#i tried at least

[daily-smol-silm]

Day #58 - Flapper Dress

I... really wanted to draw one of these things lol. Here's Findaráto modeling :D

[preggo-ace]

“What!? You- you can’t be ready to push…. The ambulance isn’t here yet.” I said, gently rubbing your back, while frantically looking down the deserted country road for signs of the ambulance.

We had gone on a walk through the local forest to help kick-start your contractions, but neither of us expected your labor to come on as suddenly as it did. Or as quickly. I kept one arm round your waist as we trekked through the forest back towards civilisation, stopping every so often for you to ride out each contraction. The pains quickly got worse and dangerously more frequent. I called an ambulance when you started grunting through them.

And now here we were, standing on the side of a quiet country road. You were braced against a tree, rocking your hips side to side and humming deeply. Feeling useless, all I could was massage your back and hope to god help would arrive soon.

“Take a breath sweetie, see if you can pant through it.”

I try my absolute hardest to take your suggestion, but it proves futile quickly. The weight of the baby lodged in my birth canal, the nearly blinding pressure, it's all too much for me. My body isn't giving me a choice.

"I... I can't. I can't, I'm sorry..."

Lowering into a small squat against the tree, I push into my hand with a whimper, the care of giving birth into my pants long since gone. They don't have much give, but it is enough for the head to descend at least a little. This wasn't what we had planned, not at all, though clearly this baby wasn't waiting. Still deep in the throes of the contraction, I push again with a low groan in the back of my throat.

I finally release the push with a gasp, leaning farther against the tree as I catch my breath. Due to the restriction of my clothes, my pushes didn't yield much progress, but part of me is kind of grateful for that; I'd rather not give birth on the side of the road! However, that also means I grow more and more uncomfortable by the second, my lips burning as they're trapped outstretched by the baby's head peeking through.

I push again despite my best efforts, eager to make that burning stop. My nails dig into the tree bark like claws, and I growl through gritted teeth as I exert practically all of my energy downwards. The baby, however, stays in place.

With still no sign of the ambulance - or any other human life besides us - I sink down to my knees as I accept the reality of this situation. We aren't leaving this forest without a baby.

•------------•

from this prompt, feel free to drop more in my ask box (just read my pinned before you do!)

[flocy-sims]

Happy start of autumn from my delulu simself. Love y'all🍁🍂🏵️ (it's my second favorite season btw)

[spinningspencer]

I want to give you that calm that you have so long searched for

~Cassiopeia, Bears In Trees

[des-thefox]

my take on the recent discourse

(theres no discourse i just made this)

[red-thread-and-constellations]

[orienteddreamerrr]

When Tanalorr was overtaken...

[strawbebbyboba]

(First time seeing the natlan teaser) I could fix her

Well let me tell you it was harder than expected

[kittkattys]

Soooooo, I had this little epiphany when I got home...

[iwonderwh0]

Continuing my train of thoughts about androids exchanging eyes

Markus: all those androids exchanging eyes, it's so...I don't know. I got this one from a dead android after my own got destroyed. And now everyone is just doing it for fun? I don't understand.

North: You shouldn't be surprised – it would happen sooner or later with your face being seen as often as it does... I too would exchange a part of me so I could carry yours with me at all times.

Markus: Every time I look in the mirror, I remember his face. And I don't even know what his name was.

North: I think he would be honoured to know that at least a part of him will see the change happening.

Markus: Thank you.

North: If it would make you feel better, I could carry it for you.

Markus: An eye?

North: For an eye.

Markus: *smiles*

[acewithapaintbrush]

The Ones That Leave

I am cutting it close with this one. My contribution to week two of @wdtajn

TW for themes of death and craziness and a very open and ambiguous ending. Read at your own risk please

****************

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

*****************

Bruno stares at the crack. 

The handle of the bucket cuts into his palm. It is filled to the brim with spackle and it's heavy, much heavier than his brittle bones and thin arms are used to anymore. And still, he barely feels it. The only reason it hasn't slipped from his hand is because his fingers are clenched around the metallic handle, frozen and stiff. 

