his hands cradled your face and waist. Remembering the pure desperation fueling your surrender that night - how you had clung to him as the only tether left in the maelstrom. How he had claimed you wholly unto himself in the throes of solace and unraveling...

"Mine," he rasped against the seam of your lips, savoring the phantom memory of how pliant and undone you had been for him in that moment. If only for a handful of searing hours before the mortal coils began reweaving around your brilliant spirit once more.

But he would eternally relish that glimpse behind the veil, where your unbound essence had shone through unto him alone. The start of his fervent devotion to keep that flame tended, no matter how deeply he had to delve to stoke its radiant spark.

The memories began to scatter like ashes on the wind as Chrollo pulled back just enough to drink in the devastation he had wrought. His thumbs traced the sharp blades of your cheekbones, reverent despite the mottled bruises and lacerations maring your once unblemished skin.

Chrollo's grip tightened possessively as he vividly recalled that fateful night when he had first tasted the intoxicating depths of your psyche. Even as you had fallen apart in anguish over your unfaithful lover, there was an incandescent fire that drew Chrollo to you like a moth to the flame.

He had meant to simply provide a brief respite - a single night of forgetting your mortal turmoils as he indulged in the radiant essence you unconsciously exuded. But from the first crush of your pliant lips against his own, Chrollo found himself utterly enraptured. Each desperate roll of your hips and keening cry spilling from your throat only stoked his covetous obsession.

You had been so gloriously undone in those feverish hours - defenses obliterated, self discarded like a shed skin as you surrendered your entire being to the oblivion he offered. And in doing so, you had revealed the scintillating truth burning at your core. An existential fire, brilliant and rapturous...yet simultaneously fragile within its corporeal confines.

Chrollo's body was rigid now as he curled around your vacant form, conscious mind awash in the recollected sensations. The salty musk of your spent passions...the litany of ethereal sounds he had drawn from your kiss-bruised lips...the exquisite rapture of joining his essences with yours in those scorching instants of coalescence.

It should have been enough. One soul-searing glimpse into the untrammeled truth of your existence before allowing you to resettle behind your mortal veneers as societal dictates demanded. But even as he held your utterly spent form in the aftermath, body humming with satiated contentment, Chrollo recognized the obsession had taken insidious root.

He could never be complete until he had experienced the full unbridled depths of that prismatic flame he had witnessed refracting through your fragmented psyche. No matter how far he was required to descend in stripping away the superfluous layers masking your truest self from view.

Which was why, in the end, such...radical measures had been required to liberate you.

Chrollo's stare bored into your vacant eyes as if seeking any residual spark still banked behind that thousand-yard emptiness. His mouth brushed your cooling temple with something akin to devotion as the memories of your systematic unraveling played out in his mind's eye.

The isolation...the escalating torments he had ceremonially unleashed to flay both psyche and flesh from your core essence...the rapturous fervour of witnessing your final fracture into this transcendent, pristine stillness.

"You are the ultimate absolution," he murmured, clutching your husk closer. "My luminous ossuary - shedding at last your ill-fitting bodily accessories to reveal the immaculate truth shining beneath."

His lips brushed your slack, parted mouth, savoring the liberation of having reduced you at last to this perfect, unbound state. Preserved forever as the concentrated epiphany he had coveted from that first, searing taste of you drowned in mortal anguish so long ago.

"Mine," Chrollo rasped with heated finality. "You are mine, now and for all eternity to come..."

Chrollo cradled your deteriorated form against him, that flickering obsession still burning bright in his breast even as he drank in the full extent of devastation he had wrought upon you. For a fleeting moment, something almost like guilt sparked behind his impassive mask.

The once vibrant, brilliant essence he had fallen rapture to now lay utterly unmade. Your eyes stared back at him, unblinking and devoid of the soulful spark that had first ensnared him so completely. Just...empty. A hollowed vessel in the wake of shattering your very spirit to reach that primal truth buried beneath.

Chrollo's thumb traced the sharp jut of your cheekbone, calloused pad catching on the ridges of mottled bruises and lacerations peppering your ashen flesh. He had been the architect of this ruination - methodically flaying away every layer of identity and reservation until only the naked essence remained. A scorched earth approach in pursuit of cradling that luminous fire unbridled at last from the confines of your corporeal self.

But surely even this devastation was a brutal form of preservation? Eliminating every potential tether that might restrain you from the transcendental state of pure, unfettered being he had laid bare...

His grasp convulsed minutely, fingertips pressing almost bruisingly into the fragile dips of your body. Perfection, he tried to reaffirm. This was the apotheosis of preserving your immaculate truth in stasis. The self-aware cosmos distilled to its most sublime....

And yet...

The briefest flicker of uncertainty lanced through Chrollo's stare as he studied the desolation reflecting back at him. For the span of a solitary indrawn breath, his convictions seemed to teeter on the precipice of horrified doubt. The full magnitude of what he had unmade you into crashing against the uncompromising fervor of his beliefs like a sanity-shattering wave.

Then your lips parted with the barest sigh, the slightest tongue movement giving audible shape to a single rasping exhalation. A phantom whisper seeming to give voice to the oblivion reflecting from the depths of your vacant stare.

"Chrollo..."

The tenuous moment fractured. Whatever fissure of trepidation that had pried open an instant before was abruptly extinguished by the guttering embers of Chrollo's dedication. His palm cupped the sharp hinge of your jaw as his brow creased in a minute frown of reproach.

"Shh...no more," he soothed in a hushed murmur. "Your essence has transcended such temporal limits at last."

With agonizing tenderness, Chrollo brushed the faintest whisper of a kiss across your placid lips. There was no response from your end - no flutter of lashes or instinctive reaction. Just the weighty stillness of a mind and spirit severed completely from any lingering mortal confines.

Chrollo pulled back a bare fraction, his sable stare glittering with something like reverence as he studied the husk before him. The fate he had meticulously crafted for you in pursuit of undoing every superficial strand barring his unfettered view of the unfurling truth laid bare at last.

And in that moment, a twisted sort of absolution seemed to settle over his expression. This bleak squalor was both sanctum and crematorium - the smoldering aftermath in which your indelible imprint had been forged into existence eternal. No matter the state of the vessel's decay, your essence would endure, preserved forever in the chilling serenity Chrollo's morbid dedication had produced.

