[chasinganecdotes]

Wilson’s Paperbacks

Andrew reached across the gap between the awnings, his outstretched hand catching the rainfall, waiting for me to twine my fingers with his. We were stuck between the Italian market and a fragrance boutique that smelt of lavender honey, a wall of torrent separating the break in the alleyway. The late summer storm had lit up the sky in sticky purple lights, erupting into cleaves of thunder that pulsed through the air as fast as the heart beating against my chest. Droplets of rain had opened up on us, suddenly and without warning, as we walked through the streets of Old Town, laughing over nothing in particular. It was the kind of rain that made your skin shiver, cold and wet. Even with the muggy Virginia air, I could feel it soaking through my jacket and down into my bones.

“If we make a run for it, the shop is less than two minutes,” Andrew said, a loose grin hanging off his lips, as if being caught in a thunderstorm was all according to plan. He gripped my hand just a fraction tighter. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I grinned back.

He tugged me forward, out from under the awning and into the street. A merciless downpour drummed over us, soaking us in their music of reverberating crescendos that made our run feel like dancing. My feet glided through the puddles, splashing up the faded and forgotten notes onto my bare legs and, just then, I knew that this moment with him would never leave my skin. The rain hit us everywhere as we ran, slow and fast all at once, and I could barely see through the thick of it. Hazy lights from the lampposts lined a trail down the sidewalks, just enough to guide the way down the desolate streets, as if we were the only two people left in the world. Old Town was usually bustling with aged wealth’s scouring for antiques or young musicians wailing over their fledgling dreams in the dead of night. It was never quiet or lonely. But tonight, it was as if the entire town had gone to sleep just as I was waking up.

We had run four blocks by the time the yellow painted bricks of Wilson’s Paperbacks glowed through the night, the only storefront in the line of colonials that didn’t boast its dilapidation. The wooden sign, hooked through a loose bit of rail hammered through a nook in the bricks, flailed helplessly in the wind, banging against the door with a force that sent echoes down the street. Golden paint clung to the droplets of rain and ran rivers down the wood, as if the words had just been retraced. The letters cracked and already faded, I knew that by tomorrow’s dawn Andrew would already be back with a brush in his hand.

Andrew fumbled through the keys, his fingers shaking with cold as he tried each key one by one in the lock. The store had four doors, each painted in various shades of pastel that bore a different combination of locks from the rest. The books inside were a treasure, Mr. Wilson had said, that contained enough gold to make even the lowliest beggar rich as a king. He wouldn’t make it easy for the pirates who sought out that treasure, even if it was his own son.

“You should paint those damn keys, you know,” I laughed just as Andrew pushed through the door, falling into the frame as he tugged me over the threshold. Laughter rolled through my belly, soft and electric as he locked the door close, his hand still gripping my wrist. Water dripped off our clothes in heavy rivulets, running rivers down through the cracks in the hardwood that would probably strip the finish off, but for all the havoc in the world, I couldn’t bring myself to care. A slow grin twitched at the corners of Andrew’s mouth, so innocent and lovely that my breath caught in my throat.

The store was hushed save for the pitter patter of the thundering sky against the shingles, a clamor that rippled through the silence. For a moment it was louder than the flight of my heart against my chest, the laughter dying in that space that at once had become both too intimate and not enough. The brandy of his eyes swallowed up, contracting under the weight of his pupils as they traced over the cotton wrapped tightly to the curves of my chest. It was as if he was searching for my soul, seeing down through my flesh and my bones into that flicker of light that burned with my every breath.

Andrew ran his fingers through the thicken of tangles in his drying hair, pulling his eyes away to the quiet store room. “Let me just go grab some towels. You’ll catch pneumonia with that wet head.”

I bit the bottom of my lip, nodding. His footsteps echoed against the hardwood and I listened to them rip through the life of the loose boards until they faded into the silence. I shrugged out of my coat, careful not to shake water onto the stack of paperbacks on the floor that were leaning over like a mountain that has grown too close to gravity, and hook it onto the rack behind the door. The books lined the hallway in stacks that made it hard to walk through, disappearing into the shelves as if they were roots extended from a tree. They were the breath of the world and I followed them as if I were gasping for air, so utterly awed by the sheer quantity of them. My footfall was careful, hesitant, because for some reason I felt as though I were entering a sacred space. I had walked this hallway so many times before, but there was something so heavy in this silence that I felt to break it would be to shatter the whole world.

I traced my fingers along the spines, dragging my nails over the creases and the withered skeleton of pages. Some had come loose from the binding, the pages shoved in place, like a tree shedding its autumn leaves, while others still clung to their crisp new life. Not a single book was wrapped in a thick cardboard shell. Mr. Wilson had always admired the art of the paperback, the way the years wrinkled and bruised their skin. “We often wear down the things we love,” he had said, “until we know them from their heart and not the skin they bear. You can read a book once and love it, sure. But it isn’t until you’ve read those words a thousand times over that you may truly know the heart behind them.”

I wondered if that is true of people as well.

The shelves opened up into a nook with old fabric couches pushed close together, circled around a coffee table that had loose leaves of notes and post-its stuck haphazardly to the wood. An open fire place crackled low in the darkness, Andrew crouched at the edge, stoking it with an iron rod. I watched as the flames cast an orange glow over his face, bending shadows in and out of his eyes. He looked over his shoulder at me and pointed towards the couch closest to him.

“I laid a towel out for you. It’s kinda old and scratchy, but it was the only one I could find.”

I picked up the towel, which was thin and faded with yellow daisies stitched into the cloth, and ringed it over my hair and arms. It didn’t do much for the goosebumps though. I scooted closer to the fire, just a shoulder bump away from Andrew, and let the warmth sink into me. There was a picture frame on the mantelpiece of Mr. Wilson and a boyhood version of Andrew in a baseball uniform, their arms looped around each other. Andrew was smiling, his two front teeth missing, and Mr. Wilson was looking down at him, caught in the middle of a word or a sentence. Mr. Wilson would have said there was something poetic about that, how we’re always caught in the middle of something.

“Do you miss him?” I whispered, thinking about how Mr. Wilson, too, had been caught in the middle of something.

Andrew stared into the fire, the flames glazing over his eyes again. “Yeah, I do. It’s like he’s still here though, yaknow? Like I can feel him walking through the shelves. He loved this place.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Bet you didn’t take me for a baseball guy, huh?”

“I thought you were more the angsty, broodish type.”

“Ah, then I suppose you must go back and reread the book again,” he said, mimicking his father. He reached for my hand and pulled me closer, so that I was facing him. This was the closest we had ever been on purpose. “Caroline Mathers, we are surrounded here by all these books and I do believe I have never asked what your favorite novel is.”

“The Great Gatsby,” I said, my breath half caught in my throat. He was still holding my hand, which was kind of sweaty, and the fire was warming my skin even though it was already warm from where he touched it. “I feel like I can relate to Gatsby.”

“How so?” The glow in his eyes dimmed for just a moment and I felt like there was this depth to them, this unseen spiral of color that didn’t happen in blue or green eyes. I could see myself reflected in their darkness, stripped down and raw before him. I felt as though what I said next mattered, that if my words were a poem, Andrew would memorize every line.

“Because I think a lot about the past. I think a lot about how I might have done things differently, and if I had, how it would’ve changed my path. Would I be a different person or would I be the same? There are so many versions of myself, of who I could’ve been or what I could’ve done.”

The words began to let loose from me, as if they had always been there, on the tip of my tongue. The weight of Andrew’s gaze made each word feel diaphanous, like he could see right through me. I looked away, following the curve of his neck to where his collarbones disappeared beneath the collar of his t-shirt. The fabric clung to his skin, the ghost of finely corded muscles along his torso stark under the parts where his shirt was still damp. Hard lines defined the space just below his belly button, a triangle of skin peaking out just above the strap of his boxers. Even that made me become too aware of my own body, so I opted for staring into the flames, watching them curve into one another like waltzers amid a loop of dance.

