#might do spme writing though

[gunpowder-tim]

i cant sleep

[jaemacleod]

                                           Your magic white rabbit                                                     Has left it's writing on the wall                                            We follow like Alice                                                     And just keep diving down the hole

it’s quite remarkable.  perhaps something of the luxury his mind had conjured from a premier suite at a vegas hotel - only less gaudy.  the gold glinted like gold, not spme sprayed on gilt.  the place had a flavour of the antique and the rare.  perhaps a glimpse of the life he’d been destined to live had the world not taken an almighty shite on everything and everyone.  and perhaps, for one night... maybe a couple, if they decided to stay that long ( and compared to every other craphole they’d squatted in so far, jae is wondering what motive there might be to leave right now ) - he can do what he does best.  only this time without the use of magic... he can pretend - by using that wholly human capacity for abject denial - that reality is something it isn’t.  that the world hasn’t been swallowed by darkness and blood and monsters.  

and they scatter.  the group of people heading off about the property, delving into the house.  looking for refuge, for sanctuary, for safety for just another night.  some to sleep or rest.  some to scavenge what they could from the exquisite objects seemingly presented on a platter.  gilded and ornate, wealthy and indulgent.  the place was something of a palace to those with a magpie’s eye - and jae, for all that he’d put his life of petty thief behind him, was still quite captivated by a shiny bauble or two.   so he wanders along hallways with paintings of scenes long gone.  with portraits of faces looking stern and of some great import.  dressers that were likely some manner of antiquity, decorated with bowls and vases and silver.

doors are pushed - a library, a grand dining room, everything grandiose.  though he doesn’t pause until one of those doors opens onto something smaller.  something like a reading room.  a place for those so inclined to take quiet tea, or indulge in tiffin...  two large, high backed leather chairs that seemed supple and inviting by a small table replete with porcelain tea set.  ready as though waiting for a guest to arrive.  and if those chairs seem inviting, they certainly live up to the expectation when he takes to the room, drops his little backpack to the floor and slides into one, the soft leather curving around him like a well worn glove.  there are no other sounds.  from where he is, he can’t hear the others rumbling around the building.  but it doesn’t seem like an entirely bad thing - a moment of peace and quiet.  a moment to simply - relax.  and if, perhaps, he rests his eyes in a rare moment of luxurious comfort, then it would only be for a little while...

...it’s only when he shifts in the chair, lightly disturbed from slumber with a small snort - eyes peeling open - that he notices.  on the table, nestled just next to the tea set, is another small silver plate.  and, perhaps he should have expected this, it is, after all, the perfect setting.  on the plate are two familiar objects.  a small bottle labelled ‘drink me’, and a small cupcake with the label ‘eat me’.

“one makes you very tall the other makes you very small.”

the words repeated as if by rote from his favourite book.  something that rolls off the tongue with ease, and he’s leaning forward with a grin on his face, wondering if someone was playing a joke.  because by all means, he’s fine with pranks if they involved cake.  and there’s only one obvious choice - eat me would make the small tea room rather cramped, so he’d obviously go for drink me.  there’s a quick look around, wondering if the joker might reveal themselves - before he’s scooping the small bottle off the table.  because, okay... he’ll play along.  and as the cap leaves the miniature, hes taking a sniff ( smells a little like neat vodka, so okay... ), then pressing it to his lips before there’s a pause.  a grin - jae speaking to something anonymous in the air.  

“you think i don’t know this story?  alice drinks and then she’s too small to get back to the table - so...”

the small platter with the little cupcake is placed carefully at his feet, before jae is pushing from that luxuriant comfort of the chair and standing - then he does tip the little bottle.  coughs slightly as the vapour of the astringent liquid catches the back of his throat, and he’s chuckling - placing the bottle back on the table, shaking his head.  he’s half tempted to manifest an illusion - to see if the joker might actually wonder if somehow they’d passed him a magical tincture...

...but then, it appears as though he doesn’t need to.

the table begins to loom, the chair behind him suddenly takes on the size of a building, and jae... in seconds... is all of about three inches tall.  okay.  okay.  so maybe someone really IS playing a trick on him.  one of the other magicians... witches, somehow getting their own back by bending jae’s reality.  and there’s a moment of intense panic.  something that’s almost as nauseating as the sudden trip downward.  a sharp and brittle laugh splits the air, something that has the hair pricking on the back of his neck - scraping nails down a black board and teetering  quite neatly along the edge of sanity - his head half turning to look for the source before he realises the sound came from him.  and from down here, the fine, fine veneer of that luxury doesn’t seem to hold up.  smooth polished wood now looks old and rotted, elegant paint is blistered and flaking.  and he can see the curl of velveteen wallpaper, with waterstains, peeling away from the wall to reveal spore ridden blackness clinging to the plasterwork beneath.  things he hadn’t noticed before.  though there’s a growing nagging in the back of his mind that the decrepit, dreary, festering things just... hadn’t looked like that mere moments ago.  

