#milobelladonna

[chaosmultiverse-a]

They stood there in the manner of an open door - a presence defined solely by absence. They were there, for sure. They were there in the way that they were not there, an emptiness that was so complete and whole that the sounds of the world quieted around them. Suppressed. Like standing apart from the rest of it, detached, removed. Sitting there on the border, between things, between that exit that Milo had become and everything else. This threshold was lined with old stones, worn down by countless feet. Many had walked here, and they had only walked one way, but came all the same. It was a tradition. It was the manner of things. It was but another step that had to be taken.

It was impossible to know how they had appeared. One second they were not there, and the next, they stood in waiting in front of the ghost.

Milo did not seem perturbed by this, by the inconsistency of their body, which stubbornly refused to be their body. This was the way of things too, and they were not the type of thing to be bothered by this. Everything was just a process anyways, why should they try to hide it?

"I see you around sometimes," said a mouth that was not a mouth, that was cool and soft and could be grasped and sunken into, deeper and deeper, like falling asleep on a gentle winter's night, "but we do not speak that often. Care to change that?"

( from milobelladonna, for polly! )

Polly had gotten used to the weird ways things could exist, the weird state that she existed in and was at this point more than used to reacting to the unique ways her friends and classmates did. Still as she could feel somethin- someone near by with the weird... Absence of presence it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

Despite hairs standing on end Polly didn’t freak or panic at the sudden appearance, she had gotten used to expecting the unexpected when it came to fellow monsters and could more than keep her chill, besides seemed to be a fellow death themed one.

“Oh yeah I guess we don’t do we?” Polly wasn’t actually sure if she had likewise seen them around, something about them did seem... Familiar but didn’t mean much especially when she would meet so many people from time to time and just forget about them. “So yeah sure! I’m always down to get to know somebody, and I like your vibes.” 

Their vibes were interesting at the very least, spooky in a way Polly won’t describe a lot of the people she’s met. Polly has always fond herself interested in new things.

[daeamour-a]

@milobelladonna​ HORSE TIME: There comes a low, soft scraping sound, on the other side of Sawyer's door. Like teeth. Like nails. Slowly they push in, and drag slowly downwards, digging deep into wood and grit as they push ever deeper, surely trying to gouge into the other side.

There's no way for them to see who this visitor is. Or what.

There is no way to describe a sudden, animal fear that fills the air like the air before a thunderstorm, crisp and clear and pooling beneath the tongue with sparking anticipation.

There is no way to describe the utter soundlessness that this presence inflicts upon the world around it, like a wound, fetid and plastered with layers of old blood that have since scabbed over and dried and opened again. A hatred of sound. A hatred of life. A hatred of movement.

The infection seeps in and it deprives the living flesh of oxygen, lets it choke and writhe in its own prison, traps it beneath for the crime of denying the nature of this silence. This stillness.

The scraping is still there, but it does not break the silence. It does not provide comfort from that infinite, terrible yawning that stretches around and around them like an open mouth, breaking its own rules and leaving the senses in ruination.

There are no words for what terrible finality sits on the other side.

Answer the door, Sawyer. Answer the door, Sawyer. Answer the door, Sawyer.

Answer the door.

They’ve been here before, haven’t they? Last time they snuck home when Susanne was with them. Just before they found that thing... That horse. If it could even be called that. Since coming to the ranch Sawyer had met all kinds of horses. Friendly horses, angry horses, distrustful horses, but none like the one they saw in their bathroom that night at home. None so full of hatred for the entire world that it left an echo of it’s feelings around the very room it resided in. None that wanted them dead as badly as they assumed this one did. They haven’t even seen it but they think it’s there. On the other side of the door, it’s waiting for them.

Their hand shakes above the door handles to the barn. They know they need to check on the horses before they go to bed. They know they need to sacrifice themselves for the care of these beautiful creatures. But fear has settled so deep into their soul that they’re too terrified to even open the door. Many times before they’ve been eye to eye with death. Flirted with them, dragged their hand along death’s hand silently asking to be taken away. Yet only now do they believe that death really stands before them. If they open that door death will find them. They will take them and if they are lucky that is all that will happen. For what feels like the first time in their life though they fear death.