As for the systematic dismantling and agonies required to unmake you to this degree...? All such atrocious steps were hallowed by the certainty still burning in Chrollo's conviction as he cradled your emptied husk with the covetous desperation of an obsessive widower. The indelible truth of your being had ultimately been preserved in a state of perfect, pristine deliverance.

And whether that ultimately amounted to an abhorrent defilement or the most sacred of consecrations....Only Chrollo could rightly bear witness to the full breadth of that existential paradox now.

#hunter x hunter x reader smut #hunter x hunter x reader #hunter x hunter smut #hunter x hunter #hxh x reader smut #hxh smut #hxh x reader #hxh chrollo #chrollo x reader smut #chrollo smut #chrollo x reader #chrollo lucilfer

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sergle · 1 year

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As the nail goddess you are, may I humbly ask you for help?? I need to chose a design to go with this dress I got (if you search up jules and cleo metallic glitter a-line, first result is the dress). It’s all silver glitter pretty much, with a goddess/stardust vibe. I want nail designs that are classy but not too simple/boring. My date is wearing a Forrest green dress but green isn’t my favorite so I don’t know if I should incorporate it into my nails. Any advice?

oh EXCELLENTTTTTTT this is my favorite type of thing to think about. ok. I don't know if you're asking about a polish, or a nail art idea, but I have many ideas for you. here are some polishes that I think would match the dress, if you want to match! X X X

I think these are all gorgeous on their own, and you wouldn't need to do any extra work.

that said, if you want more ideas: using some silver foil would be really pretty, and is VERY easy to execute. I have a little tub of gold leaf foil, and I've done nail art w it before. you could do something like this:

which, you'd just use a nude jelly polish as your base, maybe this one or something like these? but imagine silver instead of gold obviously lmao

as far as green, and matching your partner's dress: I do think that could be cute!! dark green and silver compliment eachother imo. This shade might work! I haven't seen their dress so I'm just pure guessing.

so you could paint your nails with this if you wanted, and then put a bunch of silver foil flakes on an accent nail to bring it together.

If all of that matches too heavily, my other idea would be to use black as your base, and sponge a reflective / flash reactive top coat onto the tips of your nails, like an ombre. reflective polish is cartoonishly bright and glittery in certain angles of lighting, or if a camera flash is put on them, like this -

so it would be v impactful, but I think it would also be a really pretty and very wearable nail look. or you could wear it as intended, as a sparkly top coat! okay those are my main ideas!!! they may or may not work for you but I had fun thinking of them

#sergle answers #long post #nailposting

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16woodsequ · 5 months

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Sunday Steve - Day Twelve

Things that would be new or unfamiliar to Steve in the 21st century, either due to the time period he grew up in, or his social-economic status and other such factors.

Day Twelve: Soap

One day I was looking at a bottle of dishsoap and I wondered, would Steve have used this? So I looked it up. Liquid soap was patented in 1865 but "despite its popularity throughout the early to middle 1900’s, it wasn’t until 1980 that liquid soap became mass-produced for domestic use." (Link)

From what I've found liquid soap was not that commonly used. There were liquid shampoos in the 20s but many people used shampoo powder or liquified grated soap bars.

It's the same for other soap. Laundry soap and dishsoap came in powders and soap bars. Below you can see a box of soap flakes shown to be used for both laundry and dishes.

Soap flakes sold for 10 cents circa 1929

Here are some more laundry soap options we covered in the laundry post.

Laundry soap options in 1927. They included purchasing flakes, chips, or powder; liquifying your soap ahead of time(right); and (left) grating your own laundry soap from a bar. Fels Naptha soap, which came in a big bar, was rubbed on difficult stains and rings around the collar. (Link)

Liquidizing the soap entails taking soap shavings and dissolving it into boiling water. The liquid would then be poured into laundry water to be used. If left over night the soap re-solidifies.

For dishes another option besides powders or flakes is a soap shaker. This blog discusses early 20th century dishwashing, showing things like soap shakers and dish scrapers. Looks like one could use a soap shaker to more easily get suds from a bar of soap.

Modern soap shaker reproduction (Link).

But what about public bathrooms?

Most public bathrooms nowadays use liquid soap, and if liquid soap wasn't so common, what did they use?

It's possible some bathrooms used bars of soap it's not very easy to find information about that online. What I can find that is soap dispensers that dispensed powdered soap!

There's this one that had a crank to push the soap forward to an opening. Another type of seemed to have a lever/button press to dispense soap. Some styles shave off soap bars inside the canister as well.

I've never experienced these types of dispensers but looking online a lot of people seem to remember them growing up.

1940s era bathroom experienced in the 70s:

They were very simple -- white plaster walls with a wooden partition painted dark green, a painted concrete floor, and a plain white wall-mounted toilet. The sinks had cold water only, and over each sink was mounted a metal Boraxo dispenser -- Boraxo was a dry, gritty, powdered soap, and the dispenser was a sort of mechanical sifter with a lever that hung down below. You'd bang on the lever and a small amount of the powder would sift out. The towel dispensers gave out rough folded-red-paper towels

Circa 1936 powdered soap dispenser with crank handle. Note is says "pure dry cake soap ground into powder as you use it without any waste". So this dispenser seems to ground soap cakes (bars) into powder itself.

The video below is an example of push button powdered soap dispenser. Some dispensers have labels suggested to wet the hand first before using the soap. (37 sec video).

youtube

I have also seen people talk about soap leaves being available in women's bathrooms. The soap leaf booklets could also be carried around in a purse and used by the owner at their convenience.

You can see in this accessory pack that at least some soldiers were provided with soap leaf packets to use during World War Two.

In conclusion

It is unlikely Steve would be used to using liquid soap. From what I could find liquid soap, and especially the liquid hand soap dispensers, were not popular until the 80s (this seems to be partially because of the difficulty of developing a pump soap dispenser for liquid soap, so that would also be new for him.) I think the prevalence of liquid soap would surprise him as soap is so basic you don't really expect it to change but basically the whole experience of soap has changed for him.

Also, fun fact! Soap operas are called that because when they rose to popularity in the 20-30s they were regularly sponsored by soap companies!

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princessofpatras · 8 months

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Sneak peek of LYKMC chapter 11!

(a bit late today, sorry about that! my aim is to have this chapter done by next sunday, but as always, check back here for updates.)