“Gatsby feared nothing but the future,” I continued. “Time isn’t circular, but more of a linear to and fro. He was always going into the past, never really changing, never really being anything but this one version of himself.” I paused, watching as one of the logs in the fire shifted, sending up a crackle of flying embers. “And sometimes I’m afraid that this version of me, the one who thinks about the past, is all I’ll ever be.”

“I think this version of you is fine,” Andrew whispered, tightening his grip around my fingers before slowly releasing them. “In fact, I quite like it.”

I looked at him then, a slight murmur echoing through my body. He was quite beautiful and, for a moment, I had the urge to trace him, to sketch the details of his face and preserve them on paper, though I know I could never capture every perfect detail. The way his eyes crinkled even when he wasn’t laughing and how his lashes casted shadows over his eyes. The stubble along his jaw, dark and scattered unevenly along the planes of his cheeks. The freckles that form little constellations across his skin or the scar that valleys into the corner of his lips. No, my pen could never catch these things up close. Even if I outlined every inch of skin, the memory would never amount to the real thing.

Andrew took a step toward me, leaning down over me so that our foreheads almost touched.

“‘We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’”

“What is that from?”

“T.S. Elliot, a friend of Fitzgerald,” he breathed, skimming his finger across the ridge of my collarbone, his thumb pressing into the vein pulsing at just the base of my neck. There was only one layer between his skin and my skin, but the heat of his palm made me feel as if I was already naked. “Little Gidding.” His finger looped under the hem of my dress collar. “It’s about the timelessness of the present moment.” His lips hovered over mine, so close that I could feel his breath fall heavy in the air. “And also, I think the old bastard was just trying to get laid.”

An entire instance, just one breath and one look and one touch, and I knew that I was in love with him. It wasn’t some miraculous realization or anything, nothing that demanded to be noticed by the universe. But it was a whisper that echoed through my heart, as if it had always been there and was just waiting for me to uncover it. These books and this room and this store would never look the same because everywhere would just be a memory of him. The world tends to look different when you’re seeing it through the ghost of someone else.

I ran my hand down his chest, suddenly needing to feel him closer, and circled my fingers beneath the hem of his shirt, lifting it over his head. Golden skin gilded the planes of his chest, the subtle chisels that curved into thin muscle dipping down the slope of his belly, forged ethereal and eternal. I let my palm rest in that small space, stealing the warmth that radiated over his skin, from his heart. His eyes shuttered close and he inhaled deeply, the sharp intake of breath tickling my own lips. I tilted my head up ever so slightly, catching his kiss in just a brush, a moment of hesitation. Then his lips came crashing down over mine, messy and tongue-tied like the sea rising to meet the shore. His arms circled around my back, his nails raking into the fabric of my dress, pulling the buttons loose. For a moment my body stiffened, frightened to expose myself to him. No one had ever seen my body so intimately, and I was afraid of how my own skin might look to him.

Andrew pulled back, sensing the rigidness collecting on my spine. “Is this okay? We don’t have- I can stop, I can-”

I covered his words under another wave of kissing, letting the dress fall down my shoulders, slipping around my ankles. “We shall not cease from exploration,” I quoted back at him.

[whilereadingandwalking]

Celebrating Valentine’s Day today, with beer and the auto show and baklava and some excellent ramen. Pictured, The Ripped Bodice, a feminist, romance bookstore in LA.

[chasinganecdotes]

The Crow’s Descent: Winter Solstice

Coraline had to admit she looked quite beautiful. Her chestnut hair was combed in loose curls down her back, a fishtail braid- which Andrea had magiked beads of starlight through- crowning her face. It dulled her naturally severe angles, softened her cheekbones. Even her almond eyes, dabbed over with a silvery liner, appeared more in like with a doe. And her dress. Her dress was a crystalline finery that clung to her curves like a second skin, an ivory diaphanous material that was stitched with a jewel encrusted neckline that plunged to her waistline on either side. The sleeves and ankle length skirt were the only grace the gown allowed. Andrea had rubbed pale glitter onto the skin below the line of the fabric so that when the light caught, Coraline’s skin shimmered like moonlight against frozen river waters. She was a winter night incarnate- a storm of ice and luminosity. 

“Delicious,” a voice breathed against the back of her neck.

Coraline started. She had been so entranced by her own image she hadn’t noticed Niklaus slip behind the curtain. He seemed to echo around her as the mirror reflected back his devil’s smile, close enough to catch his teeth on her earlobe. Her eyes widened, the fog in her brain suddenly churning to a darkened stormcloud.

“Wh-what?” she stammered.

“The faerie juice. Sweet as sugared candy, wouldn’t you agree?” He pulled his thumb over her bottom lip. “Your lips are stained with the evidence.”

Her lips were tinted a deep cherry color, as if she had painted them so. 

If she was starlight, then he was the night canvas. His fitted jacket and button down were black threaded silk so deep in color they looked as if onyx had been melded into his skin. The fabric was tight against his torso, the collar unraveled just enough to expose a valley of muscle. Even his hair, normally cropped close to his ears, had overgrown around the edges of his face, casting shadows along his jaw. He gazed at her like a raven in waiting, handsome with a threat of sin. 

“Do you ever tire of following me into dark corners?” Coraline scolded, turning to face him.

“Depends,” Niklaus grinned. “Do you ever tire of pretending to despise me?”

Coraline lifted her chin in an act of defiance. “I do not despise you. I just happen to know what you do with girls in dark corners.”

He seemed amused by this, his cheeks dimpling. “Solstice is keen to its promiscuity. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind being my hunting partner.” He winked. 

The image of the two of them lying together beneath the stars, stripped down to their undergarments, sent heat through her cheeks. 

“If you must know,” Coraline admitted, “I opted out of the Hunt.” She folded her skirts underneath her legs, settling into the bed of velvet cushions fanning the fire pit. She watched as the flames inhaled up in a great arch and crackled back down in tiny sparks. “I am not the most...religious when it comes to these rituals.”

“You mean the pleasure part.” He didn’t say it condemningly, just as if it were simply something he had noticed. 

“Maybe in part, but not in the way that you think.” Coraline closed her eyes to the flames, cautiously choosing her next words. “I do not feel magic as the other witchlings do. It is meant to feel like a release, yet I feel it as if it were a chain.” She hesitated, but continued on. “The truth, Nik, is that I am afraid. I am afraid to feel pleasure because I know there is double the pain. Every enchantment burns like hellfire, and every spell casts destruction in a way I cannot control. That fire in the library, it was me, Nik. It was me. Everything I love seems to turn to ash beneath my fingers. It is wicked, what is inside me. And I am a monster because of it.”

She wasn’t sure she had ever said those words aloud before, the horrible, traitorous truth of them. But she didn’t feel guilty for having said them, only exhausted from the months of carrying that secret around inside her. She no longer cared if a dozen of the Matron’s dreadful crows ripped and shredded her apart for confessing it. She would bare the scars proudly, she thought. After all, what was the pain of flesh when there was much more to be burdened on the soul.

There was a long pause of silence and then, after a moment, Niklaus sank into the cushions beside her. This close, she could smell the faint undertone of magic stirring beneath his skin, the slight sickly sweet incense of a lingering enchantment. It was unlike the usual smell of magic though. There was a hint of pine...and midnight, like the exhilaration of a cold winter night; she didn’t know how else to describe it. She had never known magic to be so peaceful. She opened her eyes, his own staring back at her with such raw intensity. 

“Perhaps,” Niklaus said carefully, “it is not your magic that chains you, but your fear.”

Coraline wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say, but it wasn’t this. “What.”

Niklaus leaned in closer, his amber eyes challenging her. “It is not such a terrible thing to be fierce, Coraline. You believe yourself separate from your magic, as a slave to its master, yet you forget which role you play.” He tilted his face closer to hers so that every word was a new breath into her lungs. “There is hellfire inside of us all, us witches and warlocks. What matters is how we choose to wield it.”

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it? How can I wield a power I have so little control over?”

