#reevie writes

[incandescent-eden]

[The Lyre Effect] Conversation II - Icarus and Hyacinthus

A scene because I like these side characters far too much.

Word Count: 1547

---

“Elysium isn’t too much farther off,” Hyacinthus said offhandedly.

“I thought you didn’t count things like that,” said Icarus, his back to the window. “I thought you said it was hopeless to think toward Elysium, people like us.”

“Maybe I needed something to dream about. I’m tired of waking up from the same nightmare every day.”

The ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk of the train cars continued onward, the only indication they were moving at all. Circling around Elysium again and again, and never getting closer.

Icarus dug his fingernails into his thighs. Sisyphus and Tantalus had done horrible things – to be kept awake forever by their hunger, by their hopes, that was a fair punishment – but what had Icarus done beside wanting to live in the sunlight? Beyond loving someone far above him?

Hyacinthus was pallid now, but Icarus could see it as clearly as if he had known Hyacinthus in life: the youth with a confident glow, brown eyes that dared to look upon the sun and sparkle. Icarus looked to his own skin, untouched by the sun except by the drawings of suns of his own design.

“Don’t,” said Hyacinthus.

           Icarus looked up, slowly unfurling his hands. He was surprised to find them shaking. “I didn’t say anything.”

           “Don’t think too hard about it, Icarus,” Hyacinthus looked at Icarus with dull eyes, eyes that once were a warm dark brown, but now were flat and cold as the dirt of a horse’s grave. “I thought I understood gods, too, you know? But I guess none of us really do.”

The bitterness was barely detectable in his words, like sea monsters lurking beneath the calm ocean waters, a shadow barely cast as they moved. Icarus had to tread carefully - Hyacinthus lashed out as easily as the serpents that snapped their jaws at the silver fish that flashed in the sun.

“Do you think we’ll be able to do it? Get to Elysium one day?”

Hyacinthus stared through Icarus with dead eyes, toward Elysium. “I don’t know.” He kicked out, shuffling his feet along the floor. Perhaps he was retracing steps in his memory, wondering, as Icarus did, how he ended up in this situation, what he did to deserve an eternity of longing with no reward.

The air in their train car was calm as the train rumbled forward, and Icarus thought of the days in Crete when storms rolled in and the sun was far away, how the thunder shook the palaces of Minos and Icarus in them. There was a strange comfort that accompanied such storms, that as long as he was inside and away from the sea, the thunder was a friend.

He didn’t know the will of the gods, but there were times when Zeus’s thunder sounded more like laughing than yelling.

It never rained in Asphodel. Or maybe it did, and Icarus, for all his staring out of windows, could not see because the rainwater fell slick and gray, and it blended in with the monotony of everything else in Asphodel.

Looking out of windows, waiting for the sun, was a habit that was harder to break in death than in life.

Hyacinthus no longer looked in Icarus’s direction. His attention was focused on the door of their compartment.

“They won’t come back for a while, you know,” Icarus said. “I almost feel bad for Achilles and Pelides. Eurydice looked like she was going to kill them herself.”

“I don’t need your pity,” Hyacinthus snapped. There it was, the break in the calm, the fall through the air.

But the fall never came. Hyacinthus’s bite was rendered useless by the furrow of his brow, the way he avoided Icarus’s eyes.

“I never said anything about pitying you,” Icarus said.

“Good,” Hyacinthus said, with a haughty voice but deflated expression.

And around the train went again.

“I don’t think anyone could pity you, Hyacinthus.”

“Good,” Hyacinthus said again. His voice was farther away than Elysium itself. Typical Hyacinthus. Typical, self-absorbed Hyacinthus.

“You had the best life out of all of us.”

Hyacinthus scoffed. “Ariadne was a princess. Hard to beat that.”

“Ariadne had a mortal lover who left her to rot on an island hated by her family.”

“Did you hate her?”

“I wasn’t her family.”

“Do you hate me?” Hyacinthus shot the question before Icarus had finished the sentence.

The train crashed against the tracks violently, like cold waves that crashed against ankles and brought a person down. Clank, clank, clank, the sound drowned the cars.

Hate was a strong word. Icarus told Hyacinthus so.

“But you dislike me,” Hyacinthus pushed, his pink lips curving into a bow. Like a bow, that smile was sleek and dangerous, a smile that could easily draw blood wielded by a master hunter.

“I don’t like you,” Icarus said slowly. “We’ve been over this. Many times, in fact.”

“Why do you hate me so much, Icarus?” The arrow flew. The bow snapped. Hyacinthus’s smile dropped back into a blank expression, like he didn’t have the energy to hold it back any longer.

“I don’t hate you,” Icarus said. “I just don’t like you. You’ve had everything, you had two gods who were in love with you, and you laud that over the rest of us.”

The anger rose in him when Hyacinthus didn’t react. Icarus kept talking, the words flying out one after another in a quivering voice. Hyacinthus was not the only one whose words could pierce flesh. “Eurydice tolerates you, Achilles couldn’t care less, and Hylas and Ariadne are too nice and won’t say anything, but I’ve known too many men who think they’re better just because they were blessed by gods, and not a single one of them has been any more than a man himself.”

“I know that.”

Icarus stopped short, shocked out of his tirade by Hyacinthus’s mournful whisper. He had expected a biting remark, a smirk, condescension.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know that, right?” Hyacinthus said, louder this time. “I wouldn’t be stuck on this train, going around forever, forced to remember everything I had and knowing I’ll never see it again if I didn’t know that.”

“Sometimes, I wonder what I did to deserve this. I know I should be grateful it’s Asphodel and not the Fields of Punishment, but… I don’t know. It feels like torture. I guess I got cocky,” he laughed slightly, running a hand through his hair. “I guess I thought if I could play two gods off of each other, I might end up better off either way. But who knows how gods work?”

“That was your mistake,” Icarus said stiffly.

“Do you hate me?”

The non-sequitur puzzled Icarus; annoyed him, even. “I already said I don’t hate you.”

“Then you’re a better man than I am. Or maybe a bigger fool,” Hyacinthus admitted. Then, perhaps regretting his confession, “But if you tell any of the others I said that, I will kill you again myself.”

“They wouldn’t believe me,” Icarus said, stretching his neck to the side. That was the thing about Asphodel. It was comfortable enough, but never quite enough that he forgot he was in Asphodel. Not torture, but the mild unpleasantness of the mundane.

“Besides, it was a silly thing to do, play two gods off of each other. You know how the gods feel about hubris.”

“Your lack of self-awareness is astounding,” Hyacinthus spat. He looked down at his feet, rubbing his temple. “Would it help if I said I really did love both of them?”

“No,” Icarus replied, because it wouldn’t. “But you’re here now, so no use dwelling over it.”

No reply from Hyacinthus.

“Stop rubbing at your scar,” Icarus rebuked him. “You’ll end up opening a fresh wound.”

“It’s not like it matters,” Hyacinthus said, pressing harder, no doubt to spite Icarus.

“It does! It’ll be bloody and you’ll get infected and it will look horrible, and I’m already stuck here with your face all day, I don’t want to look at an infected wound!”

“So you stare at my face all day?” Hyacinthus dropped his hand in his lap, his smile returning.

“No.” Icarus crossed his arms. He stared at Hyacinthus head on, ironically, at his face. If he looked away now, he would only be losing the challenge Hyacinthus posed.

“I’m very beautiful, you know,” Hyacinthus goaded.

Icarus rolled his eyes. “Maybe for the rear end of a centaur.”

Hyacinthus mockingly blew him a kiss. “You’d be lucky if the rear end of a centaur showed you this much affection.”

Icarus only scowled.

Leaning back in his seat, Hyacinthus relaxed. He broke their gaze first. “Icarus,” he said, directing his words to the door, where their friends still had not returned. “Thank you for not hating me. But -”

“I won’t tell,” Icarus promised.

Hyacinthus nodded, head still turned toward the door.

Icarus cleared his throat. “Thank you, too.”

Hyacinthus’s profile made a puzzled expression.

“Just. Thank you,” Icarus said. Hyacinthus didn’t need to know the reason. “I think we’re going to reach Elysium soon.”

Icarus turned back to his own window, watching the island flash past, as far away as it had always been, and surely always would be.

From behind him, he heard, “Yeah. I think we will.”

[luxaofhesperides]

TAG GAME: HEADS UP 7 UP

Tagged by @incandescent-eden :)))

Rules: Post 7 lines from a recent WIP.

I have ORV brainrot rn so this is from a fic in the works ;) (yes it’s an angst fic who do u think i am. yes it’s in 2nd person bc this fic is for me and i like writing 2 person. yes i am bullying already traumatized characters. that’s just showbiz babes)

It’s been so long since you last saw them. Your father is overseas and your mother goes to work hours before you wake up, but she still makes breakfast for you to eat. You love them. You wish you could see them again.

But today is all you have. They wont make it in time.