Eventually he drifted off, and when he opened his eyes he saw the courtyard at school, awash in silvery moonlight. He was looking down on it from above, as though he were floating somewhere in the starless sky. There was a dark-haired figure seated on Aimeric’s bench, but Laurent knew at first glance that it was not Damianos. The figure knelt before him was too small to be Kashel, with a mop of brown hair atop his head and blue sapphires dripping out of his ears. They piled up around his knees, the puddle of frozen teardrops growing as he knelt.

A chill hand gripped Laurent’s heart, and snowflakes fell from his eyes to dust the ground beneath him. They landed unmelting in his uncle’s hair, and Nicaise’s too, glimmering like diamonds upon their heads.

Uncle looked up and smiled at him. “Enjoying yourself?” he asked, in a voice sharp with amusement.

Then suddenly Laurent was watching from behind the tree where he’d hidden from Damianos and Kashel, and in his fist he clutched a rock the size of a softball. With a wordless cry of rage, he threw it toward the bench. The stone bench split in two with an impossibly loud crack that echoed inside his skull.

A plump white dove took startled flight, vanishing beyond the trees. Uncle and Nicaise were gone.

The clouds parted, and Laurent squinted against the sudden sunlight in his eyes. The grass was summer green beneath his feet, and around the border of the yard yellow and orange daylilies swayed in the breeze. They waved at him like old friends.

A rustle in the brush behind him sent Laurent’s heart leaping into his throat. He whirled, expecting a rabbit, but it was his uncle who stepped into the grass, crushing it beneath his toes. He stopped in front of Laurent, smiling.

“I have a gift for you,” he said. “Hold out your hand.”

Laurent did. His uncle pressed something cold into his palm that seemed to bite at his skin. Laurent unfurled his hand. It was a small metal razor blade, sharp as sin.

He looked up, but his uncle was gone. Nicaise sat across from him on the floor of the bathroom stall, a blue wall behind him. The razor lay on the tiles between them.

“It’s my turn,” Nicaise snarled as chips of paint flaked off the wall behind him and drifted lazily downward like a slow blue snow, “mine.”

He lunged forward, and Laurent did too. They scrabbled on the floor, fighting each other for the blade. Laurent’s hands turned red with blood. Nicaise’s remained white as bone.

Laurent gasped and sat up in his bed, his arms and legs all tangled up in his sheets. Across the room, his door knob turned, creaking softly. He never knocks. A shadow slipped into his room.

#this is a dream laurent is having if that’s not clear lmao #idk if this is really the best part for the sneak peek but #everything besides the dream felt too spoilery #lykmc #my writing #captive prince #laurent of vere #nicaise #damen of akielos #lamen #captive prince fanfic #capri fanfic

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molassified-minipak · 4 months

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There’s a chapel in the Temple of Time.

A close space, gated, with a window to the west. The stained glass does not fill its frame as the Temple’s other windows. The bottom third remains clear, low enough for children to peek through and view the Lost Woods through the roofs and spires of Castle Town. Adults must stoop.

Vines twist around the ever-open gates. Golden and green, with bejewelled fairies wrought into the bars. A sapphire body’s wings are rubbed dark and tarnished - for luck, the townsfolk say.

There’s a shrine in the chapel in the Temple of Time.

Fairies, real ones, gather there. The seven symbols of the seven Sages encircle it in a halo of blessing. The plaque is wood, not metal or stone. Ancient red paint flakes in a spiral. There are no other marks.

The chapel is haunted, the townsfolk say. Only the pure of heart may enter. The gates warp in a way that anyone with ill intent finds themself back outside. Discordant flutes follow them. Laughter brands them unworthy.

The children of the town know better. They play safely and warmly in the light of the setting sun. They leave flowers and sweets and interesting bugs at the base of the plaque. This chapel, this shrine, is to their hero. They will all return home without care - as their hero never did.

#not really febuwhump #but febuwhump adjacent #atmospheric study #legend of zelda #loz #downfall timeline #implied mcd #temple of time #oot

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fantastic-mr-corvid · 8 months

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Red

for day 15 of @owlcatober, healing, as well as day 27, blood. i took a different angle for mura, using the endless potential of the 'healing spells that channel positive energy hurt dhampirs' lore. self analysis here

warning for graphic descriptions of blood, injury's violence and death, even if it is mostly described in an abstracted and poetic way.

one of muras earlier kills results in her running through the dangerous parts of the city, trying to flee the guilt that plagues her in the form of blood, eventually tripping into a healer, an unfortunate event for both of them.

Cloth irritated the skin on the back of her calves, snapping against the soft skin as she ran through the labyrinthine alleyways of the lower city.

Damp soaked the little cloth under the rough-spun cloak, the metallic smell something she breathed through her mouth to avoid, lest it overwhelm her.

It had already hardened under her fingernails, red flakes falling to the uneven stones, leaving a trail of guilt that blazed in her mind.

Something wet sliding down her brow and cheek, a welling of red that threatened to blind her.

The same rough cloth slipping down with her cycles of movement and swallowing the wet- just to burst open the wound again.

Wall of noise meets her ears- eyes open at the many movements, the intricacy of the moving parts. The cloth spares her pain.

Drip goes the red on her brow, shut goes her eye, twist goes her ankle, and down does she go.

Fingertips meet soft cloth, angel feathers to her calluses, and as a hand reaches down, the falling red stains the hem, consuming the pure dress and drowning her world.

Soft murmurings soothe her ears, light shining bright on her, leading her eyes up.

The hood slips to one side as smooth digits cup her jaw, blinding her seeing eye. Light burns through the cloth still, radiance unsmothered by the red crusted rags.

Light burns her, and as it pulses down the arms of her angel, something inside her screams, and the red is diluted with salt.

Pain follows, the light hitting her skin as a supernova, eclipsing her flawed vision, surrounding her in its entirety and then some, with her eye at the center of the exploding body of light.

Red scorches her inside and out, the carrier for the damaging force, paper skin peeling back from the white gleaming shell underneath, ropes of pain withering in violent wails.

Her hands reach up, nails turn claws, biting into the soft flesh that caused her pain, mouth forced open in a desperate wail.

Bruises on cheeks blooming in red again, welling up and bursting forth, exposing the dolls threads, salt entering and stinging the wounds that covered her face, the cracks in the porcelain revealing themselves under the paint.

A look of revulsion turned regret is formed through the snippets of light that enter her eye.

Threads twitch through the pain, claws grow, something molten is cooled with salt and red and pity.

With a final effort, bones snap and snap again and red, red is everywhere, again.

