#Tales of the Grotesque

[frontmezzjunkies]

"Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque" Brings Shivers to the Campbell House Museum by White Mills Theatre Company

#frontmezzjunkies reviews: #EdgarAllenPoe's #TalesOfTheGrotesque at #CampbellHouseMuseum #Toronto crafted by #BrandonWhite #ShannonMills #RobCarruthers w/ @jonassqjt @ecmazuract @spencerschunk @divafables @zoecleland @campbellhouseto @whitemillsto

[mariocki]

RIP Timothy West (20.10.1934 - 12.11.2024)

"We met when we were cast with small parts in that really boring play, so had both brought the crossword to stop us going mad. We saw each other across the rehearsal room doing it, so decided to sit together. Then we couldn’t record because of the strike one day so we went to the cinema, Pru and I, to see The Grass is Greener with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. The show was cancelled, but a bit later Pru sent me a card saying ‘they’re reviving that terrible play, are you in it?’ I wasn’t but we started writing to each other then."

"Humour is vital, and respect for what people do and what people think. Kindness is important, and we’ve always had the same humour, laughed at the same things, been interested in the same things, got cross about the same things. And been in the same business. We have often been away from each other work-wise and therefore we’re always very glad to see each other again."

[nosleep83]

Day 82 of waiting for Tales of the Tmnt!

I played around on snapchat with my friend at our track meet take these

[thatonebirdwrites]

Heroic

Lena Kieran Walsh knew her plan was perhaps the most ridiculous and ludicrous plan of all time. Yet her mother's last wish before her death had been, "become a menace to our enemies."

Lena, in tears, holding her mother's hands, vowed, "I will. Be at peace, Mammy." Her mother exhaled few ragged breaths with a faint smile before she slipped away. As if she'd only needed Lena's vow to finally let herself go.

The funeral had been a quiet affair, mostly due to her mother's instructions. Lena invited those on her mother's list, but she also added Sam Arias and her daughter, Jack Spheer, and Andrea Rojas -- her friend group to help support her.

They stood on the Cliffs of Moher that day, and as requested by her mother, she spread her ashes amongst the dirt by that trail and planted the oak. It had taken a week to get permission for the planting due to the area being a park, but the week had given Lena time to secure the ingredients for one last spell.

Lena herself didn't believe in magic per se. She was a scientist to her core, preferring to study biology and physics at the university, her thesis on the use of nanotechnology to target and destroy cancer cells. A project she shared with Jack and Sam. As much as university had set her apart from her mother’s lessons, she still remembered the old ways.

Traditions taught from mother to daughter, magic and stories that mustn’t be forgotten. Her Mammy was a self-professed druid within a larger druidic coven. She'd been highly regarded in the community as the caretaker of Ireland's history and myths, and Lena had been expected to take her place until she’d flounced off to uni.

But that day, she asked Sam to hold her brolly, it being a soft day, the mists from the heavy clouds like pinpricks against her cheeks. She knelt in the dirt and unstoppered the growing potion, one she’d carefully made per her Mammy’s instructions. Sung the magical words and focused all her mind and heart on imbuing it with her love for her Mammy.

That day, on the Cliffs of Moher, Lena poured the potion into the roots of the oak and sung the activation song. Her voice clear and precise, the melody soothing with little runs, and her eyes closed to keep herself from weeping. Tears would shatter her voice, and she needed to this perfect.

She could do no less for her Mammy.

Later Jack, Andrea, and Sam would swear the tree had grown during that moment, but Lena had her eyes closed and missed it. Lena expected the coven’s agreements that growth occurred, but Jack, Sam, and Andrea? They’re the pragmatics and realists of the group.

In the following months, she’d think of that day often, while she quietly worked through her mother's grimoire. Partly to better understand but also to continue her legacy in a way, and that was what gave her the idea.

Her mother referenced several artifacts that had been stolen from Haitian tribes, who had contacted her out of concern the magic within them was being misused. Her mother's cancer had prevented her from doing much more than attempt wards on the exhibits in London to prevent misuse.

But Lena had a better idea.

Why not steal from the colonizers who ransacked countries, starved populations into submission or outright killed them? Lena knew the stories of her people well. Her mother had taught her of the potato famine, which had been caused by the British literally poisoning the fields. The trauma of that colonization never left her people, and she let the rage from those injustices fuel her plan.

