CHECK CONTENT WARNINGS BEFORE INTERACTING. dead dove. do not eat.
themes: family as hell, blood as a curse, filth as real as an organ, rot and decay and the life it births, becoming your father/monster, inherited sin, doomed love, loss of innocence, guilt and shame and how neither of it absolves you.
edits by @musicien <3
CONTENT WARNING:
This blog will contain material that some people may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised. As per the nature of the genre, this blog will deal with triggering and problematic topics and themes. Here is an incomplete list of topics that will be discussed or referenced on this blog:
religious & cult trauma, mental, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, self harm, addiction, alcoholism, death/murder, suicide, animal death/culling, gore, child abuse, unreality/hallucinations/delusions, predatory & manipulative behavior, unhealthy & transgressive familial dynamics. This blog is themed around the Gothic literary trend, which traditionally deals with taboo and transgressive themes.
for clarity: Miriam was sexually abused by her father. this informs many of her opinions and responses. while there will be no explicit mention or depiction of this circumstance, Miriam's experience of it will be inferred. if the depiction of abuse survival and the depiction of its possible emotional fallout disagrees with you, please leave. The abuse that runs rampant in cults, especially against children, is something i feel very strongly about and is something i don't care to downplay. i will not directly reference, depict or recount the traumatizing events that took place. That being said, Miriam experiences confused recollection and feelings concerning the events of her abuse. This, too, will not be downplayed.
None of my characters are based on any real life people. The cult in this story is not an allegory for any existing organization. In general, I strongly advise anyone who could potentially be harmed by the depiction and discussion of any of the topics mentioned above to exit out of this blog now.
A peaceable place, dull black-and-white tiles, gleaming faux leather seats. Outside, the first harbingers of a storm front rub their backs against the glass, thickening the air with a promise of rain. Darkness bears down on the small diner, makes it seem cozier than it is; an island of comfort in a world that is about to become very unpleasant very shortly. The few patrons that huddle here are in no hurry to leave.
Only the noise of her shifting and clattering interrupts this forlorn moment. Miriam, complete with plate and cutlery, suddenly pushes herself onto the bench opposite of the blonde stranger. She is a rail-thin thing, limp brown hair and bruising under her eyes. Something of a shelter dog to her, you'd expect her to start growling if someone tried to take the food from her. "Shh," the young woman makes as if in conspiracy, before she starts wolfing down the heaped serving of scrambled eggs and bacon.
Not too far behind her, a waitress is looking around in blank confusion, seeing as someone's order just went missing from the window. Crazy times.
@sunmad
Sophia could feel the pressure coming with the storm front. The scent of rain was in the air, and, determined not to reappear back at Teppes House soaked, she had dipped into the diner to ride the rain out.
She looked up from her book and a steaming cup of tea— nothing else by way of food despite what she was sure was a plethora of comfort food to humans on the menu— as the girl slipped into her booth.
The only movement that came from her then was in her eyes as they flicked from the girl to the plate, then off towards the waitress. Back to the human in front of her, and a little smile tugged at her lips as she registered precisely what had happened in the second it took to look back at her.
She isn't much for conversation. Stab, stab, stab. Her fork goes massacring the cheap ceramic, trying to skewer as much egg and bacon in one go as possible. She burns her tongue, the inside of her cheeks, and her eyes sting as she struggles to swallow and breathe cool air at the same time. After some coughing and huffing, Miriam ends up fanning her tongue in dismay.
If nothing else, the fog clears. Whatever tunnel vision drove her until this point, the food in her stomach manages to break its spell. Glass-blue eyes startled, then focus. She looks up at the woman sitting opposite of her. A fine picture, well put together. Chic in that undetermined, understated way. And something else. Something vitreous about her. The little thief's gaze narrows for the fraction of a second.