well - there’s a simple solution.  to put things back the way they were.  to put him back the way he should be.  to not be in this freakishly distorted game that sits like another unhealthy hinge of the unknown and the terrifying, storm clouds forming chaotic patterns at the back of his mind and only growing larger by the moment.  -- e a t  m e --  the label visible from here, dangling like a sail from the side of the cupcake which looked like it could easily feed at least a dozen people for a week now.

miniature jae places his tiny hands onto the cold of the silver platter, resting on the lip and pushing himself up before sliding on the slick surface down onto the side where the bottle had previously rested.  the layer of frosting looks like an ocean from here, and the airy bubbles in the side of the sponge look large enough to stick his entire arm into.  it’s a nasty thought - that brings with it a visage of an old indiana jones movie... that there could well be something creepy or disgusting laying in wait within.  the magician isn’t entirely sure as to whether he’s ever seen a more ominous treat.  perhaps he was less alice right now and more hansel and gretel, lingering beside the delicious treat with the suspicious knowledge of something more sinister inside.

and perhaps he should have just grabbed some and stuffed it into his mouth.  forced it down, and thrown himself out of the nightmare.  but a moment hesitation is all it takes to see movement.  something shifting.  which really can’t be anything good.  though it’s with a morbid fascination, and no small amount of that growing fear, that jae turns to look.  and out of those spores blistering the wall behind the paper, something is growing.  something just as black and decidedly ominous.  taking form and shape as it sprouts impossibly quickly, one larger object in the center, a few smaller ones venturing from the wall in close proximity.  a mushroom.  no jolly spotted redcap, nothing pictured in childrens books or the kind that have gnomes with fishing rods sitting jauntily atop.  black, sickly and deadly, with fluted gills beneath coughing out more of those grim spores, something jae has a rather good view of from his diminutive vantage point.  he’s only thankful that a this size, he’s not big enough to breathe them in... hopefully.

the mushroom is bad enough.  but the thing that slithers up from the otherside is something else altogether.  it seems to ooze to the lip of the fungi and halt there, swaying, dripping some kind of noxious ichor from it’s tube like body.

and just as he’d known about the little treats, he know this.  only it’s not a jolly welcome to wonderland - this is a nightmarish gaze from the other side of the looking glass.  and his feet are already stumbling back, hitting reverse on the slippery silver platter - no questioned ‘who are you’, because he’s pretty sure that the blank, black face of the caterpillar already knows who he is.  it moves again, stretching that gruesome form almost to the ground, hovering and seemingly congealing, crystallising into a cocoon.  one hand grabs for the cupcake, snatching at a lump of something, but as he brings it to his lips, there’s movement on his hand, a myriad maggots in the now festering sweet.  and he can’t quite bring himself to shove it between his lips, gagging and nauseated.  but he really, really doesn’t want to hang around to find out what’s going to emerge from the chrysalis.

heavy breaths as he tries to steel himself.  one hand pinching his nose in preparation.

“don’t.”

it’s a voice he recognises.  something that sends the little magician spinning, reeling even more than the current horrors.

too late, too late.

the chrysalis writhes, squirms as the flimsy, greasy skin splits.  and there’s no burgeoning butterfly emerges.  there’s no bright splash of colour.  a hand reaching out of the tear, and a face, blurred and indistinct still held within the cocoon, pressed against the side, as though suffocating within.  the hand that’s clear bears a ring.  a simple turquoise and silver ring thst he recognises easily -  something which goes with the voice.  something which had adorned his sisters hand for the last ten years.

“...maeve...”

“don’t leave us again.”

there’s a moment where jae almost jumps out of his skin, hand still hovering next to his mouth as a maggot brushes against his lip and it’s just a reflex, knee-jerk reaction to fling his hand away and get the foul treat as far away from him as possible.

“i... i didn’t...”

“you brought us to hell and then left us here.”

now there’s an accusation he hadn’t been expecting ( not like anything else that was happening was actually expected, but that’s rather by the by ), maybe something about cutting the hair off her barbie when he was seven.  or perhaps wiping a booger on her knee just to gross her out.  but this - this chaos around them - no... he hadn’t done that.  they were home, and in the same part of his mind that was comfortable with denial - they were away from the demons and the monsters and the desolation.  they were... safe.