His whole body feels frozen and stiff. He doesn't know how long he has been standing here, in this dark hallway behind the walls, staring at the crack. It could be minutes, it could be hours. Probably hours. His eyes are so dry they hurt. When he tries to blink it feels like he is rubbing his eyelids against sandpaper. His lips are dry too, but they always are. That's what you get for not talking for years. In the beginning he'd talked to his rats and given his voice to them for their little plays, but that had only added stress to an already anxious Dolores so he'd stopped speaking completely, had bitten his tongue every time he'd caught himself opening his mouth. 

He's been in the walls for five years by now. He hasn't talked for almost as long. 

He doesn't even know if he still remembers how. 

He stares at the crack and the crack stares back. It is not really a crack to be honest. It is too wide and too big. It starts at the bottom and reaches upwards into the dark, high above his head. It's almost as wide as he is. He'd only need to turn his body a little sideways and he could fit through, step to the other side.

Bruno has no idea what is on the other side. It should lead to the outside, to the garden at the back of the house. At least he thinks it does. But then, wouldn't he be able to see said garden on the other side? The tall trees and the grass and the little bench his mother has put there all those years ago to be able to read in the sunshine?

He doesn't. All he sees is darkness. An inky black, darker than the night, darker than his little room behind the kitchen when he puts out all the candles. 

Maybe he is mistaken. Maybe he got turned around somewhere, lost all sense of direction again. 

Casita is confusing, sometimes. Sometimes it feels like she is moving the hallways at will, to drive him crazy confuse him. He will turn a corner and realize he's forgotten something and turn back only to be faced with a wall or, even worse, another hallway impossibly stretching on into the dark forever and ever. It's given him vertigo before. It has made him curl up on the floor, shaking and crying. 

Casita always relents after a while. Bumping his feet with her floorboards in apology and gently guiding him back into his room at the end of the day where he then will collapse into his makeshift bed, spent and exhausted. Sometimes he wonders if he'd ever be able to find his room again without her help. 

Sometimes he wonders if he'd ever be able to leave without her help. If she'd let him. 

But it's just a game. Certainly just a game. 

Casita is vindictive playful like that. 

Casita is cruel mischievous like that. 

Casita is… 

Bruno takes a shaky breath. It hurts in his chest. Maybe he hasn't been breathing this entire time. 

Casita is haunted. That's what the old man had said to him, all those years ago. He'd taken eight year old Bruno by the shoulders. He'd shaken the boy, leaned down so he could stare right into his face. His eyes had been red-rimmed and wild, his hair greasy, his breath smelly. The spittle from between chapped lips and bad teeth had hit Bruno right on the cheek and he'd been so disgusted and scared that he'd almost missed the words. 

"That house is haunted! Unnatural! It is evil! Get out boy, get your Mama and sisters out of there!" 

Alma had finally found them, locked in a staring contest filled with fear and revulsion and horror and pulled the man away. She'd screamed at him, told him to leave her child alone, to never dare show his face in front of her family again. 

Later that night Bruno had tried to see into the future of the man, scared out of his mind that he would return, would suddenly stand in front of his bed in the middle of the night to scream at him again. 

The vision had shown the man walking towards Casita with a match in his hand, muttering and stumbling. But then it had shifted into a picture of a wall. Nothing but a wall. The one on the second floor, near Alma's room. 

Bruno doesn't know why he never told anyone about this vision. Doesn't know why he stared at the green slab depicting nothing but a wall and decided to destroy it and never talk about it again. 

Two weeks later, the man was declared missing. Everyone assumed that he had simply left the valley after he'd been ostracized by pretty much everyone for upsetting the revered Alma Madrigal. 

But Bruno had heard it at night. The faint sound of scratching from behind the walls, of footsteps hurrying up and down unseen hallways. Wailing and moaning. 

He'd close his eyes and hear all these noises and see the image of a wall, immortalized on a green slab and tell himself that it's nothing. 

Just the rats. Just the creaks of an old house. 

Just the screaming and begging of a trapped man  howling of the wind. 

Surely, nothing more. 

Once, and only once, months after the sounds had grown fainter and fainter and ultimately disappeared, had he asked his mother about the man. What had happened to him. 

