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delinquunt · 3 months

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Out of Sight, Out of Mind

You enter the edifice of the arboreal alcazar hesitantly, clutching for security at the roots which twirl around the esophageal entrance, and shudder as the betoothed aperture behind you wheezes shut.

You are left within a large, quiet hall, with walls made of helical trunks of wood and vine towering into the sky braced by taut strands of meat. On almost every inch of wall, there is an inset space for books, and the room is lined with more volumes than you ever thought to see in your life. What is not built of gore is built of plant matter or a strange white metal, stark and perfect in its cleanliness - the bones of the venerable tower that the Great Tree winds around, ominous and ever-present. Pots and crevices assert themselves where the shelves do not, each grouping of upright alcoves made from some grotesque gorelike substance and each nook looking like something dug out by a particularly violent bird.

It is eerily still, and a dim carnal light hangs over the space, cast presumably by the large, pulsing scarlet bulb hanging in the center of the vaulted ceiling.

In the middle of the lair, upon a raised dais, rests a pile of what appears to be discarded plant limbs and fresh meat all jumbled up and sewn together. Where flesh knits itself into vegetation, feathers like blades of off-white grass sprout in little decorative tufts like petals and wave in a breeze that you can't quite feel. Desperately, uncharacteristically, and helplessly curious, you approach the heap of organic matter with a shaky gait.

The heap in the center of the chamber starts to shift as you approach, lifting and uncoiling itself from its own length. Its form is a tangle of meat and plant and feather. Sinew and tendons and ligaments hold together bundles of vine, spun around each other like something a rope might see in a nightmare.

It untwists itself over what feels like an age until its body starts to resemble something that makes a little more sense. The beast is covered in long, lanky arms in flanking lines up its woven sides, forming a centipedal shape beneath a long-haired head decorated in crimson-purple fronds dotted with little fuzzy puffs. Its eyes are like yours, fleshy and veined, but set into pitted sockets of layered, meaty vine. Even the bump of its faux nose is taller than you are by at least twice.

It braces itself on the walls and ceiling of the enormous, spiral-walled, cavernous library and looks down at you, its hair hanging in its face as it searches you, taking haggard breaths through a too-wide mouth. Something sickly-sweet drips from its lower lip, making 'pap-pap' sounds echo through the hall as they slap into the ground.

As you take this all in, something shifts in your peripheral. Hundreds - must be, you think - of figures, all bound at the waist to the base of this gargantuan being and made of the same nightmarish flesh-and-flora. They cling where they abruptly end to the place where it connects to the floor, clambering as if trying to claw their way up its body. They mewl and groan for something, and their Father reaches down with so-many-hands-too-many to pat and soothe them. Using bark-tipped phalanges the horrifying creature dips into countless seeping holes in the walls, digging globs of titian ooze from their depths and hand-feeding them to its court. The scent of barbecue overtakes the aura of the room, heavy enough to make it harder to breathe. Thick enough to make you gag.

The figure towering above you re-twists itself and you hear a cacophony of pops and clicks from it, like it's cracking its back - but when you look, you find that the sound was actually a series of round, oozing hives perched diagonally along where its spine should be, angled toward the ceiling. As it rights itself with a heaving, liquid-pocked sigh, short-statured bee-folk scrabble out of the hives and crawl along its body before taking off to the shelves lining the walls.

Their little spindly hands get to work sorting books into their places, digging out and storing orange goop, and flying into a series of holes ringed around the lamp at the middle of the ceiling. Relieved of anything diverting its attention now, the creature at the center of it all turns its gaze to you once more, arching its back forward and clutching at the walls and floor to get a closer look.

"I re-member you," it says, its voice breathy and wispy, strained in subdued enthusiasm. It has the tone of an intrigued scholar as it lolls forward, making a cage of its hair around you. There is a stilted separation to its words, like a lurch. Despite having lips, they don't move when it speaks. "Is this the first time we-'re mee-ting? I re-member you so hazy-ly… re-member your smi-le, your laugh-ter, your grati-tude. Did you come back for more? Or have you not tas-ted it yet?"