He chuckled under his breath in that way of his that suggested he thought everything endlessly amusing. “You speak of magic as if it were a grenade. You don’t just throw it and hope it sparks where you wish it to.” He held out his palm, a pale blue ball of fire bouncing over the skin. “Magic is a double-edged sword- sharp and like to cut you if you don’t strike first.” He relaxed his fingers, and as he did the flame began to starve like a wildfire, whipping back and forth in screams of panic. It began to crawl up his wrist to the cuff of his shirt. And then his fingers curled inward again, silencing the flame altogether. “What I am trying to say, Coraline, is that we are all bred of the same flesh and bone as the Infernal God, that much we cannot change. And for it, perhaps we are all a little wicked. But do not condemn yourself a monster. Not until you truly mean it.”

Without realizing, they had leaned completely into each other. His words were like a static song in a gramophone, beautiful as they left his lips but utterly lost as they hit the air. She could notice only the heat of his skin escaping through the fabric of his shirt in all the places where they touched. She couldn’t be sure if it was the strange effects of the faerie juice or something else entirely, but as they sat there for those few heartbeats, quiet as the night, she was at peace.

Niklaus pressed his palm over her heart, her magic throbbing painfully beneath his touch. “You are more glorious than even Hell itself.”

“Niklaus- '' Coraline breathed, her eyes fluttering to half lids. She meant to tell him to stop, to tell him all the reasons why she couldn’t kiss him. His lips brushed over hers, his breath a tender escape into her mouth. It was just barely a touch, hardly even a kiss at all. But it was enough to loose all the unkempt desire she had held at bay over the last few weeks. 

Coraline tangled her fingers into the nape of his neck, the curls silken as feathers, and dug her nails into the skin there. Niklaus groaned against her mouth, twining his tongue deeper through hers. He smoothed his hand down her hair and let it trail down the skin of her open back. He kissed her like that for awhile, a desperate but careful wanting. He was gentle in a way she had not expected, each meeting of their lips meticulously and painfully delayed. He was teasing her, she realized.

In retaliation, she caught his bottom lip between her teeth and nibbled softly. 

Niklaus smirked. “Fierce indeed.”

Not to be bested, he peeled back the shoulder of her sleeve and skimmed his mouth along the ridge of her collarbone. Little shivers of pleasure rippled down Coraline’s spine. She felt something stirring deep down in the base of her core, aching to break free. He roved his tongue to the line of her pulse and sucked. She pressed Niklaus hard against her. She needed to anchor herself in him, to pull herself into his bones, as if that would help her find the center of herself. 

She arched her back, allowing the delicious feeling to sear its way through her. For a moment, it felt like bliss. Stars exploded behind her eyelids, so intense she thought she might black out. A star against the night. That’s what they were, she thought.

Something damp and sticky began to trickle down her nose, the coppery taste of blood suddenly wetting her lips. She had the overwhelming sense that something was terribly wrong. The feeling seemed to trail every kiss Niklaus pressed against her neck, lashing through her like a whip slicing open skin. It was as if her own blood was trying to break free of her. Coraline gasped at the sudden pain, her chest tightening in an icy panic, tamping out any stray desire she had felt. It was not pleasure at all, but magic. 

Her magic roiled uncontrolably inside of her, like two beasts warring with each other in a death match. She tried to push it down into that vast well inside of her, but it seemed only to claw back even harder, determined to wreck either her or itself to unleash its power. There was no thread of light for her to hold on to, no beacon that would bring her back to herself. What lay before her was an impenetrable darkness, cold and brutal. For the first time in her life, Coraline felt as if she was coming face-to-face with her magic, staring it dead in the eye for what it truly was. And she was afraid. 

“I can’t do this,” she said, shoving Niklaus so hard he landed flat on his back. 

Coraline shielded her bleeding nose with her hand, scrambling away despite her tangled skirts. She did not want Niklaus to see her like this. Where he was so elegant and clever in his magic she was equally as broken and helpless against her own. Memories of the blackened ruins of the library flashed behind her eyes, memories of the destruction her magic wielded.

Coraline ran, pushing past the curtain into the revel chamber. She was vaguely aware of Niklaus calling after her, though she didn’t dare look back. The revel chamber had gone blind in a terrible darkness, save for the moonshine pillaring in from the skylight. Coraline could see nothing but the outline of moving shadows crowded around that single line of light- a gathering of witchlings, an entire coven standing between her and the outside forest. Her breath was coming hard and fast, caught in her throat. She elbowed through the ring of revelers, stumbling forward, and counted down every pace until she would reach the chamber doors. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten-

She was dragged off balance, whether by magic or her fellow witchlings she couldn’t be sure, and was thrust back through the crowd. Coraline hit the ground on her knees, gasping for the breath she couldn’t grasp. The moonlight broke around her in a halo; she had fallen just where the crowd opened up, kneeling before the Solstice altar. Mantras crashed and rose around her- hideous, serpent-like tongues that felt like drowning. Burn thy skin, fork thou tongue. Praise to glory Unholy One. Crunch thy bones, horn thy brow. Infernal God thy will be crowned. The Witchling Sacrifice. Coraline peered up through the tangled strands of her hair, half choking on her own nausea. The Infernal Trinity hung suspended in the air, heads thrown back and hands clasped together in a ring around the altar, moonlight threading shimmers of blinding magic between them. Maiden, Matron, Crone. The three heads of the covens, the three sisters of the Infernal God. And on the altar below them, naked flesh bruised deep with death, lay Stella Bridgewater. 

[chasinganecdotes]

Homecoming

The key was of a brass lining that crowned in a knot of earthly symbols- leaves and hummingbirds, pine cones and bare chested nymphs- all etched in the tiniest hand. Alice closed her fingers around it and cradled it to her heart. It was the key to her kingdom, her kingdom of magic and woodland. It had been a long while since she had crossed over into the land of the fey, yet she remembered it fondly as if she had never left. Ten years was awfully long in the realm of the mundane,and she was no longer a child. She did not flirt with the fantasy that her people would adore her endlessly as they did in her childhood. She only hoped that with the recent mourning of their queen, they would forgive her enough to accept her ascent to the crown.

Alice kneeled in the grass, her gown rippling around her like pale moonlight. She reached into the pond, her fingers dipping into honey thick waters, and drew a circlet of posies from just beneath the surface. It was still small, like a child’s make believe costume. But there in her palms, the thorns piercing the posies together began to grow, weaving one around the other in a braided crown. A crown set for a queen. She placed it atop her brow, water trickling down her cheeks like mourning cries.

She gazed into the pond at the world trapped beneath, an inverted forest hung by its toes. Tree roots extended their fingers down into the depths of the still waters, twisting into gnarled trunks and twining branches that scraped the seafloor. Phantom sprites flitted between the trees like silvered fish, flapping their wings in fervent heartbeats. They seemed to be chasing wild berries and flowers as they were thrown ceremonially into the air. And far, far below was the morning star, hanging like a hook on the crescent moon, glistening in the darkened depths, calling her home.

Silently, solemnly, Alice tucked the key beneath her tongue and waded through the glass waters until she could no longer see herself in their reflections. The pond began to pulse in response, rippling in crowded, cold waves around her. Slower than a breath of air, she let herself sink beneath to the world far beyond.

[chasinganecdotes]

Prompt: Write a 250 word sentence

The darkness fills the small square of my windowpane, an omnipotent darkness, and I wonder what kind of world we would live in with the cloth of midnight creating shadows over the bends of light reverberating off the lampposts in New Orleans, the ones I pass on autumn mornings, where the imminent death of crisp red and yellow leaves crunch beneath my lovesick feet, and how they must wander along the same path of changing daylights that wane the very fire of my soul in a dying season, like how I used to curl up next to my mother on the lonely nights where the monsters were not in my closet but in my head, and I am banging on the door, screaming to be let out but they too are imaginary, and I am just trying to remember the world in more shades than the darkness, to know the sun so intimately that it would crawl into my skin, like how the moon, with its slivers of unwinding light, umbras the depth of all things, but if you would just take my hand then maybe, maybe we could crack the vulnerability of daylight and remember that all things must repair to fall apart.

[chasinganecdotes]

Braveheart

William stood atop the mossy hillside, looking down as his village was raided by the noble men of England. He saw restless bodies swinging in dismay, could hear the sobs of the children folded into the arms of their mothers, who could do nothing but watch as the Noble Lord paced back and forth in front of them. His boots scuffed up soot, creating a dusty fog around the village. It reminded William of the time he spent trekking through a dust storm in the abysses of the Tabernas Desert.