The Haitian tribes would see their lost artifacts returned, and Lena would wear the color of blood as a symbol of the dead left in the wake of the colonizers. Yes, if she planned well, she could leave her mark, and live up to her promise to her Mammy.

"Lena," Sam argued, "You can't do this alone. Let me help."

"I don't want to risk you," Lena protested. "You have a daughter."

"And the risk to you?" Sam crossed her arms and frowned. "You're family, Lena. And we help family always. So if you're going to do this stunt, then let me be your getaway driver."

“She has a point.” Andrea sipped her scotch from where she sat next to Lena’s bar. She leaned against it, both elbows on the counter, while her hand swirled the scotch. “This is a grave risk. Besides, it’ll be way more fun with friends, Lena.” She smirked. “I am an excellent—”

“Don’t you dare say it,” Lena pointed her finger at Andrea in warning. Her ex-girlfriend smirked in response and leaned against Sam’s side. The two had become nearly inseparable since meeting, and Lena didn’t mind if it meant less jokes about her own sex life.

Jack, who had stayed silent up to that point, chuckled. "Luv, they’re right. Doing this alone? It's a bit much. You need a team. I'll see if I can rig up a program to keep the cameras off your movements."

Lena already had done some preliminary hacking to see the extent of the security, but now that Jack had mentioned it, having someone to control the cameras would be immensely helpful. And Sam was an excellent driver and had a pilot's license, mostly because Lena had needed a buddy to get through the lessons.

"Fine. You all can help." She made a show of rolling her eyes and sounding put out, but secretly she was thrilled that her closest friends had her back.

Sam turned onto Mare Street in London, and slowed to a stop near 11 Mare Street. She parked with a frown. "Lena, are you sure this is it?"

Lena stared at the rather small storefront. Victor Wynd Museum of Curiosities was emblazoned above the more stately letters of The Last Tuesday Society. The window overflowed with a grotesque display of shrunken heads, skeletons, and voodoo dolls. No wonder Mammy's Voodoo friends contacted her for help. This place stank of exploitation of their craft.

"Yup. It's smaller than expected."

"Are you kidding me?" Sam leaned over her steering wheel. "There's a cocktail menu posted on the door."

“What? Are they drinking out of the skulls?” Andrea quipped, a hint of disgust in her voice.

Anger seared through Lena's veins. "Of course. Typical British."

"Hey!" Jack protested from the back seat, where he sat with a laptop. His fingers danced across the keys. "I am mildly offended, Luv."

"Jack, you're more Scottish-Indian than British-Indian," Lena drawled.

“Still. Till the Scots gain our independence, we do not drink from skulls.” He sniffed dramatically, but she knew he wasn't really bothered. "Their security is a load of tosh."

"Considering how tiny this storefront is, I'm not surprised," Sam said. "So, uh, what's the best way to do this?"

“Too distracted to hear Lena’s hours long presentation?” Andrea teased, which elicited a glare from her girlfriend.

“The placement of your hands is the villain here,” Sam shot back, her cheeks reddening.

Andrea raised her hands and wiggled her fingers. “We all need exercise sometimes.”

Lena rolls her eyes. “Stop acting the maggot you two.” She nods toward the museum-cocktail lounge. “Three am is the goal since they close around midnight. Jack, focus on taking over their security feeds. I'll have a program ready. It'll erase itself within twenty minutes. If I'm not out by then, all of you leg it. If I’m caught, I’m caught, but I won’t have you three joining me."

"That's kind of tight," Sam said, uneasy. "And we can’t just leave you, Lena."

Lena sighed. "I mean it, Sam. This isn’t some grand heroic moment. It’s breaking and entering.”

“I beg to differ,” Jack said. “Heroic is indeed what this is. Lost artifacts returned to their homes? A modern day Robin Hood.”

Lena smiled and shook her head. “Look, I get in, procure the stolen artifacts, and get out. No sight-seeing or distractions. Twenty is plenty.” She turned to glare at Andrea. “Can’t trust you not to lob the gob with Sam, so you’re the lookout.”

Andrea smirked. “Fine. I’ll wear all black.”

“Good. Do that ridiculous whistle if you see any Garda.” In reply, Andrea gave Lena fingerguns. “Sam, use your electric car. The idling’s as silent as a grave.”

Sam nodded. “Can do.”