Its saccharine sulfur breath hangs like steam in the air as its vitaeus spittle pools at your feet. Strangely enough, the scent, combined with the rotten-meat smell on its breath, is soothing - though that does little to quell your apprehension. Quietly, as if the volume of your voice might anger this Kubrick-staring plant monstrosity, you let out a tiny squeal. The words sit lazily upon your lips but never fall out, afraid to obey your heart's pounding starting gun.

Truthfully, you feel bad. You certainly don't remember this thing, but it sure seems to know you.

Following your anxiety's cue, the beast flows forward and touches the bridge of its nose ever-so-gently to your forehead. Two pairs of its hands encircle you, and the tips of its fingers brush over the surface of your arms and legs, barely tickling the little hairs on your skin. Powerless to stop it, your muscles tense and your eyes clench shut. The grit of your teeth is audible throughout the room.

A moment passes before it shudders, the myriad fibers and cords comprising its body creaking like rubber as it shortly trembles. Its eyes are a picture of sorrow, pitiful and deep, as it looks down its nose at you. "This? This is why you come? This is what you have been thr-ough…?" It groans inconsolably on your behalf and releases a deep, rolling whimper. "I see… I see. I will help you unre-member it," it pledges, solemn and true. Before you can find the resolve to protest, its enormous lips are upon your forehead, brushing a giant kiss into your skin.

The spot where it touches you blooms with a sharp and sudden agony, and the pain spreads back across your head until your cranium is enveloped in it. You fall to your knees clutching at your temples in desperation as it watches with a piercing, indifferent gaze. You try to focus on them, but you're not entirely sure what's happening anymore - the fog of pain has made you oblivious to the situation around you. Moments flit away unnoticeably - what feels like seconds must be minutes, because whenever you manage to find respite from the fog, you've moved without realizing it.

"In eons I have exis-ted, I have known and felt. I was an infant as your home froze over, and came to watch over this place as kingdoms of your people rose and fell. But nev-er have I seen pain, suffer-ring, traum-ma like this, so deep and unmoving. Let me save you… be one with us. Be loved by us."

The sides of its face bloom with humanoid figures, more of the waist-locked, prostrating children of this eternal beast. Their bodies claw their way out from between the fibers that weave together to render the face of this monstrosity, as if it were a sack filled with them fraying to shreds. They clamber and grasp for you - you feel their squishy fingertips on your arms, their whispering tongues in your ears. The buzzing beat of thin, rapid wings echoes in the back of your head, and you slip into a state of uncertain reality. Are you really here? Is this really happening?

You are distantly aware that it reminds you of something very regrettable, but as you try desperately to put it out of your head, you find it's already been put out for you.

Where there should be a moment of shame, you feel nothing because you know nothing. When you think you should be bringing yourself down, you can't fathom a sleight that would rationalize your depreciation. Where once there was something very deep-seated and immovable, something precious and important but ultimately despised by itself, you find: nothing. An empty spot gapes where a relevant experience would grant some context. You feel like this reminds you of home, but you don't even know what home used to look like, now.

You wrack and wrack your brain for some inkling of the place that raised you and the people who loved you, but find only darkness. You try to remember what you looked like as a child, but no matter how much you comb your brain, it doesn't come to you. Something inside you wants to see a lot of water, but you can scarcely imagine what a lot of water would look like.

A new realization dawns on you, and a terrifying fear occurs to you: without these things, how will you know how to act? How will you know how to engage with your surroundings, or to cope with pain? With a stifled sob, you start to cry and whimper up at it with a mournful, pleading gaze. But the beast just tuts and shakes its head mournfully. This reminds you of someone very special for a half-second before it leaves, and you can't remember what they looked like or their name or anything you ever did together.

"Ssshhh, ssssshhh… you wi-llh be al-right. You won't re-member ever hav-ving them…" With each word, the pain grows increasingly excruciating, and you're not sure if it's just the emotional pressure or if it's doing something else to you anymore.

You fucking hate this thing, though - you know that. Every word is more annoying than the last. You're infuriated just hearing it speak.