Drowning out the white, again

More white bones, these built for damage, reach towards the collection of ropes and threads and red all hidden under paper, the shell on top thrown back with the force of pain returned.

Red bursts through, a violent flower bloom, its short lived petals wrapping her in warm embrace, its vitality pouring into her, withering her own flowers, red turning into blues and greens and browns and it shrivels back to its proper state, petals hugging the shell and threads, porcelain fixing itself, pouring another layer of paint to hold together the shattered piece

Falling onto the slowly draining warmth, a soft cushion between her and the cold hard stone, red spilling to the crevices between them, red filling her world, filling her up.

Darkness descends as threads grow slack, the only burning bisecting her face over here eye, the cool darkness spreading through her as her jaw unclenches, something pleasant in her gut calming as footfall avoids her, just a new rock in the stream of moving parts that floods through the lower city, just another drop of red lost in the city.

#thebirdwrites #mura hagdaughter #here you go!#i dont think i can say enjoy but i hope its interesting

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cog5 · 1 year

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May - The Keep, South, Area 1B

#dungeon23

5.4. Northwest Gallery

Eight paintings line the walls.

1. A handful of snails, crushed on a cement slab.

2. The interior of a clock tower.

3. A hearth, on fire, the blaze is out of control.

4. A lean man with a top-knot and a severe case of posterior pelvic tilt. Their hands, deep in their pockets. They step boldly forward.

5. A frame with no picture, the bare wall shows through on the other side. From behind the wall, the sound of knocking.

6. A bathtub, filled with just enough water to drown in, should you fall asleep.

7. A woman hunches, picking up the pieces of a shattered plate.

8. Ice cream. The kind you like.

Under a glass cloche: A spindly plant, sprouting vibrant, green leaves with dark purple veins that pulse like a heartbeat.

5.5. Northeast Gallery

Eight paintings line the walls.

1. A house, but only half. A half-house.

2. A room with large windows, from which pale light pours in. In the room’s center a tree, with flaking, pale bark. Its growth stunted by the ceiling.

3. A highway at twilight, filled with empty automobiles. In the distance, an old woman waits high upon the overpass.

4. Abstract. Remarkably, the feeling summer.

5. A taxidermied bear, its muzzle missing. Mechanical parts protrude from the hole. If it could sing, it would.

6. A void, absent of form or light.

7. A flawless reflective pane of glass. A mirror.

8. A wild dog standing in a dark doorway. Its eyes are large, spinning spirals of incandescent sparks. It hunts.

Inside a glass display: An exceptionally heavy scepter, laden with excessive ornamentation. Grasping the handle is troublesome and getting it through doorways is inconvenient.

5.6. Hema’s Pool

The floor of this room is filled with knee-deep water. At its center, a suspended, metallic sculpture, an amalgamation of human organs intersecting with one another.

If the surface of the water is broken, the organs will activate and manifest a “thing”. A scene, object, or being, based on 2D2 art pieces from the four rooms surrounding it. If a complex “thing” is conjured, the sculpture is likely to be lost in it, obscured by the illusion.

This “thing” is seeded by the last thought that entered the adventurer's head, before they stepped into the pool.

This “thing”, for all intents and purposes, is real, until a situation is resolved. The situation is whatever the adventures perceive it to be. However they decide to solve the situation, is correct. Alternatively, they can find and destroy the organ sculpture, to break the illusion.

5.7. Southwest Gallery

Six paintings line the walls.

1. A young servant, holding a water jug. Her smile contains far too many teeth.

2. An old man, a farmer. Face cracked and dry, hands knotted and gnarled.

3. A ceremony, six figures dance around a goblet under moonlight.

4. A large fish with feeler fins that seem to probe at the edges of the canvass it’s painted on.

5. A faceless man, dressed in a suit tailored from the skin of cucumbers.

6. A stark bedroom, an empty bed, a massive hole in the wall, as if something had been blown out of the room.

Inside a glass display: A chunk of bark, carved to look like a sea-side village. Rows of fishermen with vacant eyes sit upon the docks, each in various states of casting their rods. Above them, long legged birds perch, waiting to see what the ocean will bring.

5.8. Southeast Gallery

Six paintings line the walls.

1. An empty pub washroom, broken stalls. A row of urinals, more of a trough, really.

2. A body of a bee, crushed, laying at the bottom of a small hole, surrounded by pristine grass.

3. An alien saucer, vaporizing a city skyline.

4. An endless hallway, unnerving angles, accented with pastel stripes.

5. A picnic table in the dark, seated with a lonely minstrel.

6. That sandwich shop you’ve been meaning to try, abandoned, boarded up.

Under a glass cloche: A mechanical model depicting an old water mill, operating in a forest clearing. Droplets of oil simulate a rain storm as they drip down strands of fishing line, coiled around the scene.

#ttrpg #dungeon23 #ttrpg maps #dnd #indie ttrpg #ttrpgs #osr #drawing #inkdrawing #ttrpg art

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kaikishoku · 2 years

Text

(short story) atelophobia.

1539 words. for the prompt "write about someone whose desire to constantly improve something borders on obsessive." from reedsy.com

atelophobia: (n.) the fear of imperfection or not being good enough

"I know this... thing is important to you, but don't you think you're going a little too far?"

"I can honestly say I have no idea what you're talking about."

Amira bites her lip. Elodie stirs her tea with a swirl of her finger, stopping on the tenth turn and pulling it to her lips with a come hither gesture.

She decides to try again. "When was the last time you slept?"

"This morning." Elodie sets the cup down with a little pat, pale green wisps of her magic disappearing beneath it. "For three hours. That counts, doesn't it?"

"Did you fall asleep," Amira asks slowly, playing with her spoon, "or did you pass out?"

Elodie's nose crinkles. Amira sighs, slumping back in her chair.

"Ellie—"

"It counts," she snaps, the shelves of dried herbs and powdered medicines jumping at her voice. "It does!"

"Alright! Alright, alright, it does, it does." It does not, but she isn't looking to get stabbed by a knife tied to her best friend's emotions—or worse, turned into a lizard. Again. "I'm just—worried, you know?"

"There's nothing to worry about. I'm almost done."

"If you're sure," Amira replies softly, and Elodie takes a loud sip of her tea.