The Noble Lord stopped as men in fire orange robes stepped from behind a small hut of stones and birch, a girl struggling between their clenching grips. Her brown, straggly hair shadowed her face, but William didn’t need to see her to know who she was. Murron. She was tenacious in her attempt to break free from their grasp, but it was in vain. Her small frame was not strong enough to defy the English men. A knife wrenched the inside of William’s gut, a feeling almost like nausea, but not quite, for it was laced with a hatred so deep he could feel the warmth of his own blood. He had known that something was dangerously wrong when he hadn’t found Murron waiting in the meadow for him and had feared the worst, but to see his fears actually confirmed was devastating. The men dragged her toward a wooden post and shoved her back against it, the splintered timber digging into the place between her shoulder blades. Just the night before he had brushed his fingers along the skin there, the precious white velvet of her body.

Before his mind could even comprehend what his legs were doing, he began to sprint down the hill, his feet slipping along the rocks as he stumbled toward her. Murron. His new bride. All his life William had suffered at the hands of the English, but never had he wanted to return the favor as much as he did right now. Not when his adolescent eyes had found the swollen bodies of men and children hanging from the ceiling of the village barn. Not when he watched as the English cavalry took each man’s new bride to rape on the first night of marriage. Not even when he watched as the villagers piled dirt on his father’s grave. He would slaughter them all until the village ran crimson with the blood of the Englishmen.

As he stumbled down the slope and through the road stretching on to his wife, his eyes never left her. He watched every spasm as the men tied a strip of barbed wire around her chest, every clench of her teeth as she fought the urge to howl in pain. By now her face, normally so immaculate and beautiful, was streaked with crusted blood and yellowing bruises. He could only imagine what these men might do to her. Torture her, rape her, kill her- the gruesome possibilities were endless. This only made him push himself harder.

He was only yards away, his pulse thrumming through his ears and his lungs heaving viciously inside his chest, when the Noble Lord wedged his way between his men and came close enough to Murron that their noses almost touched. His lips parted as if to whisper something to her, but thought better of it. Instead, his lips curled into a taunting smile, a smile so full of malice William doubted it could even be human. Within the blink of an eye, the Lord unsheathed the sword at his hip and carved the blade into her throat. A deluge of fresh blood trickled down her throat, staining the curve of her neck and down the collar of her shirt. William stopped dead in his tracks, his knees giving out the moment he saw the blade scissor her skin. It was like a mace had just been swung through his chest a thousand times, each strike ripping at the flesh and tendons until there was nothing left but bare bones. His wife of only a single night had been cruelly withdrawn from the land of the living, the world where his invaluable soul still wandered without her. And for what? For scratching and kicking her way from a man whose greedy hands were not rightful to her body? He raised his solemn head and took his last gaze upon her, looked into her blue-green eyes and noticed how the light no longer shone in the irises. All of the life, all of the beauty, had evaporated. Suddenly he knew what must be done.

Scotland would no longer be a disposed slavery monument for the Englishmen to tread their dirty bastard feet over. He, William Wallace, would come for them. He would bring freedom.

[bookwormungandr]

IG: b00kdragon

[chasinganecdotes]

Bath. Circa 2018

“Would you fancy a kiss?”

I say yes because that is the sort of thing you say yes to when you are 21 and it’s four in the morning and some guy with a liquid honey accent asks to kiss you. I have never tasted an English boy before, but this one tastes like cigarettes and tequila, though I don’t think I mind. Under the haze of oblivion, it all kind of begins to taste the same anyways. Skin and alcohol. Salty.

The English boy pulls my lip under his teeth, reminding me that this is all only temporary.

“Will I see you again?”

“No.”

And there is something kind of liberating in that word. Something indefinite.

He presses a cigarette to the place my lips had just been. “Good.”

The sun is beginning to yawn over the old bath stone, stretching its pale yellow arms through the cracks in the old city streets.Bath is even more brilliant in the twilight hours, unforgivingly serene and quietly beautiful.

A box of stranger’s secrets, penned on the back of receipts and scraps of notepaper. They are hidden in the vault of a slanted coffeeroom table. Who sat here before me, exposing their fears and loves and erotic temptations? Who sat here in the shade of a lampless room, rubbing raw emotion all over these things? Were they leaning into each other with a laugh, sipping expensive floral cocktails and getting acquainted to the way each other tasted? Or were their knees not touching, a speechless discomfort that could only be told in the way their eyes never met? Or were they a group of friends, like we are, confessing sins into our drinks, just trying to extend the inevitable deadline of our existence together? If they look closely at us, what would they see? Because if I had to pen my truth, I would capture only the moments of us. I would write about the infinite feeling of dancing outside the pub windows on a Thursday night, screaming the lyrics of an old rock song into our cones of cheesy chips, as if the dark street made us invincible or something. I would write about how my limbs flail and my voice breaks out of my chest and it is like one of those movie shots where I am spinning in slow motion, seeing your faces over and over and over. It is a moment of absolute and total abandon, a moment to catch you off guard, but reminds you that life is full of these grand miniscule moments. And if I write it down, then perhaps we will become infinite.

[chasinganecdotes]

Sailor Blue

Navy waves crash up on shore, tossed and broken onto the shell-toe banks, and a lock of seaweed catches on the sand. It is just a small, green-black strand that mingles with other water worn remnants. All torn and cracked apart. But if I squint, the dying shards of sunlight catch the same color as the sailor’s hair and I can almost see him lying there, drifted up in saltwater. I lay back too, into the swell of the waves, and submerge into their embrace. It is the closest I am to touching him. The salt rubbing at the open wounds in my chest. The seaweed is dense here and my fingers twine fistfuls, like scraping the nape of his neck, with the inky clouds that roll away from the storm they just wrecked. Tossed and tumbled over, like words whispered on a wary tongue. He is lost to the sea, on his patchwork boat that sails far from home.

[chasinganecdotes]

The Crow’s Descent

A murder of crows circled the high vaulted ceiling. They stalked the line of rafters, filtering in from the shattered panes like morning stars against the harsh light of day. They made Coraline nervous. She stood rigid at her pew, dared not to chant her mantras too loud or spark her flame too bright. She wanted to be invisible, just another black pillar training for her rite of darkness. But she hadn’t discovered that magic yet. No one had.

Coraline had seen the crows descend before, plummeting so fast that their beaks slashing across skin felt almost like a slap of wind. But it wasn’t the pain they were after. She had once seen a girl’s cheek shredded to braided flesh after the Matron of Infernal Saints had caught her fraternizing with a human boy. And it wasn’t just the one time. It was every time. Every morning when her coven entered the Basilica, the girl with the taste for human fondness was torn by claw and beak; her skin never healed, her scars never faded. What had once been so beautiful was now a savage mess of what the coven called mercy. Mercy because the cuts were not across her throat. 

The Matron ceased the mantra, her fire sputtering to ash just as every other worship flame blinked out in the darkness. Coraline flexed her fingers, curling them into fists then extending them back out. The skin of her palm was pink and swollen. Her flame had been a little too searing today, more than just the normal friendly warmth but something more akin to a branded fire poker. She had had to bite the inside of her cheek more than once to keep from crying out. 

Without the worship flames, the cathedral suddenly felt barren. The golems never lit the sconces, a paradox that always puzzled Coraline. She couldn’t understand why the Matron had them hewn into the cathedral wall- the stone beauty of a crow’s head with an unlit torch sheathed through its beak- if she never intended to light them. All that there had ever been was the meek twilight trapped above the broken glass. 

“Pass the offering.” Andrea bumped a shoulder to Coraline’s, motioning to the goblet the girl on her other side was handing down the pew. Coraline exchanged the goblet between the two girls, shaking her head- no, she did not have anything for the Infernal God today. Andrea shrugged and, using a small dagger Coraline knew she kept strapped along the inside lining of her coat, cut a line across her wrist. Coraline held her breath, terrified her best friend might draw blood either black or blue. But to her relief it still poured into the goblet a deep crimson, a promise of her fledgling bond. 

