my inner eye has astigmatism.

cassandra vablatsky. thirty. fortune teller at memento mori.

[timotay-chalamet]

[ofprcphecies]

name: cassandra vablatsky

species: banshee/seer

ilvermony house: thunderbird

cultural background: born in israel, then immigrated to america when she was twelve; both parents are israelis of jewish descent.

age: thirty

occupation: co-owner of memento mori funeral parlour and their in-house psychic

specialties: reading you for filth, making tea, potions, swaying to stevie knicks, Inner Eye shenanigans, concocting her own psychedelics, putting on elaborate seances.

current angst: she’s just vibing honestly.

[dylan-obrien]

American Horror Story: Apocalypse, “Fire and Reign” (S08E09)

[ofprcphecies]

vikfontaine‌:

Twitchy hands scuttled back off the tables edge towards him, sinking into his lap as if scolded into submission and accompanied by the wounded droop of his lip. He’d never been particularly good at reading signs, or people, but he did have a particular gift for taking such things to heart. He watched the swoosh of her shawls swim past his vision, fanning wafts of incense in cloudy plumes directly into his face until his eyes watered and the whim that had drawn him towards the front parlour began to feel a lot more like one of his frequent fits of masochism.

“I didn’t bring any body parts with me,” this time. It may have taken a few repeated infringements for him to remember that not everyone was as fascinated by the effects of death and reanimation as he (a beating heart held proudly aloft in his hand, successfully reanimated without any of the necessary attachments oozing congealed blood treated less with wonder than high pitched shrieking). 

The sullen set of his lips was foregone, however, at the far more interesting prospect of a conspiracy. Viktor loomed forward, eyes wide and fingers hinging on the edge of her table as he cut through a dismissive musing about Mardi Gras and hotels, a strand of hair drooping across his forehead utterly ignored as he continued, “The cards, of course, the cards.”

A single finger jabbed in their direction as he continued, “In certain circles they’re saying that they’re gathering in anticipation of an uprising of sorts. Can you imagine? It’s been so long since there was a proper revolution and a vampiric rebellion at that! They’ll be stacking bodies in the alleyways!”

(And if Viktor seemed more than a little enthused by the prospect, nobody could claim it wouldn’t be good for business.)

“Go on, what do they have to say about all this?”

Cassandra eyed Viktor wearily, the fervor behind his words casting long shadows over her expression. The undertaker’s relationship with death was markedly more intense than her own, and though she’d long since surrendered herself over to the pitfalls of her banshee nature, a darkling she was not. Death no longer intrigued her, not when it’d spent a lifetime looming in the shadows of her world, taunting, a beast with sharp teeth and far-reaching claws. She would entertain it with showy displays, glittery tributes, and the occasional reach into the great beyond for the sake of a satisfied customer, careful never to let herself be pulled under. But anything more was asking for trouble. Viktor could keep his violent revolutions and then loot what was left in Death’s bloody wake; she knew better than to play with dead things. 

“Oh, Viktor...” she tsked, leaning in to tuck the strand of hair behind his ear like a finicky mother. An elegant flick of her wrist spurred the cards to action and they flew in in sudden synchronicity, arcing out across the space between them. Suspended in mid-air, they began to shuffle themselves. “One day you’re going to look Death straight in the eye, and you won’t like what’s looking back at you.”

The cards settled back onto the wooden table, cut into two decks. With slow deliberateness Cassandra began fanning them out, facedown, into a set of dual arches. Her hand brushed up against their familiar, smooth edges, wading through a sea of differing energies that swirled all around her, calling out her name in the faintest of whispers. They pulled and tugged from every direction and Cassandra’s eyes fluttered to a close, her senses descending on the spread of cards laid out before her. Vampires. What do you suppose it means?

Grudgingly, she leaned into the centuries old magic clinging to her fingertips and listened as their echoes traced out the beginnings of yet another story she’d been condemned to tell. A tug on her wrist brought Cassandra’s hand to a stop. She opened her eyes to find it hovering over a card. With a sharp intake of breath, she turned it over. “... The Tower...” 

She peered into the card’s face, an uneasy dread washing over her. A high spire consumed in fire; a massive lightning bolt striking the top of the tower; people flinging themselves out windows. Torment. Destruction. It seemed it was to be Viktor’s lucky day, after all. “... There’s been a sudden disruption to the established order of things. An upset of some kind. It’s left the vampires reeling. They’ve -- they’ve been exposed. The Council... they’re scrambling to pick up the pieces but even they were built on shaky foundations and now the cracks are starting to show.” Cassandra lifted her hand up off the card, lips thinning at the sight of the little figures jumping to their deaths. “The vampires are the roll of thunder to herald the coming storm. The crash before the burn. They’re only the beginning. Destruction will soon follow. Chaos. Everything must fall before we can rebuild... and everything will.”