The sun is on a downward spiral and she's about to leave when Elodie asks, her gaze cast towards the ground in faux disinterest, if she'd like to see for herself. Amira stares at the brightly lit avenue just outside of the hovel, surrounded by tall trees painted in the yellows and oranges of fall, the smell of the home's freshly re-stained leather suffusing the air, and shuts the door with a nod. They travel through the long boot of a house, stepping around piles of books and baubles that Elodie refuses to throw away no matter how many times they go through the song and dance of spring cleaning. Elodie's hand is warm when she helps her across a hole in the floor, almost too wide to jump but not quite there, not yet, and the warmth stays with her long after their hands are parted. Amira holds it to her chest as Elodie unlocks the stairs to the basement—a room longer in height than it is in width, the heel of a stiletto trapped beneath the ground—and only starts her way down when she's given the go-ahead.

She always knew Elodie was better at magitech than her, but the gauntlet resting on the worktable in the center of the room just seals the deal. Slivers of pure silver wind their way through a bright copper coating, in and out like veins, culminating around a dark stone—black sapphire, she thinks—at the center of the gauntlet's palm. Every part of it has a purpose—the bronze clasps to make it easier for the joints to move, the steel at the end of the fingertips to soften the conductivity, the scratchings of runes on its underside where it would meet the skin. Amira lifts it with ease, marveling at how light it is despite its workings, and studies it as Elodie joins her by the table.

"It could be more efficient," she mumbles, brushing metal flakes from her workbench. "As it stands, one can only wear it for about six weeks before getting tired out."

"Six weeks!?" Amira turns to her, staring. "That's—that's a month and a half, Ellie, that's plenty efficient! Especially if that's all the time—no one wears this kind of thing all the time, twenty-four-seven, so they'd never hit that point!"

She pauses and looks down at the gauntlet, turning it over to get a better look at the runes. "What is this for, anyway?"

"It's to stimulate magic. Some witches are born with a strong seed of magic, but their thales are too thin for them to use it. This gauntlet—and its matching twin, once I'm satisfied with this prototype—should help to stimulate those thales and enable the user to use magic as easily and freely as any witch with properly working ones."

"Oh, that sounds like my problem." Amira stares at it, then looks up. "Are these for me?"

Elodie's ears turn red, but she says, "No, they're for—in general. Medical Arcanology is my major, Amira. I just—happened to tackle this problem that you happen to have. You aren't the only witch with terrible thales, you know, it's actually a— a pretty common problem, and—"

Amira cuts her off with a hug, burying her face into the other witch's shoulder with a sob. "Oh, Ellie!"

"D-Don't..."

"Thank you," she whispers, her cheeks warming. "Ellie, thank you."

"It's just senseless that some of us are designed poorly." Elodie sniffs, but she returns the hug—it's tighter than Amira expects it to be for someone of her bony size. "Especially when those people are as stubborn about magic as you are."

Amira laughs, and they hold each other quietly for a few heartbeats more before they part, faces red. Elodie takes the gauntlet from her and sets it back on the table, clearing her throat and taking a small screwdriver from her tools pocket.

"Anyway—as I... As I was saying, it could be more efficient. It's just been difficult to synthesize the mythril I need for that in a large enough—and pure enough—quantity." Elodie pauses, tightening a screw on the wrist. "I've been dreaming about it lately."

"This is what I'm talking about."

"I am so close, Amira. If I can just get this to work, you'd—a general you, don't smile like that—you'd never have to take it off. You would always," she says on a breath out, knuckles white around the screwdriver's bright red handle, "have magic at your beck and call, at your fingertips, just like the rest of us. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

It would be. Amira flexes her fingers, well-aware of how cold they are—a problem with her magic circulation meant her blood circulation was a little thin, too. She wouldn't have cold hands, cold feet, cold anything if she had working thales. She wouldn't need seven layers to go outside in the ever-chilly climate of Wornstone, and she wouldn't catch her death playing in the snow that came every season save summer... She'd be able to cast magic as effortlessly as Elodie did, as any of their peers did. It'd be a blessing. It'd be a miracle.

It isn't worth losing her best friend over. Elodie has always been thin, but she'd become aware of just how much thinner she had grown when they'd hugged. Her dark red eyes, her charm point, are sunken in, the skin around them dark with a lack-of sleep. Through her olive skin Amira can see her thales pulsing a ghoulish pale green, a sure sign of arcane sickness. Her normally meticulously kept white hair is unkempt and twisted, and her trembling fingers reflect the tugging and twirling she's done to it with sharp indents around them. Amira first takes the screwdriver from her and sets it down, then takes her hands and raises them to her mouth.

"Elodie," she begins, throat tightening. "Elodie, Elodie, Elodie. I really, really appreciate it—everything. But I promise you that six weeks is plenty of time. I promise that I don't have to wear it every moment of every day to be happy."

Elodie's eyes widen and she shoves her; Amira stumbles back with a yelp, but she keeps her hold on Elodie's hands and they both go down on the stiletto's basement floor.

"I am doing this for you!" Elodie's voice is strained, tears springing to her eyes. "And you're just going to reject me!?"

"I'm not rejecting you, I'm just—" Amira struggles with her, coughing as an elbow goes into her gut. "Ellie, I love you, I'm just saying that this is good enough!"

"It isn't! It isn't, it isn't, it..."

Elodie stops struggling in her arms and sobs instead; Amira breathes heavily, the weight of the other witch making it hard to get enough air into her lungs but not enough to make her feel like she needs to push her off. She strokes the white hair, untangling it with her fingers as she goes, and speaks softly into the space above them.

"If I could even match you for a day I'd be happy, Ellie. This is more than enough. No one says you have to perfect it tonight either, or even tomorrow. We have our whole lives ahead of us." She smiles, watching Elodie's shoulders shake. "Why not leave some of that work to an older, more experienced Elodie Masters?"

"As long as Amira Arima doesn't go too far from her side," Elodie replies, sniffling. "Will you promise to stay with me?"

"Always, Ellie."

"Then I'll stop. Just for now though," she continues hotly, sitting up and wiping her face. Amira breathes deeply, blessed air filling her lungs completely. "I'll continue once I've rested up."

"And you'll be reasonable about working on it from now on, right? Taking breaks? Eating?"

Elodie's nose crinkles. "No promises. But I'll try."

Amira sighs and closes her eyes. Better than nothing, she guesses, and she lets Elodie help her up so she can try the gauntlet for herself.

#short story #amira arima #elodie masters #fantasy #lgbtq

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flakehub6 · 1 month

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psalacanthea · 1 year

Text

Whalefall

1.3k words. just some writing.