“Seriously Cora, I’m going to start dying my own fucking blood if it doesn’t darken soon,” Andrea grumbled.

“I’m pretty sure you aren’t supposed to say fucking in church,” Coraline whispered.

            “Good thing witches are already predestined for hell.”

Though the offering was just a daily voluntary practice- a sacrificial reservoir of magic that the Infernal God would drink from if a witch was particularly strong- Andrea’s persistent exsanguination was more akin to desperation than devotion. A plea for the Infernal God to darken her blood. She had already had her nineteenth name day, a year behind most witches’ rite of darkness, and her blood had not yet revealed to her the coven she would take oath to. If her blood ran blue she would remain with the Wind Spear Coven, the clan most witches were born to serve. Their magic was lighter, rooted in the earthly elements, and relied strictly on sensation to strengthen their power. Spells and incantations were reserved for the Dark Claw Coven, the black bloods, because their magic was more raw, harder to tame. It required blood, often death, and definitely destruction. Coraline had only ever known one witchling whose blood had darkened to black- Stella Bridgewater, a girl three terms ahead- and it was rumored that the magic had twisted her into a madwoman. Even though becoming a black blood was next to unheard of, Coraline still remained anxious that Andrea might soon draw cards of the same fate. 

“Witchlings, if I wanted chatter in my ritual chamber I would breed songbirds instead of crows,” the Matron cooed.

Coraline’s eyes snapped up to the crows, her heart suddenly white noise in her ears. She braced herself for the inevitable slice of her skin, for the sting that would bruise her face, but it never came. The crows continued their lazy rounds in the air, indifferent to the fear locking up her bones. 

Invisible. Invisible. Invisible. She repeated to herself.

In total truth, Coraline didn’t want to be a witch. It wasn’t that she didn’t revere her magic or that she didn’t care for the witchling coven. It was that she felt so apart from the spirituality that connected a witch to her magic. Unearthing magic was supposed to feel almost like a prayer, a transcendent experience, as if every fiber in your body were intertwined with light itself. It was something you worshipped. Something that made you feel connected to the very soul of the world. But not for Coraline. Her magic felt more like a slumbering beast coiled at the base of her belly, leaden in its power- and unpredictable. Sometimes even just to unravel it was like yanking at a thread hanging down a depthless well; she never knew how long she’d have to pull it up or even where the bottom was. She wondered if perhaps she was just ungrateful and her magic was responding to it. Either way she pinned it, these were the kind of thoughts that would catch her cheek against one of those dreaded claws.

“Hello, earth to Coraline, we are moving,” Andrea poked her in the side. Sure enough, a line of witches were sneering at her as they waited for her to exit the pew. 

Coraline scrambled forward, cursing herself as she bumped her knee into the ancient rowan wood. There weren’t many girls in her term, but the hum of lingering magic on the air made the Basilica feel suffocating as one by one they bowed to the Matron on their way out. She stood at the doors, stunning against the black collared skirt and stocking uniform witchlings were required to wear. Her rippling curls, ivory as spider’s silk, had holly leaves and winter berries woven through the crown of her head. It was only about a fortnight until the Winter Solstice and the Matron was already spinning her white gowns and garland headpieces. Ice was the Matron’s favored element. 

Coraline bowed and brought her forefingers to her temple, a modicum gesture of respect.

“Merry met, sister,” the Matron lilted.

“Merry met,” Coraline repeated. 

The winter chill was biting outside the Basilica, a deep turn in the air that made Coraline’s skin feel flayed. Winter in the mountains always felt that drastic and it didn’t help that her skirts were so thin. She supposed she could summon a fire again to keep her hands warm, but the intensity of her worship flame earlier made her more than a little nervous. She didn’t think a fire would catch in the snow, but with so much forest tinder surrounding the paths, she couldn’t be sure.

“The Sinister Sisters are hosting a party tonight,” Andrea said, sidling up beside Coraline as she started down the mountain path. She had her own flame bouncing between her palms and Coraline instinctively wound an arm through hers, greedy for the warmth. “I was thinking we could wear red. White is a little too snow bunny slut, no offense to the Matron of course, but red. Red is sexy. It says I’m ready to be licked up and down like a candy can-”

“Calm down. Solstice is just around the corner and we made a pact, remember? No promiscuity until the revel.”

“Even if it’s Damon Morganstern?”

“Especially, if it's Damon Morganstern.” Andrea had a bad habit of locking lips and sharing skin with nefarious warlocks. “Besides, I’m not going. I need to go to the library.”

“The library!” Andrea almost choked, as if the word itself was insulting. “You’re going to risk our reputation, which is already in the shitter by the way, to breathe in some ancient book dust? I’ve  never said this before but, Coraline Winters, you are just selfish.”

Coraline rolled her eyes. “I’m behind on conjuring and I need to read on different techniques before the final. Not everyone can be so brilliant with magic.”

“What’s the point of brilliance when I can’t use it for something that actually matters.”

“Your blood will darken soon,” Coraline reassured her. 

“If the Infernal God wills it so.”

The campus was removed from the Basilica, a long trek down the foothills where the land began to smooth out. The Basilica, their sanctuary of worship to the Infernal God, was the peak of their hidden citadel. No witchling was allowed to climb further up the mountain and anyone that attempted fared much worse than the girl with the shredded cheeks. 

Just then a golem passed, wheeling a cart of dried carrion for the crows. The image of them feasting a savage mess on the deer and mountain cats made her shiver. 

“Amen,” Andrea whispered. “Those little creatures give me the creeps.” The golems were witches and warlocks cast out by the covens, denuded of their magic and enslaved to the Matron. Their bones became gnarled and their skin ashen gray, twisted by some foul magic as retribution for their respective crimes. 

The Coven, though lighthearted in their magic, was a well sharpened blade when it came to punishment. 

The library spire pierced the tree line, its golden hilt proud against the pines. The thick tree needles always seemed to hide the last bit of the path, but it was the spire that always gave away the last stretch down the mountain. Coraline brushed aside a copse of limbs overgrowing the path, breaching the edge of the citadel. The stone fortress rose up around them, breathtaking in its glory. Golden lace was threaded through the stone so that when the sun rippled across, it looked as if the walls themselves were glimmering starlight. The path opened up on the west wing, where the sweeping curl of staircase led to the library doors. The doors were large arches of oak that were carved with more images of crows- one matriarch chiseled at the center, its wings folded inward and beak perched high, while several others were whittled into the background, soaring vaguely in the shape of a crown. Coraline had spent hours wondering what the image meant, but always came up with juvenile fantasies that were likely far from the truth. 

“You’re sure I can’t convince you to ditch the books?”

“And relinquish my one true love?” Coraline feigned shock. “Now who’s the selfish one.”

“Fine,” Andrea grumbled, “but just remember, I tried.”

The girls disentangled their arms as Coraline began to circle up the stairs, Andrea following the path back down to the dormitories. Coraline paused on the staircase, feeling a twinge of guilt as she watched her best friend disappear into the snow. She couldn’t help but feel as if she were abandoning Andrea, always choosing midnight library strolls over midnight revels. She could sense Andrea turning suspicious, though she was graceful enough to say otherwise. Anyways, I’ll make it up to her at Solstice, Coraline thought. 

Pushing the doors open, her breath caught in her throat, irrevocably stunned by the library’s grandeur. The doorway lent a panoramic view of the chamber, the stretch of book-lined shelves running straight into the horizon. Thousands and thousands of books basked in their brilliant colors, coats of varnish sparking even the most ancient tomb to a glossy hardback. They all winked at her like little stars of light, small signs of hope. This, she thought, is the real magic. 

Coraline wandered over to her usual section, a quarter nook at the very back of the Theories and Unholy Concepts shelf. The titles here took only about half a shelf, crammed together underneath an ancient canvas painting of Lake Aryn, the frozen pool at the very base of the mountain. She slipped the next volume from its place, a leatherbound pamphlet that was one of the thinner texts she’d studied. She folded it into her chest, hoping that this would be the one that finally gave her answers. She had spent a year studying every book she could find in the library, but still she was no closer to understanding. 