"Yeah," she allows. She sits up to full height now that the waitress' attention is demanded at the counter. Miriam, by comparison looks like something the cat dragged in. "You're not gonna tell, are you?" Her eyes dart to the cup of tea. She'd prefer a soda, honestly. Her tongue still burns.
date with an angel (1987)
umberto d (1952)
judex (1963)
branded to kill (1963)
the keyhole (1933)
what happened to the inquistive janirot (1902)
the oyster princess (1919)
the madness of dr. tube (1915)
20 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Swinging in the backyard pull up in your fast car whistling my name. 21 Open up a beer and you say get over here and play a video game. 22 I'm in his favorite sundress watchin me get undressed take that body downtown. 23 I say you the bestest lean in for a big kiss put his favorite perfume on. 24 Go play your video game"
his maker's affinity for the human race thrummed a dull pattern in deadened veins, an inherited ghost of affection. marius, an anthropologist's loving gaze at the zoo-kept chimp. how simple & unenlightened ! armand did not share quite so strong a compassion; though tutelage & heritage are inescapable, & mimicry ever a compliment. the poor girl's terror is sharp, sharper than her despair ( a miscalculation on the vampire's part; REST would be a harder pill to swallow ). he forces a blink. see ? i am just like you.
i don't think you've known softness. not spoken, no. thoughts that travel over air. a sacrificial lamb ( A JUDAS LAMB, really. rather unscathed ) recognizes lamb. he has met the soft-sort, eyes half-lidded in apathetic bliss; offering grape, or a belittling laugh. the soft-lived kind too much effort for armand to pursue. but she, child hiding in the dark, wants it darker. he can give.
a flicker of a frown, concern-woven knit eyebrows over wide-searching eyes. an adolescent urge to be RIGHT. it dissolves back into inhumanity just as quick as it came.
❝ i want to give you. ❞ not softness, and to be fair, even his most gentle caress would be something claw-marked & cold. ❝ peace. ❞ it comes out forceful, whispered. & not untrue. he's seen this path of religious devotion, beaming out of miriam with every interrogating probe. he too, trodden close to god's light ( & always too frightful to commit himself to the eternal flame ). ❝ what does peace mean to you, miriam? ❞ another step.
She lives in a world in which this encounter makes sense. Perhaps that is what gives him pause, what makes him adjust his footing. She was raised on the threat and the promise that there would be horror, and that that horror would find her. That horror justified all else. Monsters crawled through the stories she was told and gnawed on the holes in her imagination, populating the blank edges of her mental mappa mundi. His eyes make sense to a woman like her. His eyes that gleam out of his sculpted face with the numinous phosphorescence of the lycanthrope. Nobody else. Nobody else could see these eyes for the first time and understand that they have their place in this world.
She is a lone structure jutting out of the landscape; its immortal geology, laughing at them both. His words arrive in the manner of a boulder that has been here for millennia. Though she never heard his voice as one should, she is transfigured into a state of having-heard. The hearing is a concluded act. She has been put behind it. And she takes his meaning. She takes him for the lure that he is, seeking to push his spider-fingers into the mushy parts of her brain until he finds the brown spots.
Her chin lifts and her throat comes into play, a fine piece of anatomy, crowned with the lovely carotid. She can smell hunger three miles against the wind. He speaks her name which she never gave him, which he plucked out of her like a ripe berry, or the eye of a dead cow. Plopped it into his mouth and crushed it to pulp between his molars. Fear unfurls its butterfly wings, glass mosaics that jitter and slice through her thoughts. He is so beautiful, even like this, even starving, so beautiful she wants to spit on him. Why does he get to be beautiful?
"Peace?" She echoes, as if this were a foreign word. In her mind, she is three steps ahead, sees her naked feet twitching a foot above the ground. "If you wanted to give me peace, you would never have let me see you." Her numb lips split. Her reproach winds up to the tune of a hymnal. She is very tender when she speaks, tears pricking the edges of her doleful, beseeching eyes. "Now I have to go on, knowing that you exist in the world with me. ...What is the cure? It is not the right time. I've told the one that came before you. If you wanted to give me peace, you'd give me purpose."
