danielcain

[danielcain]

“Run into a cave and break your ankle so that people have to come find you and they see you lying at the bottom of this beautiful cave and maybe there’s a waterfall and the light from the crystals makes you look really beautiful and they say “Are you okay?” and you say “I think so” and they say “oh my God have you been here alone this whole time with a broken ankle” and you say “it’s okay” and they say “you’re so brave” and you are brave and you look so beautiful surrounded by cave crystals and everyone stands over you and says “oh wow” and “you poor beautiful thing” and “I’m so sorry we let you run into the cave but I’m so glad we found you” and let them carry you home and promise to be your best friends forever and that everything’s their fault and also they named the cave after you and you’re prettier than all of your enemies and your enemies all died of jealousy while you were in the cave.”

— Daniel M. Lavery, How To Respond To Criticism (via boringoldraphael)

[danielcain]

Working on something new

[danielcain]

A peek at Yaquina Head Lighthouse

[danielcain]

Something that David Lynch gets that Lovecraft never seemed to understand is that if the gods that govern the space between spaces are truly vast, unknowable and infinite-- then somewhere within the confines of that dark infinity is the capacity for joyousness, kindness, and even love.

[danielcain]

No Quadrupeds Left

It was not out of the ordinary for children to possess both a pathological fear and an insatiable obsession with the four-legged Beasts of the past. The pre-Vanishing ecosystem was seldom spoken of, and only in hushed tones.

Sometimes, if an older relative grew drunk enough to feel absolved for any improper remarks, a certain sense of dark humor kept the topic tolerable, and children would ask questions about the Beasts. It was rare enough an occurrence, normally suited to post-festival gatherings. One drunkard, oft battle-scarred, slurring a diatribe about trading Beasthide as little cousins sit attentive, hugging grass-stained knees to their enraptured hearts.

‘Uncle, what of the Beasts that didn’t vanish, those who were already meat or leather?’

‘Yes, yes! Did we bury them? Did we give them rites? What sort of rites befit a Beast?’

‘Children, children, your dear old uncle has had too much wine and fermented fish. I shall answer in the morning, I shall regale it to thee you plainly, as my grandfather regaled it to me.’

Of course, when the morningdove crowed, the family’s children would find rolled-up cots and the sound of grownfolk arguing over missing silverware, no sobered-up old soldier in sight.

Reader, Next time you find yourself in the Crescent, go to a tavern. A nice one, don’t get yourself slashed. The kind full of young grownfolk, 20 winters or older. As them about ‘the Vanishing Uncle’. It has become somewhat of an archetype to the natives, much like the linen-silk trickster of the East, or the bruin-hugging Gaul. Do take care who you say this to, some don’t admire the bravado.

We all knew him, or knew someone who knew him. Everyone had a story of irresponsibility and embellishment. When speaking of this sort of man, we would preface: “Now, these are the thoughts of a distant uncle, not I…” In some villages, this is still so. In some villages, gossip on the matter is acceptable, but anything more is offensive.

For brevity: It wasn’t discussed. A rule, an unspoken rule akin to covering your loins and boeing your when a woman or widuu enters the baths — if you were raised correctly, you never had to be told outright. Adults were never to discuss the specifics of the Vanishing around children.

Especially not Adel and Utor.

As a boy, Adel was fascinated by the Beasts of the past. From hulking grey brutes with coarse skin and horned faces to the cherubic mutants ancient men kept as soft-furred companions, every child had a favorite. Children often had encyclopedic knowledge that would soon wear off as they lose interest and enter middle childhood. At 6 and a half, Adel was no different. His favorite vanished beast was the Dog.

Adel's best friend, Utor, favored the common Horse. Utor was a sensitive child. He played nicely with boys and girls, yet preferred to play alone. Usually polite, he had an occasional defiance streak, and a strong sense of justice. Regarded, perhaps prematurely, as a precocious sign or intelligence or virtue, this judiciousness was encouraged by the village tutors. Utor was the only child who played with Adel. The two engaged in imagination-play, crawling around on all fours, imitating sounds that could have been. What it must have been like to be them, to see them, the four-legged Beasts of yore.

They spoke of many things, but the Vanished Beasts sparked many conversations. Arguments, too. Utor’s parents and Adel’s mother never had to intervene, not until one day in Springtime.

While weaving crowns of daisies in the field, just ever so slightly out of the watchful eye of his overworked mother, Adel stole Utor's ring of daisies and crowned his own head with a triumphant display of listless bluffing.

Utor was upset, but he centered himself. He refused ‘caste-sink to the aggressor’ as his militant uncle would put it. The thought of this own mercy emboldened him. He reached out to swipe the crown off his thieving friend.

To Utor’s shock Adel slapped his hand away. Far harder than a friend had ever slapped him prior. The kind of slap reserved for the lowest of disciplining. Utor clutched his aching hand, dewdrops of tears welling up in his eyes. Silence became tensions as they watched the wheels in each other’s expressions start to turn. Utor thought carefully, as carefully as he could think with a stinging hand.

"I see why you like the Dog. It was the most meanest four-leg of them all."

It was the first insult he could think of. A cogent retort, or so he thought. Adel was being cruel. Adel loved the Dog. Utor only liked the daisy chain, but Adel hurt him physically. In young Utor’s mind, this exchange of blows was Hammurabian. Surely, they would resume playing.

To his surprise, Adel retorted instantaneously.

“The Horse carried meaner men than any Dog.“ Though it was mumbled with unmet eyes, its tone was as if Adel had been waiting say this all year.