“Now remember,” Lena narrowed her eyes at Andrea but glanced at the other two in the car for good measure. “We’re scouting now. No getting banjaxed. I need you all as sprightly as a wagtail.”

“Being a craic vacuum today?” Andrea quipped.

“No more dossing around, Andi,” Lena said exasperated. She used that saying once about Sam being too uptight, and Andrea adopted i almost immediately to Lena's annoyance. “Or you’re sitting the rest out.”

“Wait, there’s more planned?” Andrea grinned. “Mina, you’re holding back.”

“Shut it. We have a job to do. Now let’s get cracking.” Lena opened the door and wished she wasn’t about to sully herself in the most exploitive, macabre cocktail lounge she'd ever seen.

The moment she stepped inside, she wished she hadn’t, as the jampacked walls full of macabre exhibits and the strange musky scent almost had her walking right back out.

But no, she needed reconnaissance. Locate exactly where to enter, nab the target, and exit. Surely her ancestors and the ancestors of her mother's friends will forgive her for having a short drink next to a taxidermy lion on a table made from a sarcophagus.

She needed the ancestors protection for this, not their fury. Besides, the cocktails turned out to be manky as hell.

Dressed in a red cloak, wide-brimmed hat, gloves, and boots, Lena felt a trifle ridiculous but also proud of herself. Time to finally live up to her vow, to do what her mother could not, and bring home what was stolen.

From their reconnaissance, she marked several windows large enough for her to slip through. All required a climb. It hadn’t taken her long to make a device to shoot the rope into the wood of the window. Climbing had been a bit stressful, but she’d made it. Below she could see Andi, leaning against a wall as she watched the road. Jack was still in the car with Sam, the program churning through the security.

It took three tries with her tools to unlock the window and push it open. The stench hit her first. She pulled up her scarf to wrap around her face. For feck’s sake, did the owner store poop here? She dropped into the attic and to her horror there was indeed poop here. Several glass jars labeled with celebrity names and dates sat in a container to her right.

It gave her an idea however. She gathered a few and carefully made her way down the rickety ladder to the main floor. In the bar area, she set up each of the jars and uncapped them. Two she dumped their contents in front of the main office.

She tiptoed out of the bar and gingerly entered some of the exhibits. She couldn’t take it all — her bag couldn’t carry it for one nor would the rope hold that much weight — but the staggering amount of human remains on display twisted her stomach with rage.

Maybe she could come back and steal it all, but for now she focused on the Voodoo poppets. They were arranged in rows three exhibits down the hall in front of a macabre set of shrunken heads, African Masks — the designs reminding her of the Igbo people actually — and several skulls.

She bowed her head and murmured the words she’d heard her mother say many a time, “Tagaim chun tú a thabhairt abhaile. Bí ar a suaimhneas.” Irish for ‘I come to bring you home, be at peace.’ Then one by one she wrapped them in the silk the Haitians had sent her mother for this, and tucked them in her bag.

A quick sweep of the other exhibits found her three more poppets, and a search of the attic another six. Her twenty minutes neared completion, so she scurried through the window, slid down the rope, and tapped the button on her belt. The bolt blew apart in a rain of metal, the rope dropping like a flying a snake.

She whistled to Andrea, and the two legged it to Sam’s car. As soon as they tumbled into the backseat, Sam slid out of park and the car silently pulled away from the curb.

"Five minutes to spare," Jack said with a wink. "Nicely done."

"I'll do better next time," Lena leaned back and patted her bag. "Mam's friends will be relieved to have these home again."

"Here you are, being the hero of our time," Andi said with a grin and poke of her elbow in Lena's side. "You need a name though." She looked over Lena's outfit. "Why red?"

"Carmen is the hue actually." Lena laid her hand on her bag and thought of her Mammy, how the cancer had slowly eaten away her life. How hard she'd worked toward causes of liberation. "I promised Mam I'd become a menace to my enemies. I wear the color of anger and blood."

"Right, and whose gonna know that?" Jack pointed out.

Lena smiled. "Oh, the world will know soon enough."

Three hundred Euros later and two days of searching flights, Lena was on her way to the Haiti, her prize carefully hidden in her carry-on luggage. As she watched Ireland fade from view, she took a deep breath and released it slowly. She’d done it.