You decide that you prefer the warmth of her hands compared to the cold of a blade.

i dont have the brain power to think of who to tag so im just gonna leave it here. if anyone sees this and wants to do it, consider yourselves tagged

[wall-eye]

fics i want to try and write maybe over spring break

- series of letter exchanges between sterling and his mother and/or reevis

- Orchard picking holiday w the girls and the gang

- Outside view of the court wizard and the capt of the guard getting into Shenanigans 

[wangdrew]

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, an airbender named Wang. And although his airbending skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he’s ready to save anyone. But I believe Wang can save the world

my god this has been an emotional roller coaster

andrew rannells could fucking deck me and i would thank him

wangdrew is why god doesnt speak 2 us

cuz i want a tight knit wangily, i want a chat that makes cat jmemes

top ten anime betrayals

onceler pouting his lips and calling you pookie

tag urself i’m the slow decline of our general will to live

how does this gc turn from being pure to being pure sin in the span of 5 seconds im-

“I got flash backs from the Bee movie, which is also beeutiful”

this is why the falsettos proshoot is not on netflix

wangdrew wangells: the wang whisperer

whizzer is a twunk

sometimes i read sentences that make me want to abandon the internet and become amish//

its brandon uranover

bella thorne is my favourite type of pastry

“march of the voresettos” “march of the NOsettos”

maybe the real vore is the friends we made along the way

“NO VORE IN MY LOBBY” “NO NO IN MY NO”

“BACK FROM THE DAD™”

“Welcome back I hate it here”

“i’m just a vore, yeah i’m only a vore, and i’m voring here on capitol vore” chloe

“night guys im done w the vore” aren’t we all

“i’m gonNA MAKE THEM CRY WITH MY FISTS” chloe

“hello mr rannells sir, how lorge is ur wangus?” CJ

“welcome to hell lucy” Elise S

“gounod” chloe

swooty swooty coming for that booty

My mom, *ordering pizza, says it’ll deliver at 6:45*: “What fuck are they doing? Swimming to fucking Italy for the tomatoes?”

it comes with stickers and theres a whole section of the sticker sheet thats just andrew failing to do the jump on the album cover its so funny

cj is mothman???!! nOT clickbait

a vore blog just followed me

THEY FOUND US (chloe is cia)

there’s no way god would let this chat exist in his realm

ok but like am i the only one who hates when you’re in class working on some personal writing and someone leans over like “wHAt R u wRiTING??????” like your eulogy if you don’t back the fuck up you soggy lampshade

people found out christian was straight and were upset

“That you hate this gc?” “that too but mainly that i live in sweden”

are you fucking kidding me?? i was so happy, this endless hell could finally be over, all the supernatural fans who i forgot to unfollow will stop posting and i would be free, i was planning a party for the last day it airs and we would pointedly not watch it, i was going to cry of happiness, and instead,, This

Sophie

there were loads of theatre references in shrek too i think that’s bdj’s kink

groff dick pokes your eyes out even with its unimpressive length

i will stab you both with a rusty metal dildo

headline: groffs dick causes world war 3

“CAUSE OF DEATH: DILDO TO THE HEAD”

i sold it for my will to live

hey jess? what the fuck

hold on babes just gotta * loud cracking as he snaps off his velcro dick* ok

you’re in the bedroom with wangdrew. things are getting heated. you’re ready for the dicking down. everything is perfect, and you’re in love. he pauses, and whispers in your ear, “hey babes, just one sec”. he pulls away, leaving you wanting. there is a loud, resounding cracking, tearing noise, and wangdrew is holding his disembodied dick is his hand. he smiles. you smile.

me: why will no one date me also me: dick me down, rannells

moisten my gams kate(legs)

songs include: billy ray broke my achey break heart, wangdrews green coat, crusty june and clangy janet, and our true friend is vore

our new reality tv show, called “sometimes.. wangdrew is worse”

starring:

me as me phoebe as my favorite child chloe as vore queen cj as vorer anjie as sidekick monse as mongoose holli as opponent sophie as foolish mortal geneva as judgemental death bird jess as nutbox lucy as k i n k y kate as kinky kate kev as kinky kev haven as side salad claire as foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach reilly as commondore elise as flagelise grace as covenant kristyn as chicken pot pie amanda as kraken tasha as jigglytata asher as sneaky dorito sel as sergeant cactus cait as mcmuffin jill as diet scooby snack and faith as medalling kid

“Good mother fucking morning I am going to school wtf”

“THE DICKS CAME OUT OF NOWHERE”

“2 inches of nothing”

pe poole

Hey what’s poppin’ my name is Jake Paul I’m here in the *pans up to ‘team 10 house’* Team 10 House, I hope you are having a good day hope you’re smiling hope you’re working hard I hope you *pans out to dab* dabbin’ on them haters

hey what’s up selina reeviers, if you’re new here my name is selina reevie and i’m here in the wangdrew groupchat, i hope you’re having an awesome day, i hope you’re listening to musicals, i hope you’re *whips* whipping on the hetros and let’s GET BACK TO CRYING

Skinny beetles = Skaneateles

the only 2 genders *walks up to a straight couple* so which one of you is the jazz choir and which one is the gospel choir

Chloe: what’s a good free website Jess: google.com Solie: THE SARCASM

my whole brand is made off of andrew memes

rt! the wangdrew blog is basically an archive of all our mistakes

He gad it mumming He gad it mumming He gonly gad gimself to maine

Jizzer Brown

cronch the fucking pickle man

Good Morning Everyone My Only Mood Is Death

cunt nugget

youre on punkd lucy

ok but like am i the only one who hates when you’re in class working on some personal writing and someone leans over like “wHAt R u wRiTING??????” like your eulogy if you don’t back up you soggy lampshade

Happy VORE 🍴 lentine’s day! Hope you’re ready to get some 🍫 chocolate from your special someone ❤💋!! And mayBEE 🐝 you can give them a special 😉 SURPRISE ☝💋 and VORE 😱👅👄 their CANDY 🍭🍬🍭 ASS 🍑! Send this to 10 of your TASTIEST 🍰 friends this VORELENTINE’S DAY 👄👅🙀! Get 🔟 back and you’re the TASTIEST 😋 EVER! Get 5 back and you’re GETTING SOME 👄 MOUTH ACTION 👅 Get 3 back and you’re TOTALLY VOREABLE 😋🐯🍑! Get 1 back and you’re either a VORER 👄🍭😉 or SAD

Hi! 💁😋 I’m so happy 😁😆you’ve applied for the 🎭musical 🎼group chat, we’re over a hundred 💯people who want to make new friends 👯👯‍♂ and that’s so exciting!😜 I saw 👀👀that you were okay 👌 with using Whatsapp 💬as a platform and so I was wondering 🤔if you could give me your number📲 so that I can add you?😘 I’m very excited 😝😊and hope 🙏🙏that this will work out for everyone!!😂😂😍🤳🙌

[hermanwatts]

Fantasy and Adventure New Releases: 12 October 2019

This week’s fantasy and adventure new releases feature wars between secret societies, unraveling deep-state conspiracies, dragons returning to fantastic worlds, and the Old West turns weird once more.

Blood & Iron: Part Three – Eli Steele

Magic doesn’t exist, until a mage falls in the streets of Ashmor. In his last moments, he gives Rowan Vos, a thief for hire, a sword that will alter his future, and threaten not only his own life, but the lives of everyone around him. Now, fleeing Ashmor for the mysterious city of Thim Dorul on the Cormorant, the Sea of Shields threatens to end everything he and Kassina have fought for.

The men of the Brae have repelled the Meronian invaders in the Battle of Hell’s Gate, but must now race to repair the keep, while contending with Rayland Mace, the arrogant commander of the Beyornian Army.

And introducing Byron Dhane, shamed commander of the Meronian forces that lost a legion of souls to fifty men and the blaze in the Braewood, as well as a hand to Griffon Alexander in single combat, who now wrestles with the grim realities of war, and struggles to reconcile himself to the dark allies that he must rely upon.

The Brand of the Warlock (The Counterfeit Sorcerer #1) – Robert Kroese

A hooded man, his face marred by a mysterious black brand, walks the Plain of Savlos. Some say he has the power to summon demons. Others say he is the only one who can vanquish them. His name is Konrad, and he has a secret….

Once an ordinary soldier, his life was forever changed by a fateful meeting with a dying sorcerer. Now he is all that stands between civilization and the creeping evil of the shadow world. The Brand of the Warlock is the first book in the fast-paced sword & sorcery series THE COUNTERFEIT SORCERER.

The Counterfeit Sorcerer is a five-book epic sword-and-sorcery series. Think Conan, Elric, or Prince Corwin of Amber. After finishing up my Iron Dragon saga, I wanted to write something for pure fun (and that didn’t require so much research!). The Counterfeit Sorcerer series tells the story of young soldier named Konrad who is unwittingly drawn into an age-old conflict between warring sorcerers–and will need all of his cunning just to survive!

Ogres, demons, warlocks, wraiths… you’ll meet them all in The Counterfeit Sorcerer.

Dragontiarna: Thieves (Dragontiarna #2) – Jonathan Moeller

Ridmark Arban has defeated both the mighty Frostborn and the evil of the Seven Swords, and now he only wishes to live quietly with his family.

But Ridmark’s oldest enemy, the Warden of Urd Morlemoch, has not forgotten him.

And the Warden knows a dangerous secret…

Ridmark Arban defended the town of Castarium from dark forces.

But the Warden of Urd Morlemoch has other servants.

Now a sinister cult is stirring in the great city of Cintarra, corrupting the lords of the realm as it searches for lost relics in ancient ruins.

And if the cult finds what it seeks, worlds beyond count will burn…

Invisible Wars: The Collected Dead Six – Larry Correia and Mike Kupari

OMNIBUS EDITION OF ALL THE HARD-HITTING MILITARY THRILLER DEAD SIX NOVELS from the creator of the multiple New York Times best-selling Monster Hunter series Larry Correia and the best-selling science fiction author Mike Kupari. Includes:

Dead Six: Michael Valentine has been recruited by the government to conduct a secret counter-terror operation in the Persian Gulf nation of Zubara. The unit is called Dead Six. Their mission is to take the fight to the enemy and not get caught. Lorenzo, assassin and thief extraordinaire, is being blackmailed by the world’s most vicious crime lord. His team has to infiltrate the Zubaran terrorist network and pull off an impossible heist or his family will die. When Dead Six compromises his objective, Lorenzo has a new job: Find and kill Valentine.