“n-no... i didn’t, this wasn’t me, and you’re not here... you’re at home with cormack and mammy and daddy and....”

“you and your big break.  your fame and fortune awaiting.  you didn’t think we’d be there for that?  your first night in the limelight - little superstar”

the skin of the chrysalis moves again, that hand reaching out and grabbing in jaes direction, he sees her distorted face shfting against the fleshy pod once more and he doesn’t know whether to reach out and try to pull her out - also too fearful that this thing wasn’t actually maeve ( ring and voice and now glimpses of that flame coloured hair aside ).

“a week.  a week later.  you weren’t coming out for another week.”

“for someone who loves surprises, you don’t seem very happy about this one.”

at some point, he’d shuffled forward.  maybe drawn by that macabre nature - the almost magnetic car crash voyeurism that seemed inherent in some people... definitely in jae.  perhaps pulled by the one glimpse of something familiar he’s had in almost half a year.  eyes flicking from the hand, the ring, to the blur of a face as he struggles to pick out more detail, ad he struggles to find any amount of bravery to make himself reach out and pull her free of those sickly confines.

“you can’t be real.  you can’t be here.  you’re at home.”

“don’t i look real, jae?  do i look like one of your - tricks?  you should know, being the man who can pull apart reality and make it whatever he wants.”

“i’m not doing this, it’s not one of my tricks.  why would i... it’s not me mae, i swear.”

“i know.”

“you’re not real.”

“i am.”

and the hand with scraps and smears of cake reaches out, grabs quickly at the one reaching from the pod.  because he needs to know ( then again, since when has touch ever been a confirmation of anything, the mind could be tricked into seeing, smelling, tasting, remembering, feeling, -- touch was just another of those sensations formed by electrical impulses which could be fooled as easily as any other sense ).  and jae pulls, attempting to drag her from that septic thing, to free her from the dull flesh of a prison.  and it works - the membrane of the thing splitting further, enough that, he can see half of her face.  bright blue eyes, a smattering of freckles, those streaks of auburn hair.  

“don’t leave, jae.  don’t leave us with the monsters.”

“i won’t.”

heaving now to try to extract her from the thing - and she manages to turn into the wider opening - he thinks it might work.  that he might be able to save her.  to pull her free of the dark.  but as her head turns, there’s another of those bright and brittle sounds, this time a shriek... the other half of maeves face, the part that had been obscured, was of the same rotted, mangled, poisoned sepsis as everything else.  flesh sunken.  teeth gleaming beneath lips that curled back into a snarl of a smile, pointed and too much ivory - tipped with red, a smear that pulled across what was left of paper torn and ragged skin.  a painted, demonic, undead clown.  and over the sound of jae’s own shreak, is a howling - a moaning.  a clamour of some ill fated soul coming from the blackness around and above, getting louder as though an approaching freight train, with speed and terror the two things to spur such a velocity.

“don’t leave us with the monsters.”

the grip on jaes hand flexes from something weak to an iron grip, and instead of pushing to get out, it begins to pull the other way.  

“don’t, don’t.  i don’t want to.  don’t make me go in there, maeve.  i don’t want to.”

his arm disappears up to the elbow, following the retreating hand - the distorted face of his sister only visible now as a grey shade in the deep murk that seemed to lie beyond.

“i’m scared, i don’t want to go.”

“i’m scared.  i’m already here.”

“i just want to go home.  i want to go home."

“this is home now, jae.” 

the grip on his arm slips and so intent he was at resisting the pull, that he stumbles back, clipping heel on the silver platter and falling.

“mae!  MAEVE!”

the pod heals.  closes.  the screams from the darkness cease with such abruptness that the sudden absence of sound is jarring.  

he shouldn’t have let go...           he shouldn’t have let go....                     he shouldn’t have let go....

                                                       this is home now jae.

“MAEVE!!!”

---

there’s a jolt.  jae, snoozing in his comfy chair back in ‘reality’.  the room seemingly peaceful.  no murk or rot or corruption anywhere, just that gilted splendour.  and he might have passed it off as nothing more than just a dream ( what was a dream but another reality your mind creates ) - if not for the small, empty silver saucer resting inertly and innocently at his feet.

“i shouldn’t have let go.  this is home now.”

words coming croaked to trembling lips as he slides off the chair and onto the floor.  fingers finding the wall where the mushroom had sprouted, nails digging in to peel back the paper.  it’s hard and thick and stiff with age, flaking off in small pieces.  but he keeps peeling and pulling and digging into the plaster beyond.  because she was in there, somewhere.  trapped in the walls.  in the nightmare.  

                                                    “this     is     home     now.”