She’d rescued priceless artifacts, and now they were going home. Smiling, she leaned back and closed her eyes. Already plans formed of improved methods of infiltration. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it well.

[morbidwlws]

so i wrote an essay last semester examining themes of monstrous femininity and mankind’s path toward divinity last semester for my brit lit class if anyone would be interested in reading it <3

[nephrenklamm]

The Drolatic Dream of Aurora 2

[lovely-english-rose]

found a collection of brothers grimm at a thrift store today 🥰

[holmesoldfellow]

"Gaslight Grimoire" series, including the works of many authors, edited by J. R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec

"Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes," "Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes," "Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes," and "Gaslight Gothic: Strange Tales of Sherlock Holmes."

[merriclo]

watching old film theories on jurassic park/world and im white knuckling my phone the entire time bc almost every single point brought up is discussed in the books, and every failure of the park is an intentional part of the narrative

[daincrediblegg]

why the fuck do I always get stuck on Lady Terror's first conversation with Bridgens? like seriously. it's every single fucking time.

[doompunkdispatch]

Feast on God’s Flesh

Hard-hitting junkies went missing soon after the Pharmacyst came to town. Rumor was they went to live fulltime in his bunker, completing the irreversible metamorphosis enforced by his eldritch substances.

A small dose doesn’t enact a noticeable difference, so you wouldn’t fear having a second hit, then a third. Something stronger than addiction takes hold. The user’s biochemistry transmogrifies into impossible directions. Eye-drops distend the iris. Inhaled smoke colonizes the bronchioles. Liquid injections taint the blood. Snort the powder and feel its crystals vivisect your gray matter, opening up wounds for infection by a macroscopic foe.

See them now. Sink past dreariest dungeons and discern the gruesome machinations: organs harvested from twisted junky cadavers, hormones siphoned to synthesize new compounds for fresh generations of victims. Sallow survivors wander aimless corridors until their time arrives. At the behest of the Pharmacyst, ghoulish orderlies squeeze jellied brains into pillcaps, sieve amber pus into hypodermic needles, and crush bone into dust to cut with cocaine—the customers may be right, but they never know any better.

You spot skin, hard as petrified bark. Fauna gives birth to flora and fungi. Three bodies hang from ceiling hooks, intertwined via splintered twig arms. Leaves and flowers, reeking of odious rot, unfold between their fingers. Mushroom caps sprout from gnarled toenails, ripe for the plucking.

An undercooked fetus elongates into a symbiotic vine, enwrapping its parents’ trunks. The perverse family unit bears physical fruit; a jaundiced mesocarp drips sweet juices from splitting tumescent flesh. One subject tastes this pome, and feels a figwasp ovum rapidly developing in her belly. Parasitic visitors from innermost realms burst into our sliver of reality, celebrating the open-ended orgy that is All Creation.

Near the bottom, we find a ward housing xeno-amphibious forms, formerly human. The transfiguration left them with skin akin to earthly frogs. This gelatinous surface breathes Earth’s air, metabolizes various gasses, and secretes fluid coveted by only the most perverse addicts. Emitting froglike croaks, the tsathögguans must be kept in tanks tuned to binaural beats. Any naked eardrum that absorbs its vibration begins transmuting the surrounding skin to an exogenetic structure matching the source. Word is Virus.

Things get darker. Woven cocoons quiver in the grimiest guts of the citadel. Furtive nostrils ponder our astral scent as we pass their cells. Chitinous hairs chitter in anticipation of a meal. Curious third eyes gaze brightly from the tips of protuberant pineal glands. Slavering mandibles lunge out—

—and snatch you from the metafictional air.

Digestive enzymes pull apart the essential cogs of your mental machinery. Vicious biochemical troops rip through protofilaments and pillage delicious proteins from your doomed neurons. Curious stomachs digest juice sickly rich in consciousness. You feel yourself melt into them. Ovipositors plant eukaryotic yolks between your sulci and gyri. Your undiscovered carcass will sustain families for generations to come. Great-grandchildren will chew on your flickering subliminal sewage. Slurp up scumpunk soup.

“Open wide,” smiles the Pharmacyst, “and swallow your medicine.”

[theodore-sallis]

“…Man-Thing!” Savage Tales (Vol. 1/1971), #1.