...

A lone swing creaks, wood cracked and weathered by the endless mist and long-dead children.

The metal frame is covered in paint that flakes away under her fingertips, leaving fragments of green paint and rust on her skin. The sky is gray as she lifts her eyes, a hint of watery sunlight swiftly swallowed by the unending clouds. It threatens rain. For three nights they’ve been here, and every night it rains, and every day it threatens to.

The air is always wet.

“Mommy?”

Breathing in sharply through her nose, trying to find clarity, find thoughts, she drags her gaze down from the endless gray and into a worried stare. Her eyes, blue, but so much more hopeful and softer. With a smile, she reaches down and rests a hand on her daughter’s head. Her hair is fine and thin, wisps blown in the wind.

“Sorry, dolly. I was just thinking.”

A hand is held up, hopefully, and she lets it take hers, pulling her away from the swingset. More paint flakes off on her fingers, leaving her tarnished and unclean. Impatiently she wipes it on her jeans.

“It’s not a very nice playground. Why don’t we go home?”

Her daughter leaps up onto the seat of an old wooden bench that surrounds a dry fountain, pristine white sneakers landing in tandem. The bench is dark, waterlogged, and pale lichen spills out of splits in the wood. She walks along it like an acrobat, one foot in front of the other, concentrating. Her path is broad, not dangerous, but children must imagine danger first to be prepared for it.

Some things cannot be prepared for, though.

Could not…

“I’m tired of being inside! It’s boring! I want to run!”

Uneasiness bubbles up and she doesn’t know if it’s because of the mist, or the unwelcome emptiness of the playground. The creaking of the swing. The gulls in the distance, wheeling over dead things at the beach. So much detritus washes up.

The decay in the air grows stronger with every breeze, like a memory.

Laden with death and saltwater, it toys with the little curls around her daughter’s ears as she tries to climb up to the back of the bench to find some more thrilling hint of danger. But mother holds her hand. She won’t fall. She can’t fall.

“We’ve only just moved in. We could go decorate your room.”

“I said no!” her daughter says, petulant and demanding. “Can we go to the beach?”

“Not today, today is a bad day to go to the shore.”

In deep blue overalls the little girl walks across the back of the bench, white tennis shoes lining up one after another, toe to heel, heel to toe. Wobbling, one arm held out for balance, face scrunched in concentration. Eyes like her mother.

The child attempts to leap off the end of the bench, and she lunges forward and catches her around her waist, a thrill of fear in her chest. Terror. But the child only laughs, caught and held in the safety of her hands, never doubting for even a moment that she’ll be caught. Flying.

“You shouldn’t,” she scolds, drops her down on the thin layer of pebbles that crunch underfoot, rolling across the packed earth. “You could have hurt yourself.”

“Mommy caught me!”

“And what if I couldn’t?”

The face that was so serious is all sunny smiles now, turned up to her like a flower hunting for the sun that will never, ever come. Her voice is cheerful, but it echoes. “Mommy will always catch me.”

Until she can’t.

The swing still creaks, with a weightiness that makes her uneasy to suggest it; it feels like someone else is already there. An invisible weight, a pressure like being observed by unseen eyes. Three crows sit atop the rusted slide, silent judges.

Three for a girl.

In the distance a car goes down the main street, a low drone that barely eclipses the sound of the ocean two streets over. The small hand twists in hers, restless, sliding free with a laugh as the child bolts for the dead fountain. She hops up on the edge, begins her tightrope walking all over again, chattering away about…nothing. Something?

The calling of the crows, the creak of the swing, the voice of no one's child, and the waves, the waves in the distance that bring in the mist, it all becomes one great sound.

Noise, it’s all noise, filtering into her ears as time stalls, the entire world being dragged past her to the left and right, just out of view. It stretches out, everything ahead gray nothingness. All color and life fades into that distant pinprick, her dry eyes staring. Forever and ever.

She breathes in the mist.

“Mommy?”

Blinking, she glances down into eyes, dark eyes. Eyes like her mother. The crows croak a warning, but the seabirds are screaming louder, fighting over something dead on the shore. That’s right. There had been a warning this morning, passed by her gossipy new neighbor. Dead whale.

Washed up on shore.

She’d never seen anything like that before, and she’d gone with a morbid curiosity–

“Mommy.”

A warning.

“Let’s go play on the boat,” she suggests, hoping that the faded wooden vessel across the way will be less rusted and dangerous. The wood was polished once, but that didn’t stop the wet. Like the benches, cracks have become home for insects, mosses, and straggling dune plants. A beached vessel bursting with life.

Dune grasses and sandburs shouldn’t make it this far up, but they find a way.

The child rushes onto it, tennis shoes squeaking, and makes right for the helm.

The little wheel rattles and shakes as it’s turned, corroded bolt groaning its protest. The colors of the boat have weathered to grays except for small splashes of red and dirtied white on the trim and on the lifelike carved barnacles clinging to its hull. She paces alongside it, holding up a hand as the child moves to balance on the prow. As always, the hand clings to her, holding tight.

Holding very tight.

Glancing up, she reaches for the white tennis shoes, trying to untangle a vicious sandbur from the laces. Clinging, nasty little seeds looking for a place to settle. It’s dug in tightly, and the child refuses to hold still, leaping off of the prow with a laugh of delight. She startles and jolts forward, an arm latching, staggering under the sudden weight.

A close call, a near fall.

Her heart pounds with another near-miss in what will be a lifetime of them.

Setting the child down, she crouches at her side, pebbles digging into her knee. “Let me get rid of the sticker-burrs, we can’t take them home.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re seeds. If we take them home, they will put down roots, and then our yard will be full of sticker-burrs and there won’t be any room for flowers.” Her fingers carefully work the vicious barbed thing out of the laces, leaving them fuzzy and stretched. “Mmh, these were new shoes,” she complains quietly.

“I’m sorry.” The voice is small and sad and penitent, and the child stares at her shoes with regret. It breaks her heart, the sorrow, and all morbid curiosities are washed away. She’s needed.

“It isn’t your fault,” she reassures, tossing aside the last little parasitic seed, scooping up her daughter. “I promise. Where would you like to go?”

Her daughter smiles, tilting her cheek to a supporting shoulder, fathomless eyes dark and incomprehensible. “Can we go home now?”

“Yes.”

With the child clinging to her, she leaves behind the empty swing, the warning crows, and dead things on the beach.