A new, foreign kind of humiliation thrummed in Utor’s chest. His fair-skinned face burned ruddy. It chemical-burned from rejection into rage. It burned so much, made so much pressure in his skull, he was screaming like screaming kettle he said, “when hungry, the Dog would eat…. raw….”

Utor’s shaking voice snagged on taboo, yet still, he elaborated.

“The raw pulp of their own. Of fellow Dogs.”

Adel was never an expressive child. (He had not even cried at birth, even as the midwife chanted a hearty mantra, unsheathed her stiletto to sever the umbilical cord round his neck.)

"Dogs ate their masters."

"That's not true."

"Dogs ate their masters even when they weren't hungry. Dogs bit-“

Utor’s vision eclipsed into sudden darkness as Adel’s left-hook struck him. A slap, why- every child has been slapped. That was life in the Crescent. This was not a slap, this was a balled-fist strike.

Utor stayed in a heap on the ground, even as the teal-green sky phased back into sight above him, quick tears quickening the kohl to run from his eyelids to his snot-dripping chin. Finally, he manages:

“You hit me. You HIT me! I’m telling your mother! I’m telling hyr!”

No response. Just heavy breathing from Adel, looming above him with an uncharacteristic scowl. The whimpers continued.

“You’re no worse, no worse at all, than a vanished Dog,” he cried.

Adel’s mother heard the exaggerated wail of Utor from nearly sixty strides away. Hy wished it to be a playful holler, waited a pinch. Alas, another scream. More anxious than agitated, hy gathered up the hem of hyr silks and headed for the field. What a horrid child, hy thought fondly, just like his father.

Year ago, when the midwife cut the noose around his neck, Adel drew his first breath as a sort of trade.

He began to cry. And cry, and cry. His mother bled, and bled, and bled until she passed, became his foremother. His father cried too. His father, he-now-hy, cried so hard, that the soul of the foremother passed into the gouge in hyr heart. That must have been why, the villagers thought, that Adel’s father became Adel’s widuu mother so willingly. This was what the villagers gossiped, anyway, and continue to do so.

[danielcain]

[danielcain]

What they’ll find in our drawers:

[danielcain]

I got to do the thumbnail and bumper art for one of my favorite youtubers, Flawed Peacock, for his video on the short story anthology The King in Yellow. It's been a dream project and I'm so proud of how it turned out. And the vid is 9 fucking hours long alksdjfsljd

[danielcain]

every time I see this thumbnail I feel too harrowed to click the video. nothing good or honourable can be happening inside that hamburger with an expression like this. not at all

[danielcain]

Through them the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever. We owe them a debt none will ever know.

[danielcain]

o-face

i need to get this off my chest 

for a few years, i’ve had increasingly common problems with loved ones giving me strange looks. 

i don’t know if it’s because i might be kind of on the spectrum or something (according to my roommate, lol) or basically a hallucination but the more i got to know someone the more they’d show me this face without realizing it. 

the nuances of the expressions were always different. but there always breathe hard. they breathe very, very hard. their body language remains the same, but from the neck up, it’s like their head occupies a completely different moment in time, a completely different context and sensation. the the scenery, the reality around the head doesn’t change, but the light does. and i feel their heavy breathing, i feel it in my ears in the same way you might hear your own breathing under a sheet or in a closet. the faces were always slightly different, varied person to person, and time to time, but each individuals tended to have certain personalities.

i swear, i’ve developed ptsd symptoms from experiencing this all my life. something that only is either some massive joke played on me or actual insanity. my childhood was pretty easy, i started developing this during puberty and it just never went away. it was scary as fuck. 

only when i got my first girlfriend did i begin to recognize the expression. i was a freshman. the most intimate relationship (then 19m) and her (then 21f).  we were having sex and her face started getting weird. 

so i froze, like always. only this time, her eyes refocused, she looked at me dreamily, and said, “why’d you stop?”

“your face.”

“you looked…” i didn’t know what to say. “you looked in pain.”

she scoffed at me. “never made a girl cum before?” 

no i just saw that face all the time, and never once had it looked back at me. i didn’t tell her that. 

the next day she made the face again, i pointed it out, and she didn’t react. frozen, heavy breathing. it didn’t look exactly the same. the eyes were wider, bulging. her tongue slid out of her lips and lolled like a fat slug, where in bed she had tastefully licked them. it creeped me out.

so i only realized then it was not only someone’s “orgasm face” but it was a snapshot of the last time they orgasmed. i could tell if she faked it, or if she had masturbated in between. 

the next partner i had was a guy. i quickly lost interest in him, too, sexually. but i felt that i could experiment. he was easier to bring to orgasm than my girlfriend. i found out he cheated on me because he had made a face i didn’t recognize, wincing, like he was taking it up the ass, something he and i never did.

i slept around in between. it was interesting. i could kind of reverse engineer what they liked by the expression on their face. honestly, it was one of the few ways i could consider myself “socially adept.” i could tell who liked to be controlled a little, who liked to be hurt. i could tell who was so uptight they couldn’t look anything but ashamed when cumming. there was always a margin of error, you know, the faces always looked a little grotesque. but maybe that’s just how people look when they cum, isolated, without the context of lovemaking; an unsightly, honest mask. 

[danielcain]

Water by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - 1593)

[danielcain]

Monique Ligons’ Biblical Insectarium

[danielcain]

Russian ID photos.

[danielcain]

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😫 this strain is called “carcosa” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

me: yeah whatever I don’t feel shit

5 mins later: dude I swear everything that’s going to happen has happened

my buddy rust, pacing: this is all just a dream inside a locked room, a dream about being a person

[danielcain]

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