[jcdas]

#JCDAS: father forgive me for i am going to sin. introducing dependent muses: judah preaker & birdie lambert for fromhq. this is an exploration in hauntings in the hereditary, religion as a carnal devotion, slaughter-leading sheep & pledging to yourself to the land that bore you.

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as sowed by kay, she/her, twenty2. be forewarned that this blog will likely contain mentions and/or depictions of alcohol consumption, substance use, religious trauma, childhood trauma and neglect.

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    *     closed     ›     @jcdas .

raised in an agnostic household with a father who rather believe in the cleansing energy of a morning rain instead of a god whose name justified wars and whose alleged words nested hate in the hearts of others, river jenkins wasn’t really fond of religion or christians for that matter. and that was the reason, precisely, why she had chosen to bother the preacher the moment she knew there was one in town, right after the shock had left her body and resignation took its place once their new reality was explained. nonetheless, since the days of her futile attempts at annoying him it’s been more than two years, and everything left of that original plan is a connection she never planned to have, a link feeding an eagerness to know more, a curiosity unsatisfied she still tries to fulfill. in an attempt to do exactly that —fulfill her curiosity, try to put her finger on that thing about judah that escaped her— she made her way through the church’s door as she has done plenty of times before, two-finger saluting the christ above the pulpit before making her way to the confessionary. a derisive smile that made her eyes twinkle with devilry stretched her lips when she found him there, waiting, oh, so benevolent as the god he claimed to serve. 

“ forgive me, father, for i have sinned, ”     she drawled, feigned contrition tinting the words, the smirk on her face, insolent and deliberate, could be heard in them. she loved to start conversations with judah in this particular way.

[jcdas]

hell hath no fury like a faith deserted.  certainly there were a time — a place — where this scene could have played out differently. somewhere where either or them were who they claimed, where they were not mere corpses awaiting the finality of death to come pluck them off one by one. as the good book would have it, sinners cannot pray for each other but they can surely hope that this was salvation & not punishment. that just maybe, this suffering could be a kindness in the face of whatever stood outside of their little slice of nowhere.

heads lolls and a short laugh follows, judah recognizes this voice and therefore imposes no questioning; he's well aware of her intention & thus he does not harbor a prayer for her faux pentence. “i exist outside of this box  [...]  you do know that right?”  palms gesture in lieu though he is aware she cannot gauge it. just as god had not only existed in the hollow sky above or as a careless whisper beading against windows comes the desperation of nightfall, judah was just as real as she wanted him to be. a beat, perhaps to make of the waft of history already whirring between them — let this be something else — something real. “... could i ask something of you?”

[fairypuzzles]

closed starter for @jcdas !!

"i've been going over everything there is to find," patrick says, his voice on the brink of breaking but he holds it in, the priest shouldn't have to see his frustration, and pat knows it will only get him some divine advice that he can't take -- have faith -- which he isn't sure he's ever had. "there's nothing i can find in any books on how we can get out of here. we're all gonna die and there's nothing we can do, just prolonging it. what's the point?!"

[jcdas]

there is a saboteur that lives within you,  one that chitters and pulsates within every vein.  feed him  &  you will suffer no harm  ⸻  feed him and no one will suffer you.  “the point is that death is not something to overcome.”  nor welcomed,  but expected only that when it was your time  ⸻  and oh yes that time was different for them all but it would indeed come.  and when it came,  you would welcome it into your embrace  &  hope to god it would be merciful.  “and patrick if there was anything to find  [...]  it wouldn’t be here.”

[arcan3ly]

── the car graveyard , west & birdie !

the midnight blue chevrolet that had carried them across state line after state line was little more than a tin can in the presence of the graveyard. there were vehicles spanning decades, periods where west and birdie were barely glints in their parents' eyes; his mossy gaze danced across hoods and bumpers as they sat cross-legged in the bed of his father's beaten truck. many a night had been spent there, huddled beneath tarpaulin—they would have tangled their legs, brushed arms, awoken just a little close to one another. every movement had been explained away with a shrug and an utterance that it had been a cold night, huddling for warmth. "it's weird, huh." west spoke, cheeks filled with stale bread that chewed in a way crust should never chew, "driving all that way and ending up here. i thought we'd see the sea, escape somewhere... find a place on the coast," maybe they would have parted ways somewhere down the line, waved each other goodbye never to be seen again—had he been delusional, hoping for some semblance of a future with the woman he had picked up on the thoroughfare? gesturing to some abandoned bodywork, he spoke: "bet that would've taken us far." @jcdas