Swords of Exodus: On the far side of the world, deep in former Soviet Central Asia, lies a stronghold called the Crossroads. It is run with an iron fist by a brutally effective warlord. Enter Lorenzo, thief extraordinaire, and Michael Valentine, implacable mercenary warrior. Their task: team with a shadowy organization of modern day Templars and take down a brutal slave lord.

Alliance of Shadows: Europe has spiraled into chaos. In the midst of the disorder, mercenary Michael Valentine and his team are trying to track down an evil woman bent on total power. They’re on their own, with few friends, few resources, and racing against the clock.

Plus, two short stories set in the Dead Six universe: “Sweothi City” by Larry Correia, and the two-part short story “Rock, Meet Hard Place” by Mike Kupari and Peter Nealen.

Plague of Shadows (The Aldoran Chronicles #2) – Michael Wisehart

In his quest for vengeance against the witch Mangora, Ty stumbles across a curious book he believes might help. But its pages hold a dark secret that threatens to unravel everything his family and friends have been fighting for. The more he reads, the more addicted he becomes to the knowledge it offers…

With no memory of who he is or where he came from, Ayrion finds himself traveling with a pair Rhivanni tinkers as they head east toward Sidara. Then a plea for help from a young rover boy leads them into the middle of a horrific bloodbath against an enemy no one has seen in over a thousand years. If they aren’t stopped, these creatures will spread across Aldor, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake…

As the first prisoner to escape the clutches of the White Tower, Ferrin’s only concern is reaching his sister, Myriah, before the Black Watch catches him. Joined by Rae, her daughter, Suri, and a former captain in the Black Watch, the small band makes their way north, hoping to keep ahead of the white riders. Little do they know who has been sent to track them down…

Meanwhile, Kira and the Warren underground continue their search for Reevie as they attempt to discover the reason behind the strange disappearances in Aramoor. However, the answers they seek are more disturbing than anything they could have imagined…

The Raid (Ryan Decker #2) – Steven Konkoly

After exposing and dismantling a deep-state conspiracy that nearly destroyed his life, Ryan Decker finds his covert skills have put him on the radar of influential Senator Steele. Now Steele needs his help. Two patrol agents were killed in a bizarre explosion near the US-Mexico border—and the evidence doesn’t line up with the official story.

Enlisted by Steele to run an undercover, off-the-books investigation, Decker and his partner, Harlow, head to the border town of Tecate. But when they’re caught in an ambush, Decker realizes they’ve stumbled onto something far more dangerous than any of them understood.

The cover-up is rooted deep in the Department of Defense itself. Fearful for their own lives and unable to trust anyone outside their small circle of skilled associates, Decker and Harlow set in motion a risky plan to stop a criminal conspiracy.

Straight Outta Deadwood – edited by David Boop

Baen’s Bestselling Western Fantasy and Horror Anthology Returns for Another Showdown!

Once again, we return to the Old West with a new posse of top authors spin tales of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. We take no prisoners as they explore what really was, and mix in what might have been.

Charlaine Harris [The Sookie Stackhouse Series, Midnight, Texas] shows us a glimpse inside her new series as a tormented gunfighter faces a true demon of her past. Mike Resnick [The Buntline Special] reveals what Doc Holiday thought was so funny on his last day. Jeffrey Mariotte [Desperados, Graveslingers] introduces us to a man who specializes in pictures of the dead who won’t stay dead. Jane Lindskold [The Firekeeper Saga, The Star Kingdom Series (with David Weber)] teaches us not to underestimate a schoolmarm when her students are in jeopardy. And Shane Hensley [Deadlands] cooks up a stew that threatens to send every famous lawman in history to their graves!

Plus, a dozen more stories of how the west was wilder than any history book could contain, such as a new Native American legend by Stephen Graham Jones and a Mormon troubleshooter straddling the line between his faith and the supernatural by D.J. Butler.

The west that was rides again with west that could have been in this follow-up to Straight Outta Tombstone!

Where Nightmares Ride – R. A. Baxter

When Jack Park received an invitation to Camp Farley, a summer camp promising self-improvement using cutting-edge dream technology, he hoped he’d found a remedy for the repetitive nightmares that had been plaguing his dreams night after night. The camp, however, provided something far different than he’d expected: mysterious visitors, excessive security measures, abusive staff, unexplained technology, and camp courses seemingly bent on leading the campers on a path toward chaos.

Katie Frost had endured too much after losing her adored older sister, Abby, to a freak accident. Not long after that, her mother had taken her baby sister and disappeared, leaving her alone with a neglectful father obsessed with, if not controlled by, Montathena Research, his secretive dream-tech business. When her father’s partners demanded that Katie be compelled to serve the company, following a security breach, she stopped caring altogether.

The questions increased when Jack and Katie finally crossed paths, the course of events eventually propelling them into a surreal adventure where the boundaries of life, death, and nightmares meet.

Fantasy and Adventure New Releases: 12 October 2019 published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[incandescent-eden]

Excerpt from Let’s Kill Imogen! I’m making my way through a new short story extremely slowly, haha

---

          Isla hates the sticky dough on her hands. She hadn’t thought ahead, and it sticks to her cuffs, and buries deep inside her fingernails, and when she moves to wipe the sweat gathering at her forehead, it gets caught in her hair. “Alright, enough,” she says when six lumps roughly resembling scones have taken shape. “After this, simply fire up the scones until they’re golden in color, and you can serve them.”

           “How long will that take?” Imogen asks. Her cheek is also smeared with dough. An almond slice sticks to her sleeve.

           “I don’t know,” Isla snaps. “Go play with Mary.”

           The girls obligingly run off, happy to be free from Isla’s scowling scrutiny. Sibylline’s eyes and mouth have the lineless quality of a woman with no reason to frown. Even after three children and two decades married to that boor, she looks fresh as the day of her debut.

           “What do you want, Sibyl?” Isla asks, wiping her hands off once more.

           “Must I want something to visit my oldest friend?”

           “I would prefer if you did,” Isla answers. “Unless, of course, you want to waste my time, in which case, I wish you would want something else.”

           “Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?” Sibylline says with a smirk. “I see you’re teaching Imogen the tricks of the Hewitt family trade.”

           “She can do what she wants.”

           “She’s a wild child.”

           “If you don’t want Mary to pick up bad habits, then simply don’t bring your daughter over. Impressionability is the worst quality a girl can have.”

           Sibylline pouts, and it should look ridiculous on a woman in her late thirties, but because it’s Sibylline, it only vexes Isla. “You’re so mean, Isla. Mary enjoys playing with Imogen, and Imogen is a smart girl. They won’t get in too much trouble.”

           “Did you know Imogen is nearly thirteen?”

           The pout instantly becomes another smirk. “Why, of course I did! My darling Mary’s birthday is only one day after Imogen’s, as you know.”

           The abdominal pain this time is followed by a stabbing headache. Isla sighs. Sibylline and her uncanny ability to give Isla a migraine. “They grew up quickly. Sometimes, I think, too quickly.”

           “Not quickly enough, if you ask me,” Sibylline laughs. “Does your head hurt?” she puts a cool hand against Isla’s forehead, wiping away the dough with her thumb. “You put yourself under too much stress.”

           “I think,” Isla says, feeling her tongue slide under her teeth, “you simply don’t have a single care in the world.”

           Sibylline giggles. “Oh, life is so much easier that way. You should try it, Isla.”

           “You know you’re not a child, and you can’t live like that?”

           “You wouldn’t have as many worries if Edward were still here,” Sibylline says with a dismissive wave of her hand. She picks up the vial from the table beside the dough tray, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. “Poor Edward. Only twenty-six and almost newlywed.”

           “Some things are inevitable,” Isla says. She hadn’t realized just how tired she was until the sigh escapes at the end of her sentence.

           “And some things are meant to be,” Sibylline says, pressing the vial into Isla’s palm. “Those aren’t really the same thing, don’t you think?”

           “What are you trying to say?”

           Sibylline smiles, and in that moment, she looks nothing like sweet little Mary Hearst’s mother. “I’m not trying to say anything at all, dearest Isla.”

[incandescent-eden]

              The river was partially frozen by the time I arrived, a late November evening when the cold was just starting to settle. Patches of ice floating atop the water gleamed silver as they drifted, and in the dark, the river resembled a thick, lethargic snake making its way across the country.

           When Melly was little, I told her a story my ye told me about the origin of the major rivers in China – how four dragons had brought rain to the starving people and their dying crops by stealing water from the emperor of the Ocean Kingdom. How they had been punished for doing what was right by being trapped under mountains, and how they had become the rivers that continued to flood the banks and save the people year after year.

           “But that’s not fair,” Melly had pouted, her beautiful brown eyes wide and indignant.

           Life isn’t fair.

           The leaves crunched beneath my feet rhythmically. Just follow the river until you reach the mouth, until you reach the ocean, until it ends.

           She ran a podcast.

           She never told me she ran a podcast, but I found the link anyway. It was the first time I had heard her voice in over a year, but it was undeniably hers.

           “Hello again, listeners! It’s your host, Orpheus, back at it again. On today’s episode of Styx and Stones, we’re exploring the river in the woods. It’s a foggy night, so it’s suuuper creepy. Honestly can’t be worse than the time with the chairs, though, right?”

           Orpheus. The one who looked back.

           My daughter used to look back to make sure I followed. She would run some feet ahead at the local eighty-eight, her tiny shoes pattering on the dirty linoleum, and toss her head back with fear.