You were certain you stopped screaming at some point, but the shrill shriek and the pain in your throat comes back and leaves again in waves. Choice words for this memory-stealing monster sprint through your head, and they leave your mouth before you can think not to say them. The only response this creature can grant is a belittling chuckle.

Pain begets more pain, and you find that you're too weak to stay on your knees. You flop unceremoniously onto your back, still sobbing and throbbing with agony as your spine arches skyward and your toes curl. The fire has spread to your nerves, and it radiates downward over your trembling, sweating body, screaming in every receptor you've got. With a resigned groan, you lurch upward and gag, and vomit all over yourself. The creature with the indifferent eyes and the much-too-large hands turns you onto your side with a little nudge, as soft and casual as a pancake.

The bees flitting about the chamber are infuriatingly nonchalant about all of this, as if it happens quite often.

At this recognition, however, your eyes snap open. Did you just have a coherent thought again? The pain has let up just enough to let you think again, and a single word floats about your mind unerring:

"Manaas,"

you whisper, breathless and broken, and it nods to you. "You re-membered," it affirms, and the tip of its enormous finger brushes over the top of your head. Through eyes clouded with streaming tears, you watch its hands approach and powerlessly allow it to sit you up against its palm. It smiles down at you like a father to his newborn, and you find the strength to loll your head back to look at its face as it unwinds a few errant vines from its fingers to brush your sweaty hair aside.

Looking into his eyes, you recall something comforting and important: This is not the first time you've stood before Manaas.

You knelt at the base of Manaas' body, dressed in flowing grey robes and decorated with brilliant bronze chains and dangles draped across your body. Salty tears rolled down your cheeks and drip-drip-dripped into the fleshy leaves beneath you. Manaas cooed at you and made other soothing sounds, but you were inconsolable, no matter how much it stroked through your hair or patted your head or made that loving pouty face at you.

"Do you know what's so amaz-zing about hu-mans," it asks, snapping you out of the memory. "You can-not tell the re-al from the unre-al. It doe-sn't take much con-vincing." At your confusion, the corners of its lips turn upward and widen across its cheeks in a disturbing smile.

As it dawns on you, you sob at the mere concept and shake your head against its hand. It closes its fingers around you a little to comfort you, and it takes every bit of energy you have left to flinch away. The pain - what you would have called anywhere from a six to a ten previously - still burns in your head.

In an attempt to prove it wrong, you try to think back to your childhood again, and to the chagrin of the memory eater, it comes to you:

You smiled happily in this very room and looked down in awe at your first book. It was heavy in your little hands - and mostly pictures, for that matter - but it was yours. Finally, a piece of your Father's giant library was yours. The worm didn't seem so big and scary now, you thought, as you held your first treasured possession against your chest. It was a pivotal moment: a turning point. Fittingly, one of the earliest memories you could recall. You looked up at your Father and gave a baby-voiced "Whif!" to it, just as you were taught. You were always so polite. Manaas taught you to be so polite.

It's only comforting for a moment before you realize that it can't be right and it's not quite what you were expecting. 'Can't tell the real' your fucking ass, you think, as you let your head fall forward to look at the floor smugly. If it hurt to move your head so fast, you wouldn't be able to tell through the pounding in your skull.. You try to shove it in Manaas' face, but all that comes out of your mouth when you try to gloat is a wave of bile.

You ponder strongly what 'whif' is, and you've either accidentally spoken it aloud or Manaas can read your mind. Your question hangs low in the room like gas clinging to the floor for a moment, and then Manaas' thumb touches your thigh. "'Rhif.' It's an ex-pression of heartfelt thanks. It's Votsh Jherin, some-thing I taught you to speak when you were ver-y small. You re-member now, don't you?" It tilts its head back a little and you groan, frustrated.

It's right, though you won't admit it. To your awe and abject terror, you do suddenly know very perfect and unaccented Votsh Jherin. You've always loved the sound of it, the way it flows from your tongue and makes you think in sing-song and all of its adorable idiosyncrasies, like the way that saying you 'love' something is just saying you're certain of it.

Wait, that can't be right. You're pretty sure you only just learned it.

In the silence that hangs as you finish considering this, you bring your limp hands to the sides of your head again and try to think of something comforting.