And goes home to put down roots.

#horror?#I guess?#cuckoo child #something washed up from the deeps #non-fandom stuff

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manwalksintobar · 11 months

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Look For You Yesterday, Here You Come Today // LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka]

Part of my charm: envious blues feeling separation of church & state grim calls from drunk debutantes

Morning never aids me in my quest. I have to trim my beard in solitude. I try to hum lines from "The Poet In New York".

People saw metal all around the house on Saturdays. The Phone rings.

terrible poems come in the mail. Descriptions of celibate parties torn trousers: Great Poets dying with their strophes on. & me incapable of a simple straightforward anger. It's so diffuse being alive. Suddenly one is aware that nobody really gives a damn. My wife is pregnant with her child. "It means nothing to me", sez Strindberg.

An avalanche of words could cheer me up. Words from Great Sages. Was James Karolis a great sage?? Why did I let Ora Matthews beat him up in the bathroom? Haven't I learned my lesson.

I would take up painting if I cd think of a way to do it better than Leonardo. Than Bosch Than Hogarth. Than Kline.

Frank walked off the stage, singing "My silence is as important as Jack's incessant yatter."

I am a mean hungry sorehead. Do I have the capacity for grace??

To arise one smoking spring & find one's youth has taken off for greener parts.

A sudden blankness in the day as if there were no afternoon. & all my piddling joys retreated to their own dopey mythic worlds.

The hours of the atmosphere grind their teeth like hags.

(When will world war two be over?)

I stood up on a mailbox waving my yellow tee-shirt watching the grey tanks stream up Central Ave. All these thots are Flowers Of Evil cold & lifeless as subway rails

the sun like a huge cobblestone flaking its brown slow rays primititi once, twice, . My life seems over & done with. Each morning I rise like a sleep walker & rot a little more.

All the lovely things I've known have disappeared. I have all my pubic hair & am lonely. There is probably no such place as BattleCreek, Michigan!

Tom Mix dead in a Boston Nightclub before I realized what happened.

People laugh when I tell them about Dickie Dare!

What is one to do in an alien planet where the people breath New Ports? Where is my space helmet, I sent for it 3 lives ago ... when there were box tops.

What has happened to box tops??

O, God ... I must have a belt that glows green in the dark. Where is my Captain Midnight decoder?? I can't understand what Superman is saying!

THERE MUST BE A LONE RANGER!!!

****

but this also is part of my charm. A maudlin nostalgia that comes on like terrible thoughts about death.

How dumb to be sentimental about anything To cal it love & cry pathetically into the long black handkerchief of the years.

"Look for you yesterday Here you come today Your mouth wide open But what you got to say?"

-part of my charm

old envious blues feeling ticking like a big cobblestone clock.

I hear the reel running out . . . the spectators are impatient for popcorn: It was only a selected short subject

F. Scott Charon will soon be glad-handing me like a legionaire

My silver bullets all gone My black mask trampled in the dust

& Tonto way off in the hills moaning like Bessie Smith.

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doublegoblin · 1 year

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Cavern Chronology Log:6

[I’ll keep this short. New footage has finally been recovered. -K]

Description: Transcription segment of larger video recordings recovered from Site 3. Analysis of the subjects show connections to a now defunct web series. Subjects presumed to be said host of the series; who will be referred to in text as Clyde. Location currently under investigation, current hypothesis is an abandoned industrial center outside of town. Rico has done his best to capture the “vibe” of what is occurring.

Video and audio were captured on a mid-range handheld camcorder. Said device was recovered from Site 3. The device was found in a battered but functional state. Time of recording will be provided as needed to establish a timeline.

Note: Backlog of relevant data is missing. We are currently attempting to obtain said data, but it may very well be lost.

Date: 08/13/02 Time: 12:00AM

The opening shot is that of a long and dark hallway; illuminated by a high powered flashlight. Concrete makes up a majority of the building material. Heavy looking rusted iron doors dot the hall, some slightly ajar but most are closed and sealed shut. Iron pipes criss-cross and rattle deep into the chasm. The olive green paint accents on the walls are chipping and breaking down. Near each door is a placard that would have held some kind of sign, almost all of them are empty. Overhead hanging tube lights lay dormant and covered in a thin film of dust.

At each closed door the camcorder stops and peers into the pitch abyss beyond the filthy glass. It can be assumed that Clyde is the one recording, and the only being present. His steps are unsteady and his breathing labored and raspy. Though it is unclear if this is because of exhaustion, fear, or something else. His cognitive functions still appear in full use, however there are the occasional mutterings not able to be understood. The lens is barely able to record much of what is past the threshold. Most rooms are just concrete rectangles, uniform in appearance. 5x6 meters in size, a drain in the center of the room, and an overhead light built directly into the ceiling. No furnishings are visible in most of the rooms, a sparse few do contain what appears to be a bed of some variety or a chair set just before the drain.

Clyde(?) stops at a set of doors open enough for a person of average build to pass through. The lens pans over to the placard holder which still has a very yellowed and frayed note “SHOWERS”. Reaching out to the door Clyde's arms are completely covered in fabric; a long sleeve shirt, thick gloves, the seemes between fabrics are taped shut. His hand pressed against the metal he lets out a strained groan and the door squeals as it opens; the blue pain around where his hand presses flakes away.

Clyde: Alright Troggies, let’s go take a look.

[His voice is hollow sounding, with an almost metallic undernote, most likely due to location and poor quality of the video data we could recover.]

Clyde: [Whispering] God I wish I wasn’t alone, this place gives me the fuckin’ heebee-jeebees.

[With some effort he squeezes his way through the door and into the shower area.]

Small white tiles checkerboard the floor and halfway up the walls. The door has opened into a tight hallway with a left turn at the end. Clyde pauses for a few moments and coughs. Many of the tiles have fallen from where they were affixed and shattered onto the ground. Beyond the bend there is a faint flickering of a light, seeing this, Clyde turns off his flashlight and holds his position. Struggling to pick anything up, the microphone does capture the quiet trickle of water.

Clyde: [Whispered] Troggies, I can hear you typing, and we saw this place still has power. I doubt a squatter is going to have a crowbar to pry that rusted slab open. It could be that they keep the water running so the pipes don’t burst? City Council was talking about reopening this place a few years back.

[He cautiously approaches the bend of the hall and stops just before the wall ends.]