           I can’t reconcile that image of my Melly, barely tall enough to reach the second row of stickers on the spinning rack, with this stranger who speaks with excitement about made up creatures who lurk in the dark.

           Onward and onward, I walked until I reached a place where the moon can be glimpsed through the bare branches of the trees.

           The moon splinters, white scales separated by black branches against a black sky. For a moment, the moon was a dragon that curled in on itself, but then I remembered the moon had a rabbit, that the moon was feminine and dragons were masculine. The moon was one of the only characters I taught my daughter.

           Look, see? Take the word for day, and take the word for moon, and when you put them together, you get the word for bright.

           The moon shone as bright as Melly’s eyes when she shoved the letter in my face, begging me to read it. Eyes that shone with pride. We are happy to welcome you to…

           Did Orpheus’s eyes shine the same way when she recorded this episode? Her voice was cheerful, although her words were broken up by quick gasps and the crunching of leaves.

           Melly’s voice and footsteps echoed around in my ears without a hint of static. I closed my eyes, letting the moon wash away.

           Just smile and nod and interject every so often so Melly knows you’re listening, pretend she’s telling you about her favorite video game, or a friend from college, or her plans for the summer when summer returned. Pretend you’re just taking a walk with the daughter you watched grow up and not alone in the middle of the woods listening to a stranger talk about malicious spirits.

           But the night was still dark when my eyes opened, drawn out of fantasy by Orpheus’s shift in tone.

           “Well, that’s all for this episode. Thank you again for listening to Styx and Stones. Tune in next time. This has been Orpheus to remind you: life is unfair and unpredictable, so don’t look back!”

           The recording clicked off. There was no next episode, not in the past year.

           Without Melly’s voice, the night was silent. The moon stared back at me, filled with the same cold sympathy of the neighbors I passed in the street every day. Its gleeful anticipation of my tears flooded me with rage, rushing like the river when it rained.

           Unlike the neighbors, the moon’s gaze remained fixed, shamelessly expectant. A neighbor might have expressed their condolences briefly, then cleared their throat to cut through the silence, but the silence in the forest stayed intact.

           The ice patches on the river floated forward and backward, up and down stream as if constantly pulled back.

           Melly’s episode ending was still fresh in my mind. Maybe she called herself Orpheus, but I was the one looking back now.

           The leaves rustled, and my blood ran cold as the river in front of me, and just as swiftly. A dark figure emerged from the gray fog.

           “Orpheus?” croaked the shadowy figure in a hopeful voice.

           “No.” The newcomer didn’t respond. “I… I’m looking for her.”

           The figure stepped forward, revealing a young woman with stringy hair. Either the dark of the night or tiredness formed deep bags under her eyes. She frowned.

           Her eyes searched me as intently as the glare of the moon.

           At last, she said, “You have her eyes.”

           “She has mine.”

           “Hm,” was all the woman said.

           At last, she turned back. “For what it’s worth,” she said in a steady voice, “Orpheus was my friend.”

           Was. Everyone always described Melly in the past tense, as if the only thing they could do was look back on her life and shake their heads. It wasn’t fair.

[incandescent-eden]

            “Well, I have to agree with Melly on that one,” Daisy said. “My mom used to say I was drinking cream.”

           “Maybe you should listen to her more,” Diana laughed.

           Daisy pocketed their phone, slipping it into their jacket pocket. “Mm,” they vocalized. That was another thing they had in common with Melly: noncommittal sounds and avoiding answers. Maybe it was a young people thing.

           “Aren’t you going to eat anything?” Diana didn’t press the issue. She wasn’t Daisy’s mother, so she had no place berating them.

           “I had coffee?” Daisy suggested.

           Diana peered at them over her glasses. It was a warm day for mid-November, when the sky was heavy and wet, lacking all trace of the biting tang that indicated incoming snow. Even so, Daisy wore thick, baggy clothing, clearly layered as though going skiing. They had neglected to wear a scarf, so their neck was exposed.

          A neck like that would be easy to snap, a twig underfoot.

          “Eat,” said Diana, pulling out a paper-wrapped egg cake. “You need to eat breakfast, you know. I brought some bao, too.”

          “You didn’t have to,” Daisy protested, but their eyebrows shot up, and their eyes widened.

          “Your eyes are all golden,” Diana said in Cantonese.

          Daisy eagerly pinched the corner of the pastry Diana held out and peeled the paper off. She tore off chunks to pop in her mouth. “Mmmm, I haven’t had these cakes since…” they stopped talking to chew. “Hm, not sure when,” they finished.

--

Another day, another excerpt from Songs To Look Back To! I’m really making it up as I go though, haha!

Love always to my tag list (please send an ask or send me a DM to be added/removed!): @luxaofhesperides, @axelcat, @boffinsandbeasties

[incandescent-eden]

[EXCERPT] Here Lies Forever

TW/CW: depictions of corpses, decay

          “I told you, Maevie, I don’t know anything els- oh!” Chris stopped mid-sentence, thrown off by Maeve’s arms suddenly around her neck and shoulders.

           She was so thin. Fragile beneath Maeve’s arms, even. But still, she was almost solid; she didn’t fit in this space like she once did, but close enough. Maeve had missed the warmth from Chris’s embraces, and the soft breathing against her ear, and the hair that tickled her cheek when she greeted her friend, or held her when she needed comfort. Her scent was nostalgic: something warm and not quite flowery, but sweet nonetheless.

           And just underneath, there was a tinge of moss and dirt. The longer Maeve held her, the more she became aware of something underlying: of the pushing of sprouts through earth, of roots and mushroom colonies bleached white and pulsing with electrical signals that replaced branching nerves, of flesh slowly being eaten away and burrowed through – dull red because the heart had stopped beating long ago, and blood no longer circulated.

          Of suffocation, and bones slowly revealed, still stained from muscles that had not completely sloughed off. Empty eye sockets and lipless rows of teeth sneering at her.

          She pushed Chris away.

I wrote this passage in HLF yesterday, and I really like it, so here you go.

general tag list (ask / tag / DM to be added or removed please!): @luxaofhesperides, @axelcat, @boffinsandbeasties

[incandescent-eden]

She closed her eyes, pressing cold fingers under plastic glasses rims and against warm eyelids. “He says she’s been causing him emotional distress, but given how recently she’s died, a judge would probably give her the benefit of the doubt because think about how emotionally distressed she’d be. Not to mention – we don’t know how bad it is at the Hastings place. And we don’t want Evelyn showing up with any nasty surprises.”

Mori opened her eyes again, adjusting her glasses to the sound of Willow’s laptop being shut and packed away. The gray buildings surrounding the office were now stretches of darkness indistinguishable from the evening, broken only by large windows showing shadows and figures from other offices moving about; the small square of sunlight that lit the city earlier had long since faded, giving way to phosphorescent streetlamps shining blue far below and orange electric lamps that mimicked the glow of flame in the buildings’ interiors.

“I ought to get home,” Willow said, tugging her stylish pea coat closed over her autumn-colored dress. “6 PM. You know how the traffic rush is.”

Want to get dinner? Mori almost asked. Her heart thumped as Willow smoothed her hair back, fussing with the loose strands until she somehow, magically, twisted them back into place. There’s this café just around the corner. I know you’ll love it.

“Sure,” she said instead. “See you tomorrow.”

Spirit of the Law sure is a piece of writing.

[incandescent-eden]

31 Days of Horror - Rot (3)

A day late because I got very distracted last night, but here is day 3 of 31 days of horror!

Total word count: 1153

TW / CW : unreality, self harm ( namely, scratching and washing hands in water that’s too hot ), descriptions of wounds, body horror, body horror involving mushrooms, vein mentions, numbness, unhealthy relationships, lack of communication in relationships, internalized racism, negative self image

---

Daniel didn’t remember how it started, to be honest. For as long as he could remember, probably, but he knew he wasn’t born with the rot.

When he was younger, maybe around five or so, his skin was bad. His mother would wrap gauze around his fingers and hands until he fell asleep dreaming of trees and roots, of his hands pushing through the bark, grasping at the burst of light through the tiny crack. He would wake up in the morning in the golden sunlight, and silently allow his mom to unwrap the gauze. The little cotton pieces would cling to his fingers, little puffs of white stark against darkened wounds, like dandelion spores floating across his path.

Supposedly, then, it started before he was five.

“Stop that,” his mom would cluck, when he found his hand scraping against his thighs and calves and the crooks of his elbows.

The thing about picking at your skin, of course, is that, eventually, the skin breaks.

“What do you have to be stressed about?” his father would ask, flippantly. There was a lightness in his tone, one that suggested he was joking, like Daniel couldn’t possibly have anything to be stressed about. Mr. Lee peeled a ripe banana as he spoke.

Daniel hated bananas. He said nothing, only shook his head, even as his fingers wormed their way to his palm, his thumb, the fingers of his other hand.

“Can you pick up some bananas at the store?” Tyler had asked Daniel a few weeks earlier on his grocery run. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Sure,” Daniel replied, and he had come back, arms full, to the apartment.

The bananas sat rotting and brown, completely untouched, on top of the microwave.

Daniel grimaced, pinching the top of the bunch between his thumb and forefinger. Slowly, he pulled. He was halfway to the trash can in their tiny kitchen when the bananas sloughed off from their stems and hit the floor with a dull splat. The kitchen was filled with the smell of banana. Daniel sighed.

He cleaned up as best as he could, and then washed his hands. A small note by the sink reminded him to buy mushrooms and more bananas. Daniel frowned, scrubbing harder at his hands. The hot water helped, rushing from the faucet. It pounded and stung, but it washed away the smell of rotting banana, and scratched at the deep displeasure he couldn’t reach under his skin.