A dark flicker of movement fringed across Coraline’s vision, startling her. She edged toward the end of the row, peering over into the next stack of books. Leaning against the shelf, his head bent in a grimoire, was Niklaus Young. He was absolutely handsome, the dim light sugaring his bronze skin and casting shadows from his thick lashes as he returned her gaze. Coraline gripped the book closer to her chest, her heart jogging as she lifted her hand in a wave. He quirked his lips in a half smile, a small dimple crescenting his mouth. They weren’t exactly friends, not quite simple acquaintances either, and Coraline was always too nervous to test the limits of conversation. He was one in the line of Andrea’s many warlock conquests- a drunken night on a full moon that Andrea still thirsted over. That alone, coupled with his reputation as aforementioned nefarious warlock, made crushing on him impossible.

Or at least she hoped it would. 

His lips parted, as if about to say something, but before he could Coraline hurried down the walkway, far, far away from anything remotely tall, dark, and handsome. 

At the outlying shadows of the library, where the shelves ended and the high tunnels began, was a window seat overlooking the gardens. The velvet cushion was well worn and the panes were foggy with age, but Coraline loved the crook unconditionally. She settled in and brushed the grime coating the cover of her book, reading the title over in her head.

The Unseen Art of Invisibility: A Theory of its Existence and Where to Find It.

She had lied to Andrea. It was not conjuring she was practicing. It was invisibility.

[chasinganecdotes]

Amber Lines of Sunshine

Stalks of wheat spin high above my head, dry amber strings of light that glisten in the Nebraska heat. I hold them up like cracked bits of mirror, a chamber of reflection. I am half screaming, quietly laughing, in the chaos of the gentle wind kissing my cheeks. If only I could feel more than this, more than the wheeling sense of emptiness that fills up my breath the way air fills up a balloon. Only tightness, and the claustrophobic feeling that at any moment I could collapse in pieces beneath myself. Sometimes I like to lay here, amongst the sun and golden weeds, and imagine that that reflection of light would string its way down into me. Let the broken up glass catch the light, and let it shimmer.

[chasinganecdotes]

The Lost Scroll of Helar

Kieran reached below into the tangled branches at his feet, pulling from the dead tree limbs a book grown over with moss and roots. The roots choked the worn leather with the same ferocity a spider’s web clung to its prey, captive to the earth. The book had been born of the same flesh and bone as the earth, and within, Lydia suspected, laid bare all of its secrets.

“This,” Kieran said, “is the Scroll of Helar, the undiscovered heaven of the fey.” He touched the volume with such care, brushing off the millions of years worth of dirt with his long, delicate fingers. “People have been looking for this book for centuries, fought wars over it.” He gazed down lovingly, as if considering every soul that had ever died in search of it.

“How did you know where to find it?” Kieran belonged to a family of scryers, she knew- a line descended from the sister goddess, Eta, who the fey vowed was made from a billion stars and could hold all the light of the universe in just the palm of her hand. There was an undeniable connection between the universe and Kieran, as if he were constantly being tugged by an invisible rope that only he could see.

He pointed to the heavens and smiled. “It was just as if I knew. I cannot explain it. I was on my knees, open palmed, praying for my people. Praying for all the despair and suffering that has blighted out our land, and it was as if I were being led through a dream. One moment I was there, the next I was here. And when I awoke, the map of the forgotten road was etched on my palm.”

Lydia’s lips parted, unable to keep the truth of his lands a secret any longer, but was cut off by the terrible sound of hoofbeats thundering throughout the forest. It was like a war drum, pounding hard and fast against the air. She could not see the riders through the fog, though she knew that the sounds in fey could be deceiving, that they carried like an echo. One could feel as near as breath on the back of your neck, even miles away, while the next could sound as if it were drifting from across the sea.

“We should leave this place. We cannot lead the riders to this sacred place.” Kieran tucked the book into his satchel and grabbed Lydia’s hand, his skin unusually cold.

They turned to climb back up the road, just as a rider on a black stallion began to emerge through the mist, a band of fey warriors behind him. His shoulder length black hair was tucked behind the pointed ears of the fair folk, a crown of plucked raven’s claws strung throughout the strands. Down his cheek was a thin, lightning bolt of a scar that crooked up his mouth into a cruel smile. He was ancient, the wicked power roiling off of him almost suffocating. Lydia had seen him only ever once, lounged across the dais of the midnight revel. Prince Maverick.

“Hello, Kieran of the Scryers. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

[chasinganecdotes]

Untitled poem

Can I count the pieces I have borrowed of other people just to feel that I could love myself.

I wonder how much of it is ever really real, yaknow? The loving that we do?

I wonder if perhaps we are only loving the pieces

that we want to fit within ourselves,

that every person I have ever loved has been designed as a cosmic power to whose stars I force

to light up the void within myself.

What if by loving them

I have ripped the thread of their existence

to an unequivocal less infinity,

just to seem more meaningful.

Because is that not what love is?

An exchange of light?

An exchange of energy?

How can you sustain the darkness when all you ever fight for

is everyone else’s starlight?

[thereaderbee]

Happy Saturday! 🍂 Have you picked out your first read of November yet?? If so, what are you currently reading? (Or planning to read??) … Have started a new book this month? (Or finishing up one from last month?) I have my first read all picked out and I’ve already started it. 🤓 A few years ago I started a little tradition to read *The Night Circus* every November, and I’m pretty thrilled to have this book as my first read of the month. (This is my third yearly re-read.) This book is super great, but the audiobook, which is narrated by Jim Dale, (who also narrates the Harry Potter books), is even better. The story is so magical, and I love having Jim read the book to me. (Also, I LOVE the covers for this book.) 🥰 What are you currently reading?? Or planning to read?? . . . 📚 Beautiful Cover. #AlltheBooksNov19 📚 Resistance or Uprisings. #BookQueensNov19 📚 New Release. #BookRavensNov19 📚 Love Your Shelf. #FearYourNovelSquirrel 📚 Leaves. #NovBookstagram19 📚 Fall Colors. #BooksCoasttoCoastNov19 📚 Stack Saturday. #PageofRosesNov . . . #erinmorgenstern #thenightcircus #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagramfeature #igreads #currentlyreading #flatlay #yabooks https://www.instagram.com/p/B4XFA3spvIM/?igshid=avv6numzs3jj

[chasinganecdotes]

4•18

Your leg hooks around mine. There is an eagle tattooed on your thigh. Red, blue, yellow. The colors needled in your skin. I run my hand over all those colors, down to your toes where the last of the ink fades. I like that you are not just skin, but you are art too. A whole leg dedicated to your whims and fancies. All of my tattoos are on on my arms. I feel as if we are the missing art from one another, that entwined together we make up a portrait.

“I am leaving tomorrow,” you mumble into my neck. My vein throbs slightly faster when you rest there.

“I know,” I say. Though I don’t know it’ll be the first of many.

“I’m sorry about the rain.” It tinkers on the shingles, sliding down the face of your window like tears. I watch them fall. I run my fingers through your hair, thick and tangled like it always gets after your head hits the pillow. I cannot look at you. I am too afraid my heart might shatter.

“I suppose that can’t be helped.”

“I just wish we had gotten to finish our episode.” Your lips were too busy fishing inside of me.

“Next time.” I thought about how my legs almost choked you.

My heart is kind of delicate when it comes to you. It gets tangled up in sheets and midnight truths that we whisper to each other right before we fall asleep. You always close your eyes first. I don’t mind because I like to hear your heartbeat even out, the small noises you make in the subtle fits of dreaming.

There will not be a next time.

[chasinganecdotes]

A Trial of Flesh and Bone

It was not just human bones that haunted the shadows of the tunnel. Shards of skeletal beasts taunted me too- the desolate sockets of a longhorn skull, the shattered maw of a shark. They whisper in the dark, as if their souls were still trapped inside the marrow of the bones, purging their screams on what is left of their bodies. The woman in black does not seem to notice, does not even move, just stares at me through unseen eyes hidden in the shadows of her robe. Yet it is all I can do to drown out the plight of that wall of bones.