[musicsoundsbetterblog]

Visit Original Link

[ofprcphecies]

Viktor (any one you wanna do)

What you/they like best about them

Oh, well Viktor’s one of my dearest friends! He’s a strange sort of creature, but perfectly decent company. He might not be much of a talker but what he lacks in the gossip department he more than makes up for by just listening, no matter how silly or irrelevant the topic might be. I wasn’t much used to people actually listening, much less caring about what I had to say before I took this job, and Viktor was one of the first people who ever lent me his ear and let me be heard on my own terms. I think you’ll find he’s a good soul once you scrape past all the frost and the rot.

What you/they hate most about them

Well, darling, sometimes he can’t help but smell like a decomposing corpse now can he? But I’ve worked it out. I borrowed a little from our company funds to invest in some well-needed incense sticks (23 different varieties!) and I went to a No-Maj dollar tree to buy these cute little car air fresheners that were shaped like skulls. Then I lied and told him they were talismans to attract death so now he keeps at least two on his person at all times. Win-win.

What you/they’d like to say to them

You are a beautiful monster and you shouldn’t ever forget it. Never let the world tell you who you are.

Also, stop taking my chicken empanadillas from the break room fridge, you animal. The cards ratted you out.

A strange fact you/they know about them

He’s left Mac and I very specific instructions for what to do with his body and his mortuary should he happen to die before us. It’s sixteen pages long with an index. Can’t say I’ve read it in his entirety, though. There was one subsection titled A Risk-Benefit Analysis of Cryogenic Freezing in the Case of Decapitation and I had to just sit down.

Your/their best memory of them

Office supply shopping! It was right after we’d locked down the locale for Memento Mori and were ready to open up shop. So, we hit up the French Quarter’s shopping district and got down to business.

Boutique Du Vampyre, Reverend Zombie’s House of Voodoo, The Starry Prophesier, Cobb and Webb’s – we cleaned house. We even got to try out caskets together at Moribund’s! The owner seemed to forget we were in them, though, and he shut them close on us for longer than I would’ve liked even after I started screaming… but it turned out fine! We got a discount for all our trouble. Anyway, my favorite memory of Viktor will always be of the two of us sitting outside Beezlebub’s Bayou with our plates of gumbo, surrounded by shopping bags and wearing matching purple top hats with ostrich feathers that we’d bought three stores down.

[ofprcphecies]

macwerewolves‌:

It wasn’t something that should have surprised her, really. In the months that she’d been working at Memento Mori, Mac had slowly gotten used to the smell of incense that surrounded both the parlor in general, her coworkers, and, more recently, herself. The smell was intense, doubly so for a werewolf’s nose she imagined, and Mac still found herself itching at her nose as she went about her day of work as if the motion would get rid of the foul scent. Those in her tribe that she was close to thought it was the dead bodies she surrounded herself with that bothered her the most, but that was far from it.

Frankly, what bothered her the most was working with a damn banshee who commented on things she didn’t think about and a demon who seemed a bit too excited to slice open some corpses. Not that she was much more normal, considering her being a werewolf, but Mac was certain her younger self wouldn’t have imagined her working beside people like Cassandra and Viktor on a day-to-day basis. 

It should have just been another day of work when she walked into the parlor to do her daily tasks, but a loud sniff came from Cassandra’s heavily perfumed corner of the parlor and made Mac freeze in her steps. There was no escaping the banshee when she wanted to be heard, lest she want some screaming to start. “You should know I’m allergic to peanut butter, Cassandra,” Mac said patiently. “Unless this is your plan to try and kill me to boost business, I won’t be eating any. Sorry.”

“Allergic to... oh, how dreadful. We really should have these things written down somewhere don’t you think? Some kind of... system.”

The fact of the matter was that if she thought long and hard on it, Cassandra might remember that there already was a system intact, more specifically the set of emergency contact cards Mac had tasked her with filing last month that were currently collecting dust somewhere beneath her crystal polishing kit. However, it was important to note that Mercury had been in retrograde at the time of the event and so a touch of forgetfulness was to be expected, after all.

Cassandra sat up in her seat, breaking through the perfumed haze with a bright smile as she outstretched both hands and beckoned Mac over to her table with wriggling fingers and an urgent “come, come!”

It wasn’t often that she had people enter her little corner without lugging mountains of baggage along with them that she was expected to release them of. Company for the sake of company was a rarity around these parts and Cassandra was constantly on the lookout for opportunities to dull the headaches with some conversation. There was only so much bourbon she could justify anesthetizing herself with during work hours.

“So? How are things?” She leaned forward eagerly. “I’m starving for some decent gossip around here, aren’t you?”