Images flash in your mind's eye of birthday parties spent with Manaas, schooling from Manaas' High Priestess, and making friends with the bee men in your spare time. A memory of Manaas crying in what it thought was privacy, whispering the name 'Yishi, Yishi, Yishi…' and another of it avoiding the question of what that even is. You remember being instructed to speak Votsh Jherin in the Old Way, and being taught to speak the tongues of Old Earth, too. Manaas gave you a packed list of human movies to watch and books to read, and asked you all sorts of questions about them. 'To relate to other humans,' your Father had said. You don't feel like it should be true, but you were always quite the scholar, just like your Father. You recall being told folk tales from the world that Manaas was born on, and you remember Manaas comforting you when you climbed the library shelves and fell and broke your leg.

Amidst all of this, so familiar yet so distant and strange, you start to wonder about things more intimate, and you remember with no small degree of illicit excitement your first orgasm.

Manaas held you in its massive hand in the dimmed light of the Great Hall of the Grand Tree at the center of your beloved city, Ythllwa, and you touched yourself, just as it showed. It held you close to its face and watched you curiously, as if for a moment you were not its Child and instead some sort of experiment or subject.

It had always been curious about humans, now that you think about it.

You stared up the barrel, past your quickly moving arm, past your raised feet sitting on its thumb and made eye contact with the gigantic, horrifying, beautiful thing studying you. And romantically… you came, in that moment, as your eyes met. Manaas' eyes even lidded, uncharacteristically - shading halfway at you, and you heard it laugh dotingly and lean in to kiss you where your wriggling body was extra-sensitive as you came down from it.

You shake your head and squirm, spurred a little by your horror. Or… are you egged on by arousal, now? It's so hard to tell. It seems like you're split down the middle about it, mentally. So much of you wants to hate this defilement of your mind, but just as much of you wants to forgive this terrible creature for taking care of you. For raising you. For giving you pleasure. It's getting harder to convince yourself that none of what you're remembering is real…

… For, truthfully, how can you know anymore? If Manaas can take your memories and replace them with new ones, it's just as likely that the ones you had before weren't real either, isn't it? You realize - to your abject horror - that there's nothing to suggest that you didn't walk out the door, lose your memory, and turn around and walk right back in.

You feel yourself tumbling a little, on the edge of some slippery mental precipice. You find that you can recall embarrassing and sad memories, too, but none of them so traumatic that you recoil. Times you fell and skinned your knee as a child, and Manaas touched the wound and made it better - the split in your skin wreathed in silver bloom, flesh growing from Manaas' fingertip and joining with yours seamlessly. Once when your partner broke up with you and you cried all the way home, and Manaas commiserated.

You pray that your reasoning is intact, that you are correct in feeling that none of this can possibly have happened. You move over the timeline again and again, staring right between the horror's eyes. It can't have been that long since– …and you halt abruptly, finding you can't remember what home was supposed to be called, but you forge on so bravely. Wasn't your homeworld taken not so long ago? But even this you doubt. You can't remember it happening, and you should! You're… wait, how old are you again?

You try to do the math. You know when your birthday is supposed to be… 'if the shelves were a certain way in this memory, and I was this old, then…,' you find yourself thinking, but snap out of it when you realize that these are the fake memories, and resign yourself to the truth:

This thousand-armed Memory Thief has stolen your age.

You recall that Librarians aren't meant to be able to take things known for fact, though to your terror, you can't put your finger on how you ever learned that. Through tears and a crackling throat, you choke out a hateful sob. Drool dribbles down your chin as you attempt to spit at Manaas but only spit on yourself. It tut-tuts at you for this and shakes its head, tickling you with its hair.

The worst of it is not the feeling of loss. Nor is it the helplessness. It's the confusion, actually - pliable and unable to tell true memories from false as you are, you're not even certain what the date and time are, anymore. If it can affect your short term memory as well, then it's possible you've been going through this cycle of hate and loss for hours. You wonder how many times you've been down this road, how many round turns you've suffered, forgetting and re-realizing and forgetting again. And you feel so… small. Maybe you were wrong, maybe it wasn't just a few years ago that… something happened (You cant even remember what anymore). Perhaps the truth - if it even exists - is that all of those years have been spent breaking and forgetting and breaking and forgetting and breaking and forgetting.