Drying his hands, he walked out, grabbing his keys to go grocery shopping. Bananas. Again.

Daniel hated bananas. The first time he had been called a banana, he was nine years old, and he had worn the name with pride. It meant he was well spoken, it meant he fit in. Cantonese was such an ugly language, he told himself.

The walk to the grocery store was short, but cold. One of those staticky days when the sky was gray and the trees were barren and wet. The sky was dark gray, threatening to snow. Daniel loved the first snow, the way the snowflakes twirled at varying tempos. It stuck to his jacket and hair and brows, caught on the dead skin around old scars.

His fingers were already numb.

The grocery store was wonderfully warm. Stifling, even, at first, when he breathed in and the air was no longer charged and crisp. His hands prickled as they warmed inside his pockets. He grabbed a shopping basket and paused.

There were white mushrooms growing from the minuscule scrapes in his fingers, stacked like teeth protruding from so many tiny mouths.

He probably should have been horrified. Terrified, even. Instead, Daniel rolled back his shoulder. Sighed. The numbness grew over his lungs, spreading through his blood.

His fingers flashed in the bright lights of the wrapped produce on the sides of the aisle as he reached for the carton of diced mushrooms. A small part of him laughed. What need had he of diced mushrooms, when he had as many as he wanted growing from him already?

Mushrooms break down organic matter, he recalled from his childhood lessons. They grew on rotting trees, and rotted living trees, and they broke down the nutrients to return it to the earth. It was a cycle.

What cycle was this? The cycle of telling himself he didn’t need to get everything done? That he should tell Tyler if something bothered him? That he was good enough, that he just was too busy for a relationship right now?

Sometimes, when he had to say hi to Jenna, when she came to the apartment to visit Tyler, it felt like his tongue was wrapped in the same gauze with which his mom used to wrap his hands. Woolly and thick and padded, like he could hurt himself or his friends with that sharp tongue if he didn’t keep it wrapped.

Sometimes, he could taste the rot. It sloshed down his throat as he swallowed half-formed thoughts, salty and viscous. He pictured it whenever he swallowed, pretended like nothing was wrong even though every forced smile brought another mouthful of noxious orange slime mold, sliding down his throat centimeter by centimeter. His throat was coated with bark, must have been. It felt so fuzzy and thick.

He was still standing in the middle of the store, his hand outstretched. Daniel shook his head, clearing away the thoughts. Grabbed a thing of mushrooms wrapped in the plastic. He scratched at his skin.

The veins on the back of his hand looked different. Thinner, more plentiful. Come to think of it, his hands were starting to prickle again, a different kind of prickling this time.

From the cracks of his fingers, the mushrooms pushed outward, hard like bone shards, struggling to breach his skin.

Daniel sighed, walked to the bananas. They were still green and hard, firm to the touch. Daniel picked up the first bunch within his reach and tossed it in the basket.

The bananas sat on top of the microwave the rest of the week. Daniel watched them as he washed his hands. There were five bananas in the bunch.

He washed his hands in hot water, counting the bananas. Twenty seconds. Count one banana per second. Four times.

The bananas were dark yellow now, spotted with brown.

It was getting harder and harder to wash his hands. White, brittle mushrooms broke through hands as cracked as forest oak bark.

“Hey,” Daniel said, shaking his hands to dry them. The skin that could still be seen through the bursting white fungus was pink and puffy. The veins of the mushrooms under his skin bulged. “The bananas are ripe.”

“Oh yeah, thanks,” said Tyler, as he went back to video calling Jenna. Daniel said nothing as more slime mold slid down his throat.

Five mushy bananas kept Daniel company two weeks later as he rinsed white covered hands and arms.

[incandescent-eden]

31 Days of Horror: Distort (1)

My story from yesterday for the first day of @witch-kid-writer ‘s 31 days of horror! (The prompts are really cool, I highly recommend checking them out!)

Total word count: 1653

TW / CW for: body horror, graphic descriptions of bodily horror sounds, moments of unreality, graphic descriptions of panic attacks, fatphobia mention

---

Imogen Gong was a quiet person. She had good grades, full AP classes and honors society in high school, got a partial scholarship to get into a decent college, practiced piano and violin and Chinese - the perfect image of what she was expected to be. Her parents were so pleased with how far their daughter had gotten.

For her part, Imogen wasn’t going to contradict them. Yes, I’m going to a great school, she told aunties who would cluck and congratulate her. Thank you, I’m really excited, I worked really hard. She would muster up the most emotion she can, tried to bend fatigue into pride, tried to twist empty, meaningless compliments into some amount of self-esteem.

And, as she should have prepared for, but didn’t expect, she crashed hard. Sure, her grades were still average, but the compliments dried out, and her sleep schedule became less of a schedule and more of a metronome bouncing back and forth between never sleeping and sleeping through classes, with panic attacks set as the notes. Quarter note equals sixty-six, repeat five times a day, her old piano teacher’s voice echoed in her head when her chest was tight and her muscles clenched involuntarily, and air was scarce.

If only she could play her panicked breathing as an instrument and her heart as a drum, and play a one person symphony orchestra, so she could become famous and rich and drop out entirely.

As it stood, she dropped her theory of computation class her third year of college and, in an effort to avoid having any eight am classes, re-enrolled the second semester that year in Professor Tenner’s class.

Professor Leonard Tenner was a curious man, in the way that he was absolutely, bizarrely average. He wore rectangle glasses and an ill-fitting suit every day he taught, and boyish white cheeks and balding brown hair. He spoke with a mild voice, with an accent that was painfully American, but just standard enough that his dialect gave no indication as to where in the United States he was actually from.

Imogen sat slumped in the second row.

“So suppose, I have this graph. The shortest path, then…” Professor Tenner would say with a small smile, as he drew the graph in faded whiteboard markers on a grayed out whiteboard, filling in circular nodes.

Professor Tenner looked up from the board for a second, his light eyes boring into Imogen. “Is everyone following along alright?” he asked with a mild smile.

The words that crawled from his mouth twitched and writhed, as though laughing, curling into themselves and over and into the students’ ears.

“I hope you’re all getting this information,” Professor Tenner continued. He traced the edges between the graph nodes, added number weights full of circular two’s and eight’s.

Each graph had different colors, pallid red and green and purple and blue graphs full of crossed, curving lines. The flat, gray whiteboard was stretched and distorted with the graphs scrambling over every inch.

“The shortest path, then…” said Professor Tenner, again and again and again, pacing from one end of the classroom to the other.

“The shortest path, then…” All the while, the graphs continued to twist.

Imogen’s pencil shook. He was going too fast; she couldn’t possibly write down the question that quickly.

“This will be on the exam, so make sure you know it,” said Professor Tenner. Imogen’s intestines twisted, as cross as the garish graphs that stared mockingly back at her with their incomprehensible paths of varying lengths. She hadn’t realized exams were coming on so soon.

The shortest path. The shortest path was...

“Oh, would you look at the time?” Professor Tenner said, at last. “I’ll see you all in class next week. Remember, the homework is due on Tuesday, and my office hours are Thursday from three to five!” His voice could barely be heard over the rush of students packing up to leave.

Imogen silently packed her things and went back to her room.

“Everything alright?” Cathy, her roommate, asked, when Imogen entered. Cathy was already seated at her desk, her psychology textbook cracked open, glasses smudged.

“Just tired,” Imogen replied, collapsing on her bed. The mattress was stiff. Her stuffed rabbit, Floppy, teetered precariously on the edge of the unlofted bed, moments away from falling to the cold tile floor covered in shed hair.

“I feel that,” Cathy said, highlighting a passage of her notes. “I’ve been studying my ass off for this exam.”

“I’m sure you’ll do great,” Imogen said, crawling under her blankets. The twisting in her torso would not go away. “I’m going to take a nap. Stayed up til four last night trying to do Tenner’s homework.”

“God,” muttered Cathy piteously.

Imogen made a noncommittal sound in agreement, curled into a ball to try and stop the cramping.

When she awoke, it was dark, and Cathy was gone. Probably at dinner or in the library. She checked her phone: notifications from Twitter, an email from her stats professor reminding everyone to bring a pen to class, and a grading notification from Tenner’s class. With a frown, Imogen checked the grade notification. The soft blue glow of the screen was cold, despite the thick blankets in which Imogen wrapped herself.

Her skin prickled with heat and ice simultaneously, staring at the impossibly curved score that danced on the screen as her hand shook.

Taking a small breath, Imogen locked her phone, throwing herself back into darkness. The twisting in her intestines worsened.

She was vaguely aware of Floppy lying on the dirty floor, but Imogen was too numb to poke her hand out of the blankets that swallowed her and rescue the stuffed rabbit. The world was spinning.

Imogen closed her eyes. Willed the spiraling graphs to disappear. Begged the curved, bloated, distorted score from her last homework to have been wrong, to stop glaring at her from behind shut eyelids.

Her breathing started to get faster. Quarter note equals forty, then fifty, then sixty six. In out, in out, in out, gasping and gasping and gasping, and suddenly it’s not her piano teacher’s voice she hears, but Professor Tenner’s.

“The shortest path, then…”

Imogen flipped on her light, shaking as she stumbled out of bed. The world itself wasn’t moving, not logically, but the straight path to the bathroom turned into a twisted maze, spinning around her with every wobbly step.

The bright fluorescent lights of the bathroom washed everything out as Imogen leaned on the counter, hovering over the sink. In, out, in out, the breaths came, faster and faster, but then - finally! - slowing down. Her skin was a pale green in the bathroom mirror, the same green as Professor Tenner’s markers.