Writers: Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway; Penciler, Inker, and Letterer: Gray Morrow

[reachexceedinggrasp]

I was interested to hear your opinion on Darklina because the Darkling is inspired by the likes of Jareth and Raistlin and it's really just a shambling mess, but I totally respect you not engaging, it's definitely not worth it.

I agree though, the beard really is quite offensive. They don't know what archetypes they're working with.

It's honestly not even hard to do it right, and yet...

[screamingeyepress]

Dark Thoughts By Mark Slade

A tormented man battles with the haunting thoughts that have plagued his mind for years. As he struggles to escape the relentless cycle of negative thoughts and desires, an eerie force takes hold, blurring the line between reality and nightmare.

Malum minuitur, cum praevidetur.

You lie awake thinking these thoughts.  You can’t sleep. You can’t shut your mind off. These thoughts, like other thoughts, keep coming back to you. 

The children played in the front lawn, chasing each other with Nerf water pistols, screaming, squealing, long streaks of white water emitting from the foam barrels. The honey brown haired woman in the straw hat, oversized sunglasses and flower patterned sundress, tended to her rose bush. A tall, very skinny man in khaki shorts and dirty white t-shirt, kept taking out cardboard boxes and haphazardly dropping them on a yellow streaked lawn.

Those thoughts keep intertwining, or trying to replace other thoughts. They will not leave you. No matter how hard you try to purge them from your tired brain.

Okay, you tell yourself. Think of this:

Pay the electric bill. Pay the internet. Pay the cable bill. Pay the debt creditors for the credit card you barely used. A hacker had too much fun with it, though no one could find evidence a hacker used the card, nor existed. Pay the alimony. Don’t be late again. Pay the child support. Don’t be late again. Pay the rent, even though roaches are your roommates and water damage is on the ceiling in the bathroom. Don’t be late again.

Work. Pressure from the job, or jobs as it may be. Worrying about who, what, and where. Will you be done by the time your shift is over with. Why are you working so much, why this job, or jobs. 

You think about that post on social media. Why on earth would someone post a video of a cat taking a dump in a candy jar full of snicker bars? Why would anyone make a video like that? Why would anyone comment on every post or like every post everyone has posted on that site?

Why does it rain on one side of the cornfield, switch sides, and the first side only has a rainbow? Why are people so mean to each other? Why are you so mean to people, especially to that old lady who always seems to be shopping at the store you shop at when you are there? Why are the same commercials about a hotel played three times in a row on every program you tube into? And why, on God’s green earth, does that one annoying song stick in your mind and you can barely remember the lyrics or middle part of your favorite song? 

Malum minuitur, cum praevidetur.

But I have to tell you something. All of that is just semantics. Twaddle. Doesn’t mean a fucking thing to me.  I get off on the bad thoughts you have. The worries tickle me and I giggle, yes. What really gets me excited are the thoughts of dread or harm you wish on others. The times you drive by  their houses, slow down, and watch as the wife works on her garden of roses, the husband cleaning out the garage, and boy and girl chasing each other with water guns 

You lay in your bed, wide eyed, dark circles under your eyes and contemplate how you would run your knife along the woman’s white swan-like neck, down to the curves of her breasts, the point sliding across her stomach, making a beeline for her………

Malum minuitur, cum praevidetur.

Ohhhh how wicked you are.

You drool over the possibilities. You lust after the image of the rooms covered in blood. You hear their screams and pleading, and you feel yourself get excited. Your heart skips a beat.

Ohhhhh yes you do.

Don’t lie.  

Anger toward your childhood, perhaps? Anger, you never experienced the true, or traditional family values? Instead you lived a transient and chaotic life with your mother and three brothers. You had a revolving door of stepfathers, abusive boyfriends, until your mother could no longer attract a man, good or bad men. She finally drank herself to death by the time you were eighteen. Oh, how you hated your mother, your abusive brothers.

You left home the day of the funeral, changed your name, and made your brothers bad memories. You became a mechanic, owned a garage for a few years, fell in love, and had two children. You were happy until your wife revealed she no longer wanted you and she had met someone else. You hate her. You hate your offspring, a girl and a boy. The three of them took and took,and continue to take, bleeding you of money, and love.

Yesterday you spoke on the phone call with your estranged wife. You keep playing it over and over in your head.

“The garage was sold to a group of investors from  out of state,” she said. ” They plan on turning it into a drugstore.”

“So,” you said. ” I don’t care.”

“I just thought you’d like to know,” she said.