She pulled back the hood around her shoulders, cascading the satin down her body, and letting it pool at her feet. At first, I notice only the sinuous line from her breast to her waist, the grace of her body ethereal as if it were infinity written across the sky. It wasn’t her nakedness that pounded a sickening hunger through me though, a desire for pleasure so strong it was a verge of madness. It was that she was evil crowned in flesh and bone, incarnate of the darkest demons I’d ever let myself dream. She was beautifully sinister, two ebony ram’s horns crowning the violet curls rippling down her back. And on her brow, two crescent moons inked back to back, daising an even fuller moon as if it were a third eye. But her eyes, they were a milky veil of oblivion, totally bereft of iris or pupil.

“Do you wish to see the stars now?” the demoness slithered, scratching a nail down the pulse in my throat.

I wanted to wheel her, to sin against the cave wall with the same heretical nature she was essence to. I could see the compulsion like an inky fog tazing my mind, her backside slamming into me and my hands wrapped around her neck. Whether by pain or pleasure she would let escape a moan that would tear through me, ravage me, until I was undone. But no.

No, that was not what I was summoned here for.

“Yes. Show me the cards.”

She smirked, a cruel upturn of her lips. “But first,” she said, disappearing behind a golden weaved tapestry, “a little insurance.” She reappeared, a python coiled down the length of her arm. It was not so much a snake as it was a mythic serpent, its scales raw obsidian that looked as if it had been bathing in black blood, and incisors so large they mottled its flesh.

I stumbled back, falling almost entirely into the wall of bones. “What is that,” I demanded.

“A python. But also,” she smiled again, “insurance that you satisfy your end of the bargain.” She began to unravel it, holding it out to me like an offering. “Place it around your neck. It will only squeeze if you begin to disent.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you will not receive what you came here for.” She was not cruel in saying this, just simply stated it as if it were no matter to her whether I obeyed or not.

I held out my hand, the serpent crawling from one ring of flesh to the other, torquing its belly around and around until its full length wrapped my shoulders. Everywhere its icy, wet skin touched mine sent shivers of panic through me, quickly dispelling any lecherous thoughts. From head to tail, it was a vise grip on my neck. A chain.

“You are foolish, my boy. Hasn’t anyone ever told you better than to make deals with the devil.”

“Just show me the cards, damnit.”

Her eyes flashed, if you could call it that. A dark sheen of something shaded the whites, a depthless terror I had no name for, though it was gone in an instant. She pulled from her fallen robe a deck of tarot cards, a print of scarlet and gold hieroglyphs that were similar to those on the tapestry. They were symbols I did not recognize, though some of the runes seemed to resemble the sun and moon. She knelt to the ground, chanting in an ancient tongue as one by one she fanned out the cards in a circle around her. A ring of smoke began to rise from the cards, an infernal breath of magic ripping the veil between here and hell. She flipped over the first card just as a rivulet of black blood began to leak from her eyes.

The breath suddenly cut from my chest, a pain like drowning burning all the way up my throat. My hands pried futilely at the serpent wrapped around my neck, trying to gasp in strangled air. But the feeling wasn’t the serpent- it was coming from inside me. It was as if every nerve in my body were short circuiting, spasms the like of an epeleptic shaking me to my knees. A series of images tore violently behind my eyelids, too fast for me to grasp onto, though each impact hit me just the same. Over and over they ripped through me, like a tornado uprooting buried memories from the ground- faces and bodies, though I had no name for who they belonged to.

A man crouched atop me, his face a mere shadow, though he held a lit candle in one of his hands. He did not touch me, though the way he hovered just a hairsbreadth from my naked body made me uneasy. He tipped the candle so that the wax began to drip inside my legs- hot, burning, bone melting. I bit down hard on my tongue so that I wouldn’t scream, blood filling my mouth. Though my legs lay bare of flame, everywhere the wax hardened along my skin felt like it was being peeled back to the bone. The burn kept clawing deeper and deeper, tearing through me with such savage force that I felt as if I were melting right into the ground. I cried out, a pathetic whimper of pain.

Abuser. The word hissed through me like wind.

The man moved his face into the light of the flame. Please, please have mercy on me, I thought. But as his face began to take shape, I felt the world begin to sink, shoving me down through the earth. Dirt shoveled in around me. Burying me. The burning sensation ceased but just as another replaced it. My skin felt as if it were crawling- as if things were wriggling between my bones, sliding through flesh. Maggots and worms burrowed into wounds that appeared long festered, digging through me as if I were a corpse. I wanted to vomit, to shed my skin. Narcissist. I looked to the sky just as the last bit of light was closing up my grave, whispering the first word of prayer I’d ever spoken in my life. But it was not God looking down upon me. It was the mirror of my own self, smiling back at me, as he threw in the last of the dirt that would bury me alive.

. . .

The world was black.

A black box with no light save for the reflective pane that cut holy patterns across my cheek. The pane slid back. Except it was not a pane at all but a screen, one where the patterns had been etched into iron and stained glass had lain beneath, projecting the warring image of lion and lamb. A place to bleed out sins and bathe in sacrificial redemption. A confessional. I had the vague sense of having lived this moment before. A vision- no, a memory.

“What is it you wish to bargain for?” A silky vixen voice, one I knew. The demoness.

I longed to peer through to the other side, but it was as if my body were snared in the memory. Everything in me struggled against what was to come next, this singular moment of damnation. There would be no mercy on the other side of that confession. No salvation.

But my lips still betrayed me, formed the word even though I willed them not to.

“Eternity.”

But of course what I had really meant was the permission to steal and fight and fuck for as long as my miserable soul defiled the earth.

“A body forged in eternal steel, without age or loss of prowess.” The demoness sighed. “Predictable, I’m afraid. All you young Napoleon types striking deals to the same effect.”

I don’t think at the time I quite understood what she meant, but I had a feeling I was about to.

“There will need to be a reading of the cards, of course,” she continued. “The cards do not profess what is to come, but rather speak truth to what is already there. The tarot will decide whether you are worthy of the Dark Lord’s unholy power.”

My lips quirked up in an arrogant smirk. “So the devil dares to dance, huh? Lucky for him, I know how to tango.”

And then the memory shifted back to the wall of bones, the tarot reading, only this time I was outside of myself, totally disconnected from my body. I sat motionlessly vacant amongst the chanting and the smoke, back rigid and unflinching as the demoness began to rise from the ashes of her incantation. There was something amiss about this picture, something that unsettled me more than any other torment I had witnessed tonight. My eyes had begun to change, a slow burn from azure to black, swallowing all color with the same depthless venom as the demoness’. The opposite side to the same sinister coin. Black to match her white. Both, it seemed, a vessel of hell.

“How do your dance moves fare you now?” She straddled her legs over my thighs, smoothing back a lock of hair from my forehead. “Pain until death, death for pain. A fair trade, wouldn’t you agree?” She began to unravel the serpent from my neck, letting it slither back to the unknown cavern of horrors that was sure to lie behind that tapestry. “Occultism, even of the darkest natures, must maintain a balance.”

Something about her words itched in the back of my mind, as if I were flirting with the edge of some understanding. I had bargained for an eternal body, yet somehow I still remained detached...

The demoness licked her lips, smearing the black blood that now painted her cheeks. “Do you know what they call me in that dreadful tomb of a book you mortals so worship?” She leaned closer, her breasts swinging dangerously close to my mouth. “Seductress. Temptress. Eve.” Mother of the woman scorned. And mother of wrath. “Oh you do understand, don’t you? For the countless bodies you have stolen from my children, you are equally thieved of your own.” The images that once plagued me began to focus, bleeding through until each became a name and a face. The children of Eve. The women I had hurt.

Eve tilted her head, her eyes cutting up to where my soul was watching. Trapped, I realized, amongst the wall of bones. “Have fun burning in hell.”

[chasinganecdotes]

Shankshaw’s Revenge 🎭

Prince Roland clinked his silver against the glass goblet, standing from the velvet cushion of his throne. He looked so elegantly regal in his midnight attire, a black silk coat cinched tight to his slim frame and a crimson cloth draped over his shoulder. His hawk-like features were hidden beneath a lattice threaded mask beaded with onyx pearls and rubies that curved up into a plomb of wings, as if he truly were the predator incarnate. His only betrayal were those frozen river eyes that didn’t quite match the rest of his darkness.