Faded, weak, a shadow of the bright green the marker once must have been. And used to draw twisting graphs, twisting and twisting like Imogen’s intestines.

Imogen watched her eyes in the mirror, watched as the dark brown shifted from hopeless to glaring. If she could just stop cramping, she could start to do something.

To her surprise, her organs complied. The pain went away immediately.

Imogen blinked. Pinched herself.

Watched with glee as the skin gave way, stretched and curled around her fingers as she twisted. Laughed, even.

This had to be a joke. She tugged at her fingers, her thumbs, her palms.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

She had always struggled to play tenths on the piano, but no more.

Gazing in the mirror incredulously, Imogen pulled at her cheeks, watched as her lips curled into a smile.

She could get taller, she realized, stretching herself by several inches. Crack, crack, pop, went her spine. Her face slid into a wider smile even as her cheeks flattened. Mom had always wanted her to be taller, thinner. Now she could be.

For a second, her smile lingered, until the homework score flashed in front of her eyes once more.

The twisting in her intestines returned.

Will as she might, Imogen could not erase the pain this time. She grabbed her abdomen. Hugged it tight. Watched as her skin turned from sickly to pink from the blood rushing, twisting with her own hands this time. Twisting and twisting and twisting until the pain went away.

She kept twisting, desperately trying to erase the smooth curves of the number that flashed in her mind. Stretched her limbs outward at sharp angles, as far away from smooth curves as she could get. Pinched and pulled, faster and faster, copying the graphs Professor Tenner had scribbled on the board. Twisted her joints until they were the half-filled curlicues of her professor’s handwriting, and pinched her skin until it was the faint purple and green and red and blue of the markers.

Ignored the sounds of popping and crunching and squelching.

Imogen smiled to herself. There was no one else to smile to - she couldn’t even see where her mouth was in the mirror.

The shortest path was clear in her mind, now, an obvious path from elbow to lung to pelvis. Imogen kept shifting, rearranging, distorting herself until she had created each graph configuration of Tenner’s questions and several more.

Shortest path, longest path, minimum spanning tree, and so on. All of them were clear now.

A new number flashed before her eyes, the score she would get on this exam if the answers came as easily as they did now.

She could challenge herself more, get harder and harder questions right. Add more paths, more nodes, more edges, more cycles. Her breathing picked up again, this time from excitement - quarter note equals fifty five.

The sprawling, spiraling skin and the cracking and clacking of bones as they connected to form a new graph were barely even noticeable now. Imogen solved the shortest path from her knee to her skull, faster than before.

The shortest path, then… echoed Professor Tenner’s voice in Imogen’s mind, again and again.

[incandescent-eden]

31 Days of Horror - Vast (2)

My go at day 2 of 31 days of horror : Vast ! And this one was finished before 12 A M in my time, I am so excited!

Total word count: 1457

TW / CW : deep sea mentions , unidentified creatures , bullying behaviors , burn wounds , burn mentions , (special mention for scientific inaccuracies)

---

“What the hell?” Vivienne clenched the clipboard she held. It dug into her palm as she tried to resist the urge to throw it at the woman who had brought her in through the mechanically locked doors.

An urge that was quickly becoming harder to fight while the woman stammered out an explanation. She had been studying the specimen for longer, had been on the initial team that found it, or so Vivienne had been told when she accepted the project.

“This is the specimen, Dr. Zhu,” she said, wringing her hands. A strand of her straight black hair slipped in front of her goggles from the loose ponytail that held it back. Sloppy.

“Is this a joke?” Vivienne demanded. Her fingertips ached from pressing on the clipboard. “I was told there was a specimen to study, and you take me here to show me, what? A central pillar?”

Slowly, shakily, Vivienne lowered her clipboard, pressing her other hand to her temple. She tried to breathe, to keep her voice level. It wouldn’t do to get angry at another researcher, not on her first day. “Did David put you up to this? I won’t get mad, just tell me where the real specimen is, and who told you to play this silly little prank. I won’t even tell the director.” She grit her teeth, inhaling through her nose. Exhaling. “Just stop. Wasting. My time.”

“Um,” the woman whispered. The red stitching on her lab coat read ‘Dr. W. Ng.’ “N-no, that… that really is the specimen, Dr. Zhu. That entire tank…”

Vivienne’s breath hitched, mid-inhale. She turned around.

The tank was pressurized, puffs of air hissing every few seconds around it. It was a tube, the kind that stretched from the base of the building all the way to the top floor, with the top left exposed so people could peer in, downward. The shape of it was oddly nostalgic, reminding Vivienne of when she was a little girl and her parents were at work. Her grandfather would take her to the aquarium, teaching her the names of different animals in Cantonese. She used to run along the curved ramps of the aquarium, following fish as they flitted from one end of the glass tank to the next, until she reached the top and she could gaze down, standing on her tiptoes, wondering what it would feel like to ride the turtles.

This tank was a similar shape, with metal stairs all around the reinforced glass instead of sticky aquarium floors. Where Vivienne used to look into clear, blue tinted waters and see multitudes of coral and fish, however, all there was in the tank was a solid white pillar.

She pressed one hand to the glass, expecting it to be cool. It was hot to the touch - so hot that Vivienne jerked her hand away instinctively.

“This…” Vivienne muttered. “This is the specimen?” She ran, circling the tank. Behind her came the clanging of her companion’s footsteps as she tried to keep up. “How did you transport it here?” she said, half-dazed.

“It bit one of our probes,” Dr. Ng admitted. “We sent a probe down to try to map some of the creatures closer to the sea floor, and it, um… latched on.”

Vivienne reached out, stopping inches away from touching the tank again. “How did you… pull it up?”

“We didn’t know,” said Dr. Ng quietly. “It was really small at first. We pulled up the probe, and there it was. Just this, wriggly little thing. Real cute,” she said with a nervous laugh.

“I mean, the coloration!” she gushed, a smile floating up to her face. She flushed pink, her dark eyes far away and sparkling. “Something that was pure white, that was meant to reflect light, ten kilometers below sea level? We were worried maybe the light would be too much for it, but it didn’t seem to respond at all to different lighting levels. Just pressure. Well, that, and...”

“Feeding,” Vivienne finished softly.

“Yes,” said Dr. Ng, breathless. “It ate everything we gave it. Fish food at first, but then Nicky accidentally dropped one of the grapes they were eating - god, they should not have been eating in the lab - and it snatched it up. And then we thought, hey, what if we fed it other things? It must have been a top predator…”

“But?” Vivienne asked, sensing the hesitation in Dr. Ng’s trailing off.

“But it kept getting bigger,” she continued somberly. “Do you understand, Dr. Zhu? No matter what we fed it, it kept getting bigger.”

Vivienne nodded, recalling the emptied cans labelled potassium cyanide they had passed on their way into this main chamber.

“So why call me in? Sounds like your team would want credit for this find.”

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was the running of the turbines filtering what little water was left in the tank and the faint hissing of machines straining to keep pressure at deep sea levels. Then, almost imperceptibly, there came a low, haunting, whistling tone.

“Do you hear that, Dr. Zhu?” Dr. Ng asked in a hushed voice.

“Yes.” The word barely left Vivienne’s lips.

“Creepy, isn’t it?”

“Beautiful,” said Vivienne.

The whistling tone continued, just low enough that if she hadn’t been listening, or if she started to think of something else, she would have missed it. It was a sweet and sad chorus, bouncing off the metal of the rails of the walkways encircling the tank, filling the chamber as if expanding, as if taking up the entirety of the tank was not enough, as if nothing would ever be enough until the creature had consumed the vastness of space itself.

“Dr. Zhu?” Dr. Ng interrupted, grabbing Vivienne’s shoulder.

Vivienne whipped her hand off the tank on which it rested, now aching and red. She gasped in pain, holding her wrist as her hand throbbed.

“I’m fine,” Vivienne muttered through gritted teeth. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Dr. Ng looked at her with round eyes and rounded, parted lips. Vivienne hated eyes like that, full of pity and concern. Eyes that once stared back at her from a mirror, decades ago, when Vivienne herself had been a young woman like Dr. Ng.

The whistling was gone now.

“We should leave,” Dr. Ng said slowly. As if she was speaking to a child. Anger rose in Vivienne’s throat, hotter than her quickly scarring hand.

“Answer. My. Question,” Vivienne repeated.

Avoiding Vivienne’s eyes, Dr. Ng finally tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re the leading expert in deep sea parasites. We thought, at first, with the way it would eat everything, maybe that’s what it was. It was only about this big when we called you.” She held her hands about half a meter apart.

“We weren’t feeding it more than a few grams of fish formula a day, but it kept getting bigger, and then,” Dr. Ng paused, taking a deep breath. “One day, we stopped feeding it. Just to see if it would respond, try to tap the glass or whether it had gotten, you know, conditioned. But it just kept getting bigger.”

“A lot of people… Nicky, Felix, Adeline, basically our entire team quit. Burned their hands against the tank the same way you did when it was still small. But the water temperature was always cold to emulate the bottom of the ocean when we checked it. And it was highly improbable that all of them just got careless one day. That just doesn’t happen.”

Vivienne nodded. “Why are you still here, then?”

Dr. Ng looked curiously at Vivienne. “This is my work. I’ve been with this project for three years now, and I couldn’t just quit. Wouldn’t you have done the same?”

Wordlessly, Vivienne nodded.

She turned again, staring at the specimen, the blinding pillar of white that seemed to consume her entire field of vision.

“I started this project thinking I would find something at the bottom of the sea floor. Better document that part of the ocean, you know?” Her words remained soft, but her voice took on a hard tiredness. “I don’t know what I’ll do if it gets bigger.”