Clyde: [Whispered] Okay troggies, I’m going to move the camcorder out and you guys tell me if you see anything in the comments.

[As Clyde slowly angles the lens around the corner the unit slips from his fingers and clatter to the ground. The echo reverberating through the empty room. A panicked shuffle of feet and the camcorder is lifted back up. Clyde begins to turn it around to inspect it.]

Clyde: Okay, looks like everything is still working. Fucking butter fingers.

[While inspecting the camcorder for damage we get a good look at Clydes face. It is mostly obscured by a black balaclava mask and scarf. The small amounts of flesh visible beyond the fabric is mottled gray with small cracks and scabs around where natural creases and folds would be present during natural speech. His eyes are obscured by black sunglasses; the right eye reflects back a sulfurous yellow shine through the lenses. Once confident in the undamaged state of the camcorder Clyde turns and heads back through the door. On his way out, the sound of water ceases]

[Once back out into the hallway Clyde resumes his slow walk down it. While walking he starts to mutter to himself]

Clyde: Go to the abandoned industrial complex they said, it’ll be great content they said! Bunch of jokesters…should have brought a buddy…fuck…damn rash is really starting to itch. Head is starting to hurt real bad again, maybe I’ll stop for a hot second.

[The sound of his steps slows. The view of the camcorder turns and shakes as Clyde gets seated on the dusty floor. In the relative silence the clanging of pipes carries through the stillness.]

Clyde: Much better. Now [the sound of off screen paper being manipulated] if the shower is here, then I must beeeeee here! [A sharp papery slap] So if the camcorder is saying 1:30AM then, holy shit, have I really been here for four hours!? Man time flies when you’re having fun I guess. Thankfully [the harsh snap and static of a can of something carbonated being opened via a pull tab] I’ve got you Mr.Redbull to keep me going.

[Soft fabric shuffling as Clyde lowers the scarf and moves the mask out of the way. After what I can only describe as a couple healthy slurps Clyde begins to cough and wince]

Clyde: Shit! Cough cough got it in an open one. Wow th-hack-at really stung…am I bleeding? A little, damn it. Ugh, now my head is really starting to spin. Maybe [LL] was right, maybe I should go to the doc.

[Another coughing fit, during which the can of Redbull is thrown across the hall. Sounds of distress come from Clyde as the camcorder is violently tossed from its resting spot. The view spins and audio is completely overtaken by the scrape of plastic on concrete. It does eventually come to a rest with Clyde center frame. He is standing with a hand on the wall, the other arm wrapped around his stomach, and his posture is hunched.The flashlight illuminates Clyde from the front]

Clyde: What th-th-the hell? Oh god, my fucking head won’t stop spinning!

[After holding this posture for several moments he slowly nods and with effort returns to standing upright. Almost immediately he doubles back over and vomits. The sound of his retching echo deep into the complex. Upon inspecting the material ejected by Clyde it appears more red in hue than other colors, possibly blood? Clyde notices the vomit and stumbles back. As he moves backwards the hand upon the wall leaves a smeared blood trail. Down the hallway is the crackle and pop of a radio being turned on and a couple more small pinpricks of light. Clyde does not notice these. Instead he stumbles forward and falls. Landing headfirst atop the ground, a low crack coming from impact. He lays motionless.]

After this a pair of security officers enter the frame. The two are a James Hogan: age 35, and a Tyler Grant: age 27. With weapons drawn and chest mounted lights shining they slowly approach the downed form of Clyde.

James: Oh for fucks sake. [Lowering his weapon and speaking into his shoulder radio] Looks like another bum got in just to fuckin O.D. in the hall, over.

Radio: Got it, check the body, see what he’s got on him. I’ll call the cops, over.

Tyler: [Also lowering his weapon he walks over to Clyde.] How the hell do they keep getting in? Christ on a bike this guy fuckin’ reeks. [Getting close enough he gingerly prods at Clyde with his foot before rolling him over.] Damn, young guy too.

James: You hate to see it, check him for an ID or something. Maybe the cops can let his family know?

Tyler: No way man, gag, I’m barely keepin’ my lunch down this close you fuckin’ do it.

James: Oh come on you big baby it can’t b- [recoiling he claps a hand over his nose and mouth] god damn! Dude smells like he’s been out in the sun like this for weeks!

Tyler: I told you! Hey, [points] grab that pipe.

James: Good thinkin’.

[Grabbing a long rusted pipe the two prod around at Clyde until they manage to get his mask off.]

Tyler: I know this guy.

James: You do?

Tyler: Yeah, my kid watches this guy. What the hell is a guy like him doing here and looking like this?

James: Maybe digital fame wasn’t what it was cracked up to be?

Tyler: Damn shame.

The two turn their attention away from Clyde and to the camcorder. Making their way over Clyde's body makes small movements. Tyler is the one to bend over and lift the device up. The lens is pointed down at the ground as the two look it over. As the view comes around to show Tyler's face, Clyde is standing behind him with the pipe raised in a shaking hand. Just before the pipe impacts Tyler’s head the data becomes unusable.

Date: 08/13/02 Time: 2:37AM

Blood coats the walls in large glistening splotches. A hunched figure we later know to be Clyde obscures another form on the ground. A third figure is slumped against the far wall. This would be Tyler, dead. His body limp like a doll and the left side of his head caved in from the pipe strike. Clyde turns to face the camcorder, in his mouth the eye of James sits between his teeth. With a meaty pop, Clyde bites down on the eye and the video feed dies again.

Date: 08/13/02 Time: 10:18AM

Clyde is sitting on a couch facing the camcorder, to his right is the body of Tyler. The room is dark, a pitiful amount of light is able to get past the drawn drapes. Clyde sits unblinking until his demeanor shifts. He sways gently from side to side and holds his head.

Clyde: Wh-what the h-hell? Whe-when…did I? [He turns to his right and looks over Tyler] Oh hey man…when did…when did you g-get here?

[Clyde stands and stumbles off screen]

Clyde: S-sorry I must ha…have black out, th-thanks for tak-tak-taking me to the hospital. Look…look…j-just make yours-self at home. I’m…going to lay down for a n-nap. I’ll c-call when I g-get up.

[End of recovered data]

[Wonderful to hear from you K. Keep up the good work. -T]

#writing #writeblr #original fiction #original writing #creative writing #original work #work in progress #fiction #CavernCC #cw blood #cw gore #cw language #chapter 5 #document horror #document style story

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