Addled and disoriented, you find a question caught at the back of your throat, though you've not the strength to ask it.

You think that this thing must be a God. You saw yourself worshiping it. You know it has a High Priestess.

It answers immediately: "Nnnnno," and sees you are unexpectedly disappointed and reassures you. "There are worse things than me. I am just a sheph-erd to a sad flock ben-eath His Eye. It is not me who takes your me-mory, it is He," it says, and more of its progeny sprout from its palms, and their soft vegetal hands cup your cheeks in a gesture of adoration that feels impossibly genuine. "He loves you. We love you. Through our hands, He holds you. Through our eyes, He ad-ores you. For His gaze is pois-on to your lit-tle mind. If you think yours-elf bro-ken now, you would be forev-er lost be-fore Him. He… He is a God as your kind would have worsh-ship-ped."

As if to purposely overwhelm you, Manaas continues as you sit in awe at this.

"To an-swer your o-ther quest-ion… the question of time…," it starts, but it trails off agonizingly. If you were a hundred feet taller you would strangle this fuck.

You become so impatient that you close your eyes in frustration, and open them to find that you've moved. You didn't even feel yourself being moved, but here you are, held up in this thing's huge hand - 'just like your first time,' a traitorous part of you muses. Your hand is clutching something written on thin, tanned parchment, and you raise it to read it.

"I,"

You start to read the letter aloud, noting immediately that it is written in your handwriting,

"grant prior consent for Manaas the Elder - my love eternal and guide - to steal, fabricate, and modify my memories."

Beneath this, in lieu of a signature, sits a stamped thumbprint of blood - and you can remember putting your thumb there.

You turn your head just-so and look off to the side, and see in your peripheral that you're no more than a couple feet off of the writhing floor. The terror and outrage boil inside of you and alloy with the glint of freedom, and they galvanize you as your nerves electrify.

You roll to the side, crumpling the contract in your furious grip as you tumble out of this thing's palm. Adrenaline surges through your veins, a tide of superhuman strength to push you to the door, driving your legs without your mind having to think on it. Something primal is pushing you toward the light.

You reach out toward the gasping hole in the wall and cry out for it to open, your voice a tired but ineffable scream, and it groans asunder for your passage.

But the moment before you cross the threshold, a gargantuan hand comes down around you, trapping you in its fingers.

"Whh-at a shame. We will do it ag-ain. Ag-ain unt-il you love me… ag-ain."

As its disappointment burns like poison in your ears, its offspring sprout and surge around you, full of life. Dozens of hands touch and probe you relentlessly, cupping the insides of your thighs and tickling at your armpits. Then the buzzing of its apian servants, screeching in around you, wings beating hungrily for a taste.

So many hands and vines and mouths violate you. Your sense of sanctity shatters, hopelessly stuck under this mountain of flesh and desire. Moaning, warbling plant-folk and chittering whispers drown out your thoughts, and you feel the beast's middle finger curl inward and make stern contact with the back of your head.

Tendrils of flesh - plant and meat alike - writhe in your hair, messing up your locks and teasing at your scalp, curling around the shorter strands at the base of your neck. It tickles, itches, and smarts as it probes your ears, and the sullying of even your grey matter comes as a funny feeling in your chest.

And then you stand up.

Full of determination with an edge of uneasiness, you stare up at the pulsing entrance of the inner chamber of the Great Tree at the city's center.

You do not know what you will find in the depths of the palace of the Grand Librarian of Ythllwa, but in your heart, there is a glimmer of hope.

A red light washes over you as the door squirms open.

#my gay little posts #mold doll #cw: noncon #cw: mindfucking #cw: abuse #cw: torture #out of sight out of mind #happens in the same world as mold doll just like for my house #you will note some similar names and concepts #manaas is my ideal man lets be real #guy who can take my memories and also hes a giant 50 foot tall plant centipede guy and he has no morals

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