When, Vivienne said, but her lips remained sealed.

The whistle tone started once more, reaching and stretching into the air. It struck Vivienne just how tall the observation chamber was, just how wide the radius of the tank, and just how small she and Dr. Ng must have been - mere specks against the mass of white that came from a great unknown.

A tiny cracking noise, rendered inaudible by the specimen’s whistling, accompanied an even smaller webbed crack in the glass of the tank.

[incandescent-eden]

31 Days of Horror - Misplace (5)

I skipped flesh (day 4), for now! Got a bit busy and just wrapped up day 5!

Total word count: 1302

TW / CW : strong language, obsessive chase / mindset, paranoia-inducing ( the monster in this story is ambiguously real and could be read as a hallucination, although that is not the intent ; please proceed with caution )

---

It shouldn’t have been so hard to find the goddamn gold fedoras. For the love of whichever dread power was laughing at that instant, they were golden fedoras. Twenty of them. The gaudiest shit you had ever seen.

Marley rounded the corner of the labyrinthine backstage, throwing the door of the dressing room open. “Have you seen the -”

She stopped short as a burst of hairspray hit her directly in the mouth. It smelled sweet and metallic, but tasted awful.

“Oh, sorry!” Nicky said hurriedly, dropping the can. “I go on in a bit, so -”

“No, it’s fine,” Marley cut them off quickly. Her mouth still tasted of hairspray. “Have you seen the fedoras?”

Marley started searching, ducking to check under the chairs, and lifting costume pieces. Vaguely, she heard Nicky respond apologetically in the negative.

The last time she had seen the silly hats, she had stacked them on top of the dress form in the costume shop, so maybe they were still there?

She started to run, her heels clacking against the gray tiles. The lights flickered slightly, transforming the short, straight corridor into a wavering bridge from the dressing room to the shop. The overlapping voices from the dressing room drifted to Marley’s ears.

Marley paused, her hand inches from the door. The shop was locked.

It was supposed to be locked.

Marley had one hand in her pocket, her fingers curled around the key.

The red double doors to the shop were slightly ajar, the lock still on the floor, barely an inch from the toe of Marley’s shoe.

Maybe Lee had gone in for supplies and forgotten to lock the door again?

A shadow flitted from the corners of the dim lights in the shop. Marley stiffened.

“Hello?” she called, peeping through the crack between the doors.

No reply. Maybe it was a rat. It happened. Hard to keep rodents out of the theater, and cast was always eating backstage (which they weren’t technically supposed to do, but call was so early and it was cruel to expect people to just not eat and then perform for three hours - Marley was fine with it as long as they didn’t spill anything on the costumes).

A long sustained note hummed faintly in the air, just barely audible through the thick metal doors into the wings, but it was enough to shock Marley into jumping. Enough for her to kick the discarded metal lock through the crack in the doors, where it skidded loudly to a stop.

Marley winced. The band was done tuning. She had to find those goddamn hats.

The shop was, perhaps, more difficult to navigate than the tiny dressing room full of dancers and haphazardly placed character shoes scattered among chairs draped with jackets and skirts.

Racks of gray military coats stood stock still, like a line of soldiers that watched her with gleaming gold button eyes as she walked past. A draft blew in from the door. Marley shivered.

“Where are those hats,” she muttered, rubbing her hands against her arms.

A fake raccoon statue with beady eyes appeared as she rounded the corner of costume racks. An old sewing machine sat with red tarp pooled on the floor around it, like a corpse sitting in its own blood.

Again, Marley paused. That machine was supposed to be covered up with the tarp. “Lee?” she called again, wondering if her assistant costume designer had been through the shop earlier.

No answer.

She couldn’t hear the sounds from the stage inside the shop, but she was running out of time. The gold fedoras were needed for the act one finale, and they were already well into the act.

With a frown, Marley continued her search.

She only took a few steps further when she almost tripped over the knocked over dress form, a styrofoam wig head a few feet off to the side.

“Lee, this isn’t funny!” Marley whisper-shouted after her initial yelp of surprise. “If you’re going to leave the shop a mess, then you have to put it back together!”

Still, there was no response.

The lights in the shop flickered as much as the lights in the hallway, but the shop lighting was far worse. Squinting, the dress form and head resembled a corpse. The styrofoam head glared at her accusingly, like she was the one to knock it off of the nearest table. In the flickering light, something winked back at Marley.

She picked up a single gold fedora, upside down next to the wig head. One down, nineteen left to find. Maybe Lee had taken the rest of them out already and had just dropped this one?

Gingerly, Marley also picked up the styrofoam head and placed it on the table by the old sewing machine. It was oddly heavy. It matched the expected weight, which was unexpected on its own. Styrofoam should never feel as heavy as it looks.

“Lee,” Marley hissed, tossing them the single hat she found. “You left the shop a mess!”

Lee looked at her curiously. “I didn’t go into the shop, Mar. I thought you had just gone in to get the hats?”

“Well… yeah. I only found this one though,” said Marley with a scowl.

Lee frowned. “Weren’t they all put together?”

“They should have been. Maybe I misplaced them,” said Marley, crossing her arms.

The clock was ticking. A clang of cymbals indicated there were only two numbers left until the finale.

“Well, they’re not in the dressing room,” Lee said, gesturing to the mess around them. “And I guess not in the shop?”

Marley shook her head in confirmation. The bright lights of the dressing room flicked, for just a moment. Just long enough for her to see herself in the big mirror that covered the entire wall on the opposite side of the room, to see her reflection shiver before returning to the picture of herself she expected.

Pressing a finger to her temple, Marley sank into one of the chairs placed by the makeup counter, careful not to step on any character shoes or discarded costume skirts. The door to the dressing room was open just a sliver.

A shadow passed. The same shadow she had seen early. And a gleam of gold beckoned her, flashing in the flickering light of the hallway.

“Mar!” Lee yelled in concern as Marley bolted out of the chair, kicking away at a cape someone left behind.

All caution was thrown to the dressing room floor like a discarded tissue covered in excess foundation. Marley was not going to let the hats evade her that easily, not when there was still time to get them.

She chased the glimmer of sequins down the hall, catching only a glimpse each time it turned the corner. Still, the lights flickered, faster and faster, as though laughing in futility. Twisting and turning down corridors and stairs, Marley’s heels echoed in time with the beat of the music swelled as the penultimate number of the first act drew to a close. Her heart pounded, instead, in time with the lights.

There was nowhere left to run. Just a flash of yellow as it slipped through the double doors into the house.

Marley threw open the doors with a bang.

The theater was dark. No flash of gold in sight. Only chagrined, bright eyes that glared back at her silently as she stood, panting in the doorway, light flooding the side of the orchestra seats from the hallway behind her.

Numbly, Marley closed the doors behind her. Watched from the sidelines as the final number began, with only the single fedora she had handed Lee earlier.

From the corner of the wings of the stage, she could see a shadow and a glimmer of gold, winking at her.

[incandescent-eden]

31 Days of Horror - Broken (11)

A familiar face (if you’ve been around my account before) makes an appearance!

Total word count: 1135

TW / CW : mentions of death, mentions of dead bodies, body horror (sewing flesh), blood mention, description of blood, minor injuries

---

The porcelain pieces lay strewn across the floor. Beautiful, gilded, painted pieces. A shard the size of Viola’s hand lay on top of an open anatomy book, stark white against the yellowed page.

“Did you do this, Daedalus, you wretched creature?” Viola admonished the black cat with the nicked ear as he nonchalantly licked his paw.

Daedalus gazed back at her from atop a pile of books, his pupils dilated. Who, me?

Viola frowned, but she scratched behind Daedalus’s ears nonetheless. “You know you’re not to come into my laboratory, silly beast.”

Jumping down from the pile, and sending the teetering book stack flying off the table for good measure, Daedalus made his way over to the center of the room, where a graying linen tablecloth covered a small cot. He sniffed curiously at the edges of the tablecloth before turning accusingly to Viola.

“Well, we have to make do somehow. No need to be so judgmental,” she sniffed. “Out you go, you know you aren’t welcome here right now anyway.”

With an indignant mew, and his nose and tail raised high in the air, Daedalus turned around to slink his way through the door, ushered out by Viola’s tutting.

Viola made her way back to the table, picking up the pieces one by one. A thin red line appeared on her finger, dripping a single bead of red onto the gilded porcelain piece on the book.

Swearing, Viola quickly snatched the glass off the book, careful not to stain the pages with blood. She laid the pieces she collected to rest on the dusty shelf of a large bookshelf where several encyclopedias once stood before she had scattered them around the laboratory.

Briefly, she considered wiping her hand on the cloth that covered the table. Instead, she clenched her teeth and squeezed her finger in her other hand, surveilling the table covered in the books Daedalus had knocked over. A spool of thread sat next to a pair of silver scissors that gleamed in the lantern light. The tip was white, as though dipped in the light of the moon that beamed through the closed window.

A cloud passed outside. The wind whispered outside, slowly and softly like an exhale.

Viola turned around, heart pounding with anticipation even while her brain reminded her that it was impossible.

The cloth did not move.

Adjusting her glasses with the wrist of one hand, Viola threw back the covering with the other hand.

The moon peeked out of the cloud, slowly passing over the newly revealed face. His face was pallid and thin, skin pulled taut over high cheekbones. A thin line was barely visible at the figure’s neck, the black thread poking out from pale flesh where Viola had reattached the head at the neck. His black hair spilled out over the edge of the table.

She gently cupped the man’s cheek in her right hand, wiping away a speck of cotton that had fallen away from the cloth onto the cheek below his eye.