“Turning the screws, eh?”

” No. I’m not…I’m trying to…..John said I should be more open to have you in our live—”

“John says,huh?”

“Yes,” she said with a deep sigh.

“I don’t care,” you said. 

“Okay,” she said,  “The kids miss you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Do you miss them?”

You don’t answer right away. You give a wooden performance when you do. A very hollow bland voice.

“I miss them. Yes  Do you miss me?”

“I have to go,” she said and rang off abruptly.

You still get angry at that. 

She isn’t perfect. That life was not—–

Put it out of your mind, you tell yourself. Think of…….

Perfect.

The Cartuck family……they are perfect in every way. 

Malum minuitur, cum praevidetur.

Perfection.

You sought it your entire life. Why were you denied? So many times it was just out of reach, right at the grasp of your fingers.

I personally do not care why you wish death upon this particular family. I just want what you can take from them. I get off on the vibrations your body puts out when you feel…..release.

“No!” You scream, arms flailing, hands slapping at the air. “Get off me!” 

You try your best to topple me from your chest. Your breathing becomes labored. You close your eyes, yet you can still see my beautiful, hideous visage that haunts you, keeps you from seeing beauty in others, beauty in everything.

My laugh is like metal scraping concrete. “You cannot vanquish me until you give me what I want. What I need.”

“Please,” you sob. “Get out of my head.”

“I am not just in your head, I am in your flesh,” I laugh. Metal scraping concrete.

You wail and thrash about in your bed. You hear a knock on your door. A voice asks if you are alright. The landlady who rents you this tiny, shabby room.

“I’m alright,” you call out. “Just a nightmare. That’s all.”

You can see her slippers under your door. She hasn’t moved away. Gone back to bed. It feels like centuries before she leaves. The light in the hallway abruptly turns to darkness. The glowing moonbeam returns to your otherwise dark bedroom, as I do, perched upon your chest.

“Okay,” you say. “I’ll bring you what you want. Then will you leave me alone?”

My blackened lips curl up in a ghastly smile.

“Most definitely,” I tell you. “Malum minuitur, cum praevidetur.”

You leave by way of your bedroom window. You basque in the bright moonlight. You walk the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, bare feet on concrete. You keep the .38 tucked into your pajamas. You walk a block to the end of the neighborhood and see the Cartuck house. You already know the lock on the basement door is broken. You slip into that perfect family’s home.

In less than an hour, the walls of that perfect house are covered in blood.

Their screams thrill you, fill you full of….delight.

You don’t leave the home. You stay. You cook yourself breakfast, make coffee. Enough for an army, or rather, a police force. They arrive hours later, and you offer them breakfast. Still covered in the Cartuck’s blood, you sit calmly at the dining room table, eating, drinking, smiling, thinking happy thoughts. The officers decline your offer.

You are happy. You have rid yourself of me, those dark thoughts. You are overjoyed. You see beauty in everything, even in your heinous act of murder.

You are happy.

You confess to everything. You tell your life story. You tell them about stalking the family. You tell them how you first shot the children in their sleep. How the parents came running and how they screamed and cried. You shot the husband point blank in the face. You tell the officers that you could not contain Your laughter when you see him fall sideways. You explain to them that you were not insane as the wife thought he was, that was involuntary laughter. That’s all.

You get a little excited when you tell them how you made her undress. And how you took the butcher knife you had taken from the kitchen and you ran the blade slowly down her perfect beautiful body……..

” Ah well,” you said, and signed. “You saw what I did to her. I…..kinda regret it…..but…..”

“Why did you do it?” You hear one of the officer’s say.

“I thought they were perfect. You see, I would have let them live. I swear to God I would have. I would have just occasionally drove by and watched…..them…..then I saw those marks on their faces. The kids had dark pigment marks on their foreheads. The husband….well… he had a burn mark on the left side of his face and……his nose was all….twisted……nostrils fucked up. 

“The wife, oh she was beautiful…. very beautiful, until one evening, a wind blew her dress up over her hips and I saw the dark brown burn patterns on her legs.  I felt sick. I vomited immediately.” You shake your head.” That’s when this thing, this…..I don’t know what it was…..this creature began to talk to me. But I’m free!”

They glare at you as you howl with laughter.

You tell them about the dark thoughts and how they had driven you to do this,  because you could never, ever, achieve perfection anywhere in your dreary awful life. 