“My esteemed courtesans, welcome to this Hallow's Eve Masquerade. A night to celebrate the souls of those we’ve lost. A night, I dare say, to ravish in their memory and indulge in revelry on their behalf.” Though the mask covered his mouth, Georgina sensed that the corners of his lips had upturned  in a rather bemused smirk. “I have prepared our jester with a small game for your entertainment.” He motioned to his guards. “If you would kindly bring in the clown.”

He was dragged in on chains, his body limp with the weight of the gilded manacles biting into his ankles and wrists. Bent over, his spine punctured his dirty rags like tiny daggers slicing the skin, starved and broken as he was. He was placed at the foot of the dais, the guards unshackling him, and for a moment Georgina thought the clown might collapse. But slowly, ever so slowly, he began to roll up on limbs seemingly inflated with life. With his head still bowed, he peered through strands of silvered hair, his eyes red rimmed and swollen. A smile stretched across the whole of his face- not just any smile though. It was a smile carved from flesh, a mangled mess of a puckered wound that sliced up his cheekbones from the corners of his mouth. Georgina gasped. She had never seen someone quite so hideous, nor anything so gruesome. It wasn’t becoming of a lady to be present to such eeriness. 

“Ghouls,” the clown rasped, crooking a finger toward a woman seated at the front, “and gremlins.” He lurched toward the man seated opposite her. “Tonight we feast on the dead.” 

“Enough with the dramatics, Shankshaw. You are not here to frighten the guests,” Prince Roland scolded. 

Shankshaw glared up at the prince from the corner of his eyes, his smile widening to teeth.“Yes master.” He turned back to the crowd, pulling out a blunt of sage from his bootleg. “To begin this ritual, I must first perfume the air with the burning of a beauty.”

“He means a beauty burning the sage, of course.”

Shankshaw nodded vehemently. “Of course, of course.” He skidded over to Mrs. Westlow, the wife of the Captain of the Guard. “Misses, if you would.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly-“ she protested, her thickly jeweled neck blushing stark white.

“Oh but you must!” He dug his talons into her naked shoulder. “The spirits call to you, my lady.” Mrs. Westlow’s eyes rounded as he thrust the sage into her hands and, as if by magic, blew a breath of fire to ignite the wrap. Thick purple smoke began to mist around the room, obscuring the clown as he weaved in and out of the rows of courtesans. 

“And now, if you would, may I have a volunteer to draw just a drop of blood?” The clown’s voice was a wailing whisper, like claws scratching violin strings. 

A man wreathed in the insignia of the scroll chamber jolted from his chair. “And what of this? Why should we spill our blood on the plea of a court jester.”

“Mr.Chamberland, keeper of the ancient scrolls, is it?” The clown unsheathed a dagger from a scabbard at his side and palmed the blade. “Hasn’t there been anyone dear that you’ve lost? Anyone you would simply die to speak with one last time?” Georgina watched as the man’s face slacked, his outburst extinguished by a sudden veil of sorrow. It had been rumored, she knew, that the man had just lost his youngest daughter to a terrible bout of pneumonia.

“I suppose I volunteer tribute then. I will slice my palm, but just enough to get on with the ritual.”

Shankshaw handed Mr. Chamberland the dagger, blade first. Mr. Chamberland carefully sliced a line across his palm, watching in fascination as a well of blood began to pour from his open fist. Shankshaw crouched below the line of blood, letting the next drop catch on his tongue. 

“Now look, you tortured creature-“ Mr. Chamberland started.

“And for our last bit of fun I shall use the help of our prince.”

“Do not involve me in your antics, Shankshaw. I am not meant to partake in your little game.”

“Oh, oh, but Prince Roland you must lead example to your court! It is a small part. Insignificant really. Why you don’t have to do anything at all. Just stand center to the ritual. A figurehead. A leader. A king.” Georgina could see the cold, calculating fury starting to fissure through Prince Roland’s eyes. She knew the clown had struck a cord with that forbidden word, the title Prince Roland so steadfastly reached for but would never quite grasp. The prince lifted his chin and waved a gloved hand, unimpressed by Shankshaw’s performance but unwavering in his determination to not be bested by the tricks of his fool. 

Shankshaw bounded up the steps of the dais so that he was face to face with Prince Roland, a cruel mirror of the beautiful black hawk of Rathia to his broken and bloody plaything. The clown no longer looked hunchback, but rather stood taller than even the prince. They could be about the same age, Georgina thought, though the clown’s mutilated face made it hard to discern any signs of youth. 

The clown pulled from his pocket a leather bag, which he began to upturn in a circle around the prince, creating an almost protective sphere, like she had seen some of the witches do in their hexes. Though instead of candles and salt, small shards of bones and what appeared to be ash crowned the prince. Shankshaw howled, a truly vicious laugh that stopped Georgina’s blood cold. 

“For years you have laughed at my misery, prince. Humiliated me, tortured me. Carved up who I was born to be into the tiny pieces of who you forced me to become. I was born to be a magician, you know that? Born to the blood of the magi. But you stole that from me. You all,” Shankshaw turned to the crowd, “have stolen that from me.” 

“Your game this night is over, fool. Do not think I will take kindly to what you have done here,” Roland seethed. “Guards!” But the guards did not come.

Mrs. Westlow began in a fit of coughs, a rib rattling hackle that seemed to worsen the more the sage smoke burned the air.

Shankshaw bent back his spine and let loose another cackle onto the night. “You think me so dim witted. A lowly court jester. Ha! I have paid attention over the years.” With a wave of his hand, the smoke parted to reveal the mask of horror that lay beneath. All across the room, velvet and jewel encrusted vizards drop bloodstained on the floor, the courtesan’s faces unveiled to the skin. And across each, a smile of flesh and blood sliced from ear to ear.

 Amid the coughing, Mrs. Westlow let out a strangled scream, though to Georgina’s ears it sounded more like choking. 

“Mrs. Westlow, how I do regret that the smoke will trigger emphysema, especially with such a case so severe as yours. A hidden opium pipe addiction will do that, I suppose.” 

She clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to muffle the next onslaught. But instead of air, a ripple of flame crawled through her lips, licking its tongues down her neck to catch fire to her dress of jaded satin. The fire didn’t just burn her skin, it seemed to melt it, a sort of hellfire that incinerated her in the same instant it took for her to breathe. In just a blink of an eye, she became mere ash, as if she had ceased to exist at all.

“You monster!” Prince Roland bellowed. “Have you no remorse, no mercy for the carnage you have wrought upon your kingdom?” The prince dared to charge the clown, drawing the sword that always lay ready at his back, but was hurled back by some invisible force that enchambered the circle of bones.

“Tenfold for the carnage you have wrought upon me.” Shankshaw countered. He dragged a finger across the wreckage of his smile. “Just a boy prince is all you are. Cruel without purpose. Tell me Roland, how does it feel to be trapped as the world you love dies right before your eyes?”

Prince Roland’s eyes flickered to Georgina, a plea to run, to escape the fate of the dying court. 

“Ah yes, the jewel of Rathia,” Shankshaw purred. He stalked toward her, an icy fear paralyzing her to her seat. She looked to Mr. Chamberland, her last hope, and gasped as his body fell to the floor, blood leaking from his eyes and nose and mouth. 

“Georgina!” Prince Roland screamed, though it was as if she were hearing him from beneath water. She could hear him, but the words could not reach her. Silent tears wet her cheeks as the clown bent a knee before her, pulling from his shirt sleeve a single rose and extending it to her. The rose was in full bloom, strangely plump in a season where the rose bushes were beginning to wilt.

“A beauty such as the Gardens of Botanica would be jealous.” Shankshaw whispered.

Georgina reached for the rose, and for the moment her skin touched his, she was reminded of another boy at another time with another rose jimmied up his shirtsleeve.

“Peter?”

Shankshaw smiled, a true grin without malice or menace. “Georgina.” And then, in a motion swifter than her eye could track, he slashed a dagger line across her chest, just above where her heart lay.