[horrorstorygifs]

[ofprcphecies]

vikfontaine‌:

“It’s probably the formaldehyde.”

Viktor had never possessed much of a talent for the art of small talk, nor was he able to determine just why, when he’d been elbow deep in some poor sod’s chest cavity not ten minutes ago, the impulse had possessed him to pass this way instead of out the back. Banshees had an uncanny way of attracting the dead and nearly-dead to their doorstep, it was only one of the reasons that Viktor had been so pleased to have Cassandra share his work space.

He wriggled his fingers, still coated in a fine sheen of powder from recently shed gloves and shuffled across the parlour to regard the spread of cards she’d been dealing with interest. Some curious developments had occurred with one of his subjects in the morgue (regeneration was a fascinating pursuit to follow) and perhaps she’d be able to shed some light upon them. 

“Vampires,” he offered appropos of nothing as he settled into the seat opposite hers, avoiding eye contact in favour of the cards as his hands settled twitchily upon the tables edge, “There’s droves of them arriving in the city by the day. The French Quarter is rife with them. What do you suppose it means?”

Religion wasn’t something Cassandra ever gave much thought to, at least not since the days of chafed wrists and priests being ushered into her makeshift prison ( room -- her father had always insisted on calling it her room ), rosaries clutched tightly around their fingers as though it were the only thing standing between them and the chiquita endemoniada bound to the bed. No, she might not reminisce that far back anymore, not if she could help it, but something about Viktor’s unsettling aura tended to inspire some long forgotten sensibilities and it was a wonder she didn’t start reciting her Hail Marys right then and there as he pulled up a seat opposite hers. 

“Ack. What have I told you about bringing your work here, hm? Now, do I ever skip over to your ghoulish little morgue burning sage and speaking in tongues?” -- once, only once to sing him a Happy Birthday and it’d ended with her scampering out, screaming at the top of her lungs after something on a nearby gurney had reached out for her skirts and tugged -- “Of course not! So, I’d appreciate it if you could lend me the same courtesy.” Cassandra ended this last note with an air of haughtiness, brandishing her colorful shawls like weapons and swishing them about, as though she could somehow banish all talk of formaldehyde and the lingering scent of rot from her imminent presence with enough gumption. Swish, swish.

His question stirred her to attention and Cassandra steepled her heavily adorned fingers in the space between them on the table, expression pensive. “Do use your words, Viktor. Are you asking me, the cards, or my Tibetan singing bowls? If it’s the first then I can only hazard a guess. Perhaps they simply want to get a head start on Mardi Gras this year.” Her shoulders rose in indifference. “Prices for hotel bookings are through the roof these days, you know.”

[jedijenkins]

when it’s 2017 and you’ve left your ability to give a shit in the rearview mirror as you ascend to the astral plane

[antoniporowski]

We’re in 2017 while Jim is in 3089 A.D.B.C.E.

[princes-heels-deactivated201912]

mood

[ofprcphecies]

location: memento mori funeral parlour

status: open

The cards were being fickle today, like a woolly maths professor unwilling to spare her the correct answer no matter how hard she pried. She fixed her scowl in the direction of The Magician – how he mocked her so! – and ignored the tug on her psyche, the one pulling her towards The Inner Eye. Best to keep them at a distance, at least until she had a nice bottle of scotch in front of her.

A dramatic sigh blew past Cassandra’s lips and rolled through the tightly wound knots in her shoulders as she settled back in her seat, eyes drifting to a close. The nearby record player was carving out a tune, something meditative and Tibetan to raise her psychic vibrations while incense burned freely, enveloping her in a hazy swirl of purple. My own little perfumed corner of the world, she thought fondly. That caskets were on full display not five feet away and Viktor was slicing open some poor sod’s chest cavity in the back was… inconsequential. The dead of New Orleans made for decent company; she could do worse.

She sensed their arrival before the jangle of beaded curtains being parted gave them away. Cassandra sniffed, eyes still closed. “Mm… do me a favor, corazoncito, and have some peanut butter when you get home, will you? Your aura reeks of niacin deficiency.”

[katherinenzrr]

When they ask you, “What is a prophecy?” tell them the truth. Tell them, It’s screaming into the night when you know no one will hear you, when you know they wouldn’t help even if they did. Tell them, It is blood blood blood    dripping from the end of a sword;     from rocks, smashed into heads;     from hands, curled into fists;     from your own mouth. Tell them, It’s the still moment   When the whole world holds its breath, just before the sun rises. Tell them it is fresh fruit in winter. Tell them it’s your own wrists, bruised from hands which have not yet dared to touch you. When they don’t believe you, remember not everyone can possess the future. Most only have enough strength to die screaming once.

The Prophet, Cassandra (via katherinenzrr)