#foreb0de

[foreplagued]

im so sorry, my lord, please take this that i offer up to you in desperate supplication of your mercy

@foreb0de

[forewilt]

“ come closer, ” he murmured, his voice a low—unholy hymn to the darkness. “ do not fear the veil of night, for it conceals truths the day is too weak to bear. here, beyond the reach of fleeting light, eternity waits to enfold you. " his form would appear to meld with the dark, his presence vast and consuming—gaze was starved for her, a longing coiling around them both. [ ... ] " join me in shadow. " —he, grotesque & bewitching.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙫𝙚𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙨 , heavy & all consuming , at first a late tide that became sudden & final before she could even conceive a readiness to brave it . And with the night , the crawling breath through her throat , a heavy pant that would threaten to overtake her at the same rate in which her heart beat through the hollow cage of her chest . Then there — at the window .

A creaking sound from the latch . A tremble and flutter of the bobbin lace curtains like the spreading of a moth's wings ...

Suddenly, his voice , pulling her up as though she had sunken deep into an abyssal pool . He restores the air within her lungs . Her breath is no longer a shaking prey , but deep , . ... hungry . Ellen turns her face to the shrouded wall past the shafted moonlight of her open balcony and feels her lips tremble apart .

What lurks beyond her in there in the shadows ? here , surrounded by the heavy weight of her four walls with but only the stars to bear witness her miserable life ? She sees the glittering of two staring back at her from the corner and wonders if she can bare to see the truth he speaks of up close . “ I cannot , ” Ellen whimpers , her skin crawls from clenched hands to milky thigh , and she is shackled in place .

“ Please go away ... ” She begs , her eyes rimmed ruby against the pale reflection of her countenance . She can feel the horrible knotting in her stomach she had forgotten , the licking of something inviting at her ankles with each growing shadow climbing across the room , and it's all she can bear to do to close her eyes and recall the choir of her wedding song .

There she sees light . There she sees Thomas — her hands bound to her chest in prayer before the altar — everything good , holy — until the rising scent of lilacs whisks her away from that untouchable dream and forces her eyes wide once more . and suddenly like those watchful stars , following their own dogged course , she gasps upon the realization she is no longer there at her bed — but has drifted indeed just like them , ever transfixed to the horror waiting in that very corner she'd hoped to avoid. bewitched.

“ This is not real ... ” Ellen whispers between doomed lips . She grasps for courage even at the last moment , anything to steel herself against the torrent of sensation itching towards the figure lurking .

With finality she revolts, cold as the sea hence @foreb0de has come, “ I reject your so-called eternity . ”

[foreplagued]

“ tell me, what do you dream of in your mortal slumber? do you see her—your fair ellen, radiant as the dawn—or do shadows creep into your mind? do you wonder, as i do, what it means to be touched by something darker, something eternal? ” the pale reaper's fingers brush the edge of the man’s collar, an intimate & unnerving gesture, light as a spider’s web.

The lace of time weaves peculiarly within the ruination of these walls, where a moment feels like a fortnight to him in his boundless despair. From within the great hearth, the fire burns heretic, aberrant flames casting shades and shadows that flickered in mesmeric pageantry, wild and taunting and almost too brilliant. The primordial darkness that shrouds the castle spaces at night seems to swallow up any other light, leaving only the aberrant silhouette of his host visible, and the rest up to his sordid imagination.

Fear transmogrifies itself into a deafening roar, a haunted descant above the tympanic thudding of his heart in terrifying concert. But most of all, Thomas hates the sound of Ellen's name upon the count's decayed lips. He had horded her name in his mouth a reliquary might form itself around the remains of a saint—but what was sacrosanct was sin in Orlok's mouth, what was virtue itself it turned vile upon the wicked volute of his tongue.

He asks after his dreams with the authority of certitude. As if he knows that Thomas's thoughts have been in a disarray as obscured and out of order as the disaster of his heart. That dreams come unbidden within his morbid state, filled with phantoms and fears that leave him depleted before even the cock's crow can rouse him.

Is this present a dream? He cannot know. He wonders vaguely if his beloved dreams in such a fearsome manner. Regret limns the errant thought—he wonders if he'll ever have the chance to apologize. To tell her that he knows what terrors the night can bring, that he has seen the darkness in its all its denuded depravity. To beg her forgiveness for all his callous indifference. And it is that which his thoughts focus on in the exigency of the count's precarious proximity, the only touchstone to the present that he dares cling to. The flick of his collar is very real. So is the oppressive scent of his heavy velvets and matted furs, the effluvium of his wine-stale breath that bloomed offensively upon Thomas's fevered cheek.

Orlok's gaze is impossible to escape. Those eyes so black and bleak like the cynosure of a dying star, that looked so much like the exquisite black pearls of Ellen's eyes, but bereft of the verve and brilliance that always featured in her soft gaze. Was that why he couldn't tear himself away? Why he let himself become consumed by dark provocation of his chthonic eyes, that chilled the blood in his veins, flooding every venule with terror transmogrified? Because he finds those eyes twin in most demonic fashion to the divinity of his beloved?

His words hung in encroaching space between them, like a funereal shroud, making the peripheral world around him hazy and unfocused. The echo of the question still reverberates within the hollows of his bones, roiling within his marrow and the deepest parts of him. His fingertips grasp weakly at the soot-soiled, ancient fur that lines the count's rich dolman coat, a thoughtless gesture to steady himself as he felt his knees threatening to upend him.

"Do you think..." Thomas asks in a hoarse whisper, voice tremulant. "Do you think you have any right to know the contents of my dreams?" He swallows thickly, the bright of his blue eyes sharp with both alarm and accusation.

His grasp grows bolder, pulling the count closer in a bid to evince a bid for his own dominion. His stuttering "Do you think that because you are the cause of all my nightmares?"

[mollyhousing]

@foreb0de

“Hmm. Do go on.”

[mollyhousing]

@foreb0de

“…This feels like an insult.”