[jcdas]

birdie is sat there with her face upturned to the sky;  a half-devoured strawberry dripping supple sweetness between the webs of fingers.  she can hardly hear wes when the wind gets to howling,  hardly known if this were a concious choice or not.  she swears right then and there that she could hear her sister’s voice in that swell of silence that wedged itself into the conversation she’d seemingly negated herself from.  bird was like that a whole lot these days:  a pretty little shell like the ones she would collect the one time of year mama would take the girls to the sea;  hard  &  just hollow enough to float. she’s more than just a shell around west though,  he fills her up with something bird was never sure of but it feels a whole lot like love;  the good kind too.  round gaze centers when he pipes up over the cacophany of a half-eaten lunch,  finishing off the strawberry  &  whatever red had stained her fingers.  “well that’s life ain’t it?  like sinatra said.”  or something of the likes.  they were high-riding just a few months ago  &  now they were all shot down and broken.   “we found eachother.  found  [...]  this place together.  maybe we just took too many wrong turns on fate  &  this is where it chose to dump us off at.”  bird knows that’s not what west wants to hear  ( or at least convinced herself )  that just maybe all roads led here.  her line of sight traces his own,  settling on a big body sedan that she had imagined was once a powdery blue color with plush white seats.  the thought of it made a grin upturn at the corner of her mouth,  “that chrystler?”  there’s no need to search the bumper for the brand crest,  she knows it by heart.  “i bet it hardly brought whoever drove it here in one piece.”

[jcdas]

taylor russell. cis woman. she/her. ⸻ i saw BIRDIE LAMBERT around THE WOODS, you know? the 25 years old that was driving from BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA when they saw the tree on the road. BIRD has been here for SIX MONTHS and i think they were A MENDER before they got stuck in the town. with the way things are now, they are struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy and  seek a way out without losing themselves or dying. lets hope you at least survive the night on their own.

TELL ME / WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

full name    abilene lambert birdie faye lambert nickname(s)    bird, faye (birdie is reserved mostly for loved ones) age   twenty5 gender identity    cis woman orientation    unlabelled place of birth    beaufort, south carolina date of birth   august 16th faceclaim    taylor russell former occupation small-time mender & hitchhiker positive traits   ardent, perceptive, resilient negative traits   morbid, impetuous, delicate moral alignment   chaotic good parallels amma crellin (sharp objects), maren yearly (bones & all), india (stoker), abigail hobbs (hannibal) current residency    the colony house current occupation laundress for the colony house BIOGRAPHY tw for the following content: childhood trauma, illness & abandonment, mental illness and murder.

you do not enter this world alone, but you do happen upon it utterly starved & half dead. your sister comes first, and you follow shortly behind ⸻ with all her same parts, but worse. you emerge a novel shade of blue, witholding infant wiles because even then you knew how to wield attention to your liking if there were going to be two of you. you’ve been a gaping maw since then,  devouring anything within reach simply because you could.  you gulp life as if it were something you were starved of.  in all truth,  you’ve always gotten what you’ve wanted,  it was only a matter of having more.

two little girls with bad heart, both still rotting from the outside in. mama says she thought the water would be good for you so your family upped and moved to the closest thing to it when they could afford it. you're still hardly a wink near the southern marshes but mama still paints the house blue to ward off those bad spirits. your dad leaves for the first time real soon after that, part of you still thinks the blue is what warded him off ⸻ that maybe it was best that mama's own superstition hadn't allowed him past the front porch.

ain't this good, bird? she'd say, fingers swept up in your never-done hair because half your childhood was spent mustering the strength to climb out of bed. just us girls. you didn't much like it, but it would stay like that for a long while. a mother-wound doing her very best to raise two little girls that had gone rotten in their own ways. you had always been a spindly little rose,  luscious from first glance but when people were close enough to touch you they could feel that dry,  hollowness you exude even now.  the withering bud your ma had managed to overwater in the dry season.  even with a pink teddy perpetually tucked beneath an arm you were still all teeth.

the liar and the thief, if competition were made between you and your sister, you were by far the finer lambert girl. even in your ailing condition your mother had mulled through you with a fine tooth comb,  ensuring that you and you alone would be the one she would pour all her efforts into. you would be doted:  the one better loved from the top shelf of ma’s china cabinet  ⸻  she thought life was too abbrasive for you so you were kept tucked away.  except this love was more of a gentle taxidermy, in time you would know what it meant to keep the dead things alive.

when you are old enough you will learn that the best place to harbor things ⸻ the best place to bury a body, is within yourself. you would tell mama that it was an incident what happened to your sister, that you didn't mean to dig in the knife ⸻ to twist. but even as you had promised in the womb, she would be your wound as you would be hers. surely there were the startling differences between you as children, but you were the maw remember? your sister had taken everything from you, so when you had sat on it for just long enough, you decided that you would carve out those pieces of yourself in her & make them yours again. 

mama couldn't stand the sight of you and for the first time in a long while, you think ⸻ let alone miss ⸻ your father. you leave in the night like he did, and you've been nothing but a whisper on the wind since. you were just a girl then but you still take that peach fuzz softness and cast it over the vile bits you.  too many teeth where they shouldn’t be,  and too sharp to be just that.  in a childhood turned crime scene,  you were the rabid thing that had been tied up in the powder blue bow & now you're something much worse than you could have imagined. your sister may be dead, but she lives on in you.

[myrcella]

[horrorlesbians]

lake mungo (2008) / sharp objects (2018)

[bluejeanbeans]

Taylor Russell for Fantastic Man

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Sun Bleached Flies

Handmade Collage, Beauty No. 7, 2022