"It doesn't matter.", she'd said. "He left."

But he'd seen it in her eyes. Had seen it in the way she'd clenched her fists and in the way she'd glanced at the walls surrounding them, in the way she'd lowered her voice and tried to keep a smile on her face and failed horribly. 

He'd seen it all and he'd understood that it wouldn't have mattered if he'd told her about his vision in time. 

It wouldn't have mattered at all. 

And he'd nodded and agreed. 

The man left. 

Except Bruno knows better now, has always known better. He can sometimes see something moving out of the corner of his eyes. A man-shaped shadow, a fleeting misplacement of light. Once he'd tried to turn a corner and Casita had pushed him back, had hit him in the chest with one of her floorboards so hard it had taken his breath away. But not quickly enough to prevent him from catching a glimpse of the heap of ruined clothes on the floor. Of white bones sticking out of them, fingers like sticks still reaching out to scrabble at a wall covered in scratches. 

He doesn't go into that part of the house anymore. It is probably covered in cracks by now, but he doesn't care. If Casita ever breaks apart, that hallway will be the epicenter. One of the scratches will have turned into a crack and that will be the one that tears her apart in the end. 

That's where her end will begin and maybe that's how it's meant to be. 

Bruno steps closer to the crack that is not a crack. The darkness behind it is absolute, but it still looks like there are things writhing inside of it, shadows battling for dominance. He has stared into it for so long that he's beginning to see faces in its depth. Contorted, grotesque faces. 

His mother. His sisters. Their children. 

The man. 

His father. 

Maybe the man was right. Maybe there has always been evil in these walls. Or maybe Casita is just a little bit too human. Capable of change in the worst ways possible.

Maybe it started with the man. Maybe it started long before that. 

For the first time Bruno wonders what it must be like to be a thing with a conscience. To see and hear and feel but not be able to move in any way that matters. Only opening cupboards and swinging doors and moving floorboards. Housing beings with whole lives and emotions within you and still only looking in from the outside. Watching their lives pass you by, growing older while you are stuck just the way you have always been. 

It's enough to drive someone crazy. 

Bruno laughs, shrill and loud and crazed. It's the first sound he has made in five years and a small part of him hopes Dolores is asleep or far enough away to not have heard. 

What a horrible first thing to hear from her uncle after five years of silence. 

The darkness answers him, it ripples and wavers. He hears a small boy laughing in there, hears a small girl laughing behind him. What a merry little symphony they make, full of bells and death life. 

The walls expand and collapse, the floorboards under his feet vibrate. 

Ah, Bruno realizes. Casita is crying laughing too. 

The darkness creeps out of the crack door. It slithers at the corners, looking like vines testing the air. And then it passes that invisible boundary and reaches out to him. 

Bruno reaches back. He's always been the one to reach out to everyone but at some point the people have stopped accepting his outstretched hand, have pulled back instead, and so his outstretched arm has withered away like a flower cut off from its stem. 

But here in this dark and dusty hallway a darkness reaches out and Bruno reaches back and it welcomes him. It is so cold where it touches his fingertips that it burns. It feels like he is touching a candle flame and Bruno shivers and a grin pulls at his lips. 

He has been cold for so long. He can't wait to get warm again.

He gets pulled towards the dark doorway and he willingly steps forward. 

Casita SCREAMS laughs and Bruno SCREAMS laughs with her. 

And then he is gone. 

He left. 

[nightstandart]

SCREAM

[pickled-flowers]

It turns out cowboy boots were not in fact made to walk on snow 😭

[neptune-scythe]

I was making a post on the Crows as represented by colours but I stopped after Kaz because I am unqualified to speak on any of the others

rip me and my over ambition i guess LMAO

[morganali-art]

Here's the thing. Every now and then @breadedsinner will say something, and I will spend my entire work day thinking about it, and this is where we land.

[emeraldthelynx]

I think I really learned a lot about shading for a nighttime scene when I colored this.

And, while this is random, I was listening to the The Greatest Showman soundtrack when I was drawing this, and now the only thing I can hear in my head when I look at this is 'Rewrite the Stars.'

Chapter 12 is up! We're moving closer to the endgame now.