Now that it’s all over with, you’ve done the deed, the dark thoughts are gone, and I am vanquished.I no longer walk the shadows of your dreams, your nightmares.

The officers cuff you, and one of them places you in the backseat of the cruiser. Your wife wakes you. You stare at her blinking rapidly. She says, “You were having an awful dream.” 

You don’t know what to say except, ” Oh, yeah, the worst.”

She removed her nightgown, and upon her naked body you see  the dark brown burn patterns on her legs.  You strangle a cry of fear as you quickly rise from the bed and catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. You see burn mark on the left side of your face and that  twisted twisted nose and fucked up nostrils.Your wife smiles at you, says, “Malum minuitur, cum praevidetur.”

[zip-sketchbook]

New Colors!

[pseudowho]

"Kento, can you play this game for me?"

Putting his shoes in the rack, and loosening his tie with two fingers, Kento's hands magnetised to your hips, and his lips to your forehead.

He hummed at the plastic-sealed game in your hands.

"I may be wrong, but I believe the enjoyment of a game comes through playing it yourself."

The game cover was a jagged mash of reds and blacks-- something grotesque, Kento had no doubt-- and you grimaced, apologetic.

"The thing is, I want to play it, but I just...can't. I don't think I could handle it, but...I could watch?"

Kento looked flatly at the game case. Your words still didn't seem to register.

"...you...just want to watch?"

"Yes."

"Watch me play it?"

"Yes."

"Wh-- ...never mind. Alright. I'll play it for you."

You gasped in joy, pressing a wet kiss to his cheek, and jumping onto the sofa. Kento huffed, his half-smile painting his irritation as false. With bags of sweets, snacks, fluffy blankets and the lights off, you had clearly placed money on him saying yes.

Kento sat, unbuttoning the top of his shirt, and watching you set the game up.

"It's a horror, I assume?"

"You assume right. You've got a camera, and there are ghosts, and an abandoned creepy village and you're trapped--"

A cool hum, unfazed. Kento leaned back, unbothered as the title screen opened, and he clicked through settings, suddenly sixteen again. The game began, the cut scene telling a tale of woe, and the barest hints of the dreadful, mangled spirits to come.

You chirped, hiding all of your toes beneath a blanket. Your body pressed to Kento's side, and he grunted, sweeping your legs over his lap without looking away from the screen. You crammed a sweet into your mouth, adorably wide-eyed enough to make Kento huff with a crooked smile.

You were an easy target for games like this; your vivid imagination and skittishness fell victim to haunting ambience, hook, line and sinker. Kento was safe-- slick, analytical, more method than man.

By the first ghosts, you threatened to pull the blanket over your eyes.

By the first fight, you jumped hard enough to upend popcorn all over Kento's lap, squealing and flapping your hands as Kento chastised you ("Darling-- you're a Sorcerer, for god's sake--").

By the boss fight, you had buried your face in Kento's neck, your arms throttling him as you clung for dear life. Kento grunted again, as concentrated as he was as a teenager, and paused the game for just long enough to lift you into his lap, rest his chin on your head and finish the fight. Two broad arms bracketed you, while clever fingers did their duty.

Kento finished the fight. He breathed out, completely unshaken, and looked down at you mulishly, gently scolding. You swallowed hard to feel him twitch inside his pants against your lower back. His voice was gravelly, the room still bathed in ghoulish light.

"I think that's quite enough for one night."

You looked up at him, suppressing laughter at yourself. Your voice was sickeningly sweet, coy, and you stroked your fingers down his chest, whispering.

"My hero."

Another hum, and a rumbling moan as your fingers hit his zipper. Kento took his spoils, your kisses a boon, and pressed you back into the sofa, deepening his kiss until his tongue stroked for entry, and you felt molten promise pit in your belly.

Without warning, Kento pulled back with a sigh. He sat in the corner of the sofa, mellowsoft eyes on you in a determined half-smile. Your mouth watered as he unzipped himself, hooked his aching cock out and held it in his palm. He offered one slow stroke, a bead of pre cum trickling down his fingers.

As you crawled towards him, Kento held up his other hand to halt. You obeyed, close to a whimper, as Kento scolded you, and began stroking himself to a ragged moan and spreading thighs.

"Ah ah ah. I thought you liked to watch?"