“Daedalus doesn’t like you,” she murmured.

She wasn’t really expecting a response. Not really.

Still, she held her breath, awaiting a response. The man on the table said nothing. His eyes did not open, nor did he draw breath.

If Viola closed her eyes, he could almost hear his heart beating over the low hiss of the lantern bulb. She allowed herself a brief moment to smile before covering up the man’s face once more.

She went to check her notes, flipping through several books. Ink notes filled the margins, spiraled across the pages. The detailed drawings stared back at her: vertebrae, tensed and relaxed muscles, optic nerves. A list of all the body parts she was still missing, a single line crossing through the parts she had obtained, flashed before her eyes.

Every single item on the list had been crossed out.

She could hear Daedalus’s scratching at the door. Slamming the book shut, Viola tossed it back onto the table. It landed with a dull thud, scattering a few papers she had left lying about. The book was heavy enough it sent the pair of scissors sideways into the lantern.

Viola picked up the scissors, watching as the spool of thread - now fallen onto its side and rolling off the table - hit the floor, leaving a thin black trail on the floor behind it. The spool traveled across the gray floor until it hit one leg of the table on which Viola covered her creation.

Trailing across the gray floor, the thread seemed to divide the laboratory in half. Or perhaps, Viola smirked as she picked up the spool and walked it to the bookshelf, winding it as she went, sewed the laboratory back together.

She placed the rewound spool gently next to the porcelain shards. The gilded remains winked at her sadly, like tears falling from tired eyes. What cheerfully painted pink and blue flowers could be seen in the daylight were brown and violet in the dimness of the laboratory, shadowed by the old wooden shelf.

The pretty porcelain egg had been her mother’s before she passed. William and Ernest always asked to see it, to hold in their hands in the sunlight and watch the gold paint shining as they moved it from one angle to another, but Caroline Frankenstein had insisted that it would be passed on to Viola and Viola alone.

For her part, Viola never let on she had much interest in the silly egg. It was a beautiful splash of color on her otherwise beaten and faded furniture. Before Daedalus had knocked it over, Viola had been using it as a paper weight where it would annoy her every night with its incessant flashing when she was taking notes.

Elizabeth or Dorian might have appreciated it more. No matter, though. The egg was broken now, and Viola was far too busy to repair it.

Besides, she couldn’t glue the shards back together in the hopes that it would be like nothing had changed at all.

Viola paused. Her fingers were still curled loosely around the spool of thread. From the table across the room, her abandoned notebook beckoned to her.

In two strides, she was across the room once more, grabbing her notebook and a pen, and throwing back the covers on her creation. The thin threads that scarred his skin webbed across his serene face. If only she could be content with gluing the pieces back together and setting him on a shelf like she might with a cup or a vase.

She moved a strand of hair out of his face. His skin was pale as porcelain, and just as cool to the touch. His eyes remained closed, his lungs without breath. He was broken, still.

Viola could fix him.

[incandescent-eden]

31 Days of Horror: Breath (24)

I would love to do more work on the demon universe, so I had a lot of fun writing this piece!

Total word count: 1250

TW / CW: scopophobia, demons, references to sickness / illness, religious (Christian) imagery, pregnancy mentions

---

The light poured in through the thin slats of the closet.

Butters circled Willow, whining softly. Her puffy tail wagged in confusion. Daisy was still sleeping, her cheek pressed against Willow’s shoulder.

“Will?” Kevin’s voice was cracked and dry. He kept asking for Willow, the sound reverberating throughout the house.

“Will, please, I need help.” He certainly sounded desperate.

“I’m sick. You know that, Will.” His voice echoed as much as the coughs before. The low rumble at the back of his throat bounced as if trying to escape from his body.

“You promised. Through sickness and health, ey?”

That was before, thought Willow. Daisy made a small sound but remained asleep. Better she didn’t see what Kevin had become.

“Come on, Will. Don’t do this…”

The creaky stair squealed as Kevin’s voice got louder. “Will, please, I want to talk.”

Hearing these words, Willow tensed. Her heart pounded, and she closed her eyes tightly, trying to ignore the way they clenched her chest and squeezed so hard that Willow’s blood rushed to her ears, like one of those squishy stress balls she used to own in college. She held her breath, trying to tamp down the guilt that sloshed up her throat in cold waves.

“You promised!” Kevin’s footsteps were audible now. 

You promised! The words taunted Willow. Icy guilt built up in her throat and spread through her lungs and her internal organs until her skin froze from the inside outward.

She remembered how it used to feel, back before she made the talking rule. How the cold used to be a steaming bitterness, curling inward and consuming her from within, and she was so desperate to make it stop that the anger would solidify and wrap itself around her tongue and she would blow up at Kevin because no, she didn’t want to talk, can’t he see she was miserable and he did it?

“Don’t act like this, please. What will Daisy think?”

I’m sorry, she had said in the morning when she had calmed down.

We need to tell each other things, Kevin had agreed. Let’s promise to talk to each other, alright?

When she first found out she was pregnant with Daisy, Willow stopped talking to Kevin for a week. She could hear his voice, echoing in her ears, reminding her that they needed to communicate. Remembered their vows, how they promised to always talk with each other. Daisy, Willow decided, would never have to be filled with hurt to the point of bursting. They would set a good example for her.

The door to the guest bedroom opened with a small whine. Even the light through the slats was gone now, bathing Willow in darkness.

And then, all at once, she was flooded with light, as the closet doors were thrown open behind her.

Instinctively, she yelped, tightening her grip on Daisy’s body. The wall on the inside of the closet was white. Kevin cast a shadow such a violent puce that Willow felt it splatter over her crouching form. She shielded Daisy’s head, one hand on her daughter’s hair.

“Will…” Kevin croaked. “Please…”

Shakily, Willow stood, her legs aching from having crouched for the past - minutes? Was it really only minutes?

Daisy’s hair was sticky. She was warm to the touch.

“Don’t ignore me, Will.��� His voice was soft. Pleading. You promised.

Willow turned, holding her breath. Held in the reflex to gasp.

Kevin looked worse than he had mere minutes ago. His chest heaved, up and down as white plumes of smoke circled around him, in and out of his nostrils and his mouth. His usually golden tan skin was sallow, dark eyes rimmed with red. He could have been crying, although it was impossible to tell whether that was truly Kevin or a trick of the thing possessing him. Maybe he had been crying. Hopefully.

The smoke flashed every so often, blinking with a shifting multitude of red eyes that vanished and appeared in shimmering, distinct configurations, all of them staring hungrily at Willow.

At her feet, Butters growled. The eyes of the demon did not change their focus.

“You don’t look so well,” Willow said cautiously. Daisy shifted in her arms, her eyes still shut. She drooled onto Willow’s shoulder.

“I don’t feel so well,” Kevin laughed. His voice fluttered, ripped through by a distorted cough. Crimson eyes and white smoke exploded like shrapnel from his mouth, joining the shape of the form which he continually breathed.

Breathed in, breathed out. The cloudy mass of the demon had grown twice as large in a matter of seconds.

Its bright eyes shone hungrily.

“Let me put Daisy down to bed first, okay?” Willow inched to the side, trying not to move her arms at all. Daisy mumbled something in her sleep while Kevin moved closer. “You should go lie down. I’ll be with you in a second. Okay?”

“I’ll go with you,” Kevin blocked the door, one hand on the frame. His chest heaved as more and more eyes appeared.

“You’re sick,” Willow replied. “You said so yourself. We don’t want Daisy to get sick, too.”

“She won’t,” Kevin said, voice hoarse. The dark circles under his eyes, gray against his gaunt skin, were tinged with the same red as the big red eyes that continued to watch Willow.

“I would be much more comfortable if you just laid down. Daisy’s feeling a bit warm already,” Willow said smoothly. The car keys were by the front door. She could outrun Kevin in his current state, even holding a baby, but strapping Daisy into the car seat, actually driving away… “Just go to our room, go rest.”

The eyes that almost consumed Kevin stared on and on, glowing with greed. Willow clutched Daisy like a crucifix, steeling herself against their gaze.

“I ins-”

“No, I insist,” said Willow, stepping back quickly as Kevin stumbled forward.

More eyes appeared when Kevin coughed, spilling out over his hands, over his curved back.

The door lay open behind Kevin, spewing more and more of that smoky white form and those leering eyes.

Willow bolted.

Kevin’s outstretched hand, fingernails stained red with tiny blinking eyes, barely missed Willow’s arm. He ended up grasping at air instead, as he stumbled, wheezing, into the hallway behind her.

The guilt curled around Willow’s heart, squeezing and fighting against the relief she felt when, out of the corner of her eye, as she rounded the corner onto the stairs, Kevin tripped and fell over the dashing form of Butters.

Willow didn’t dare breathe lest it slow her down.

Daisy, on the other hand, started screaming. Her cries echoed throughout the house while Willow grabbed the keys.

Vaguely, Willow registered Butters’s barking and Kevin’s groans of pain, the eyes that continued to follow her, as she fumbled with Daisy’s squirming in the baby seat in the back of the car.

The seatbelt clicked.

Willow was on the highway by the time she remembered she had left the front door of the house open. Poor Butters might have run out the door. That was dangerous.

Her shoulder was soaked from Daisy’s tears.

She drove onward, listening to the sounds of cars rushing by as she continued to drive, her daughter’s soft breathing indicating Daisy had once again fallen asleep.

You promised, Kevin’s accusation echoed in her mind. Bitterness like smoke swirled inside her, pushing and pushing until every breath hurt.

Red-rimmed, glistening eyes stared back at her from her own rearview mirror.