“Go. Please go.” They beg but their voice is eaten in the silence. Only the scratching of wood interrupts the silence. Offering no comfort, no solace or relief. Only the reminder that they are no longer the hunter. Once more they are the prey. This is how it feels when the tables are turned. When they feed on others this is what others feel. An unimaginable fear that lingers far longer then what should be.

They don’t move their hand remaining hovering over the door handles as tears well in their eyes. They try to will themselves to move, to run and make an escape. But the silence traps them in their place. Once again cold freezes them where the are at. Do they open the door? Unleash the horror upon the world in an effort to save the horses that are trapped with the beast on the other side? IS there a beast on the other side? Is there another side?

How do they know they will find the horses on the other side if they open the door? For all they know that thing could be there by itself with only darkness to accompany it. Only the vast nothing that can hold the kind of horrible animal it is.

‘It is but a horse.’ They try to reason while ignoring the demands to open the door. ‘It is but a horse and nothing more.’

Yet the demands chill them to the core making it near impossible to move. Much less open the door. Could they really unleash this wretched creature upon the world? Perhaps it would be better to leave the doors shut. Go back to their room, pretend nothing happened. Act as though-

“Sawyer!” A voice breaks the endless silence and the vast darkness that had wrapped it’s way around them falls apart. Once more they can see the grass that surrounds the barn, the open fields where the horses play in the day and the fences that keep them in. A cyclops stands behind them, looking at them with deep concern. “Everything okay? You’ve been out here for over an hour. Is something wrong with the horses?”

Sawyer stares at the other in shocked silence, chills running through their entire body. Processing the interruption from the terror. Unable to separate what is real from what they were imagining. If they’d been imagining anything. “I... It’s nothing. I just... Got distracted is all.”

They lie hoping that will make everything better. If they pretend nothing happened perhaps they’ll be able to sleep that night. It’s only an act however and an act can do nothing to hide the scratch marks on the door when they finally open them.

[fullcfphobias-a]

"Lucky, lucky you!" Milo clasps their hands together and at once adds a chuckle onto the end of their words, sounding like the hollow echo of a burned-out log remembering the flames and filling the air with the smell before it rains. "I got that badge my first day here — you would not BELIEVE how easy it is to identify plants! Sure, sure, those Eagle-Ranks may claim that it is 'the hardest badge to earn', and 'absolutely impossible, why did anyone make this a badge', but trust me! I can show you all of the ropes, and there is a lovely little overgrown trail that we can go practice on! And the lighting is MWAH, perfection!"

( from milobelladonna :> )

“Wow— I mean, that’s not hard to believe! That you got this so fast and all..”

Oz turned over the badge in his hand, still soaking in the achievement. Guess hanging out with Calculester really rubbed off on him, that or his paranoia that he’d somehow get poison ivy despite the lack of skin finally came in handy. Either way, he was now the owner of a sweet new badge!

“Oh! I think.. that’d be nice! The help, I mean.”

An overgrown trail sounded like all sorts of trouble, from the likely possibility of getting lost to potentially crossing paths with something that lived there. On the other hand, however, it entailed spending time alone with his favorite grim reaper! Wasn’t he trying to be bolder this summer? Now was the perfect chance!

“Do you walk that trail a lot?”

[candyredmuses]

"Ooooh!! What are we doing here? Arts and crafts?" The voice winds up from behind Poppy, smooth and velveteen, while a perfectly manicured hand rests against her shoulder. It shifts as it rests there, as if the skin and bone are not quite comfortable and have to contort themselves into some easier shape. The fact that the shape it takes is almost... too perfect, too ideal, too exacting to the image of beauty itself, is all secondary. As is how Milo's very presence seems eager to dip through her porcelain shell, at once just the hand of a fellow campmate and at once fronds of rot sinking their roots through to her core, wrapping around and around and reclaiming.

None of it bothers them any, as they take a seat beside her, propping one elbow up against the table and chin against their palm, looking down at the assorted bones and chunks of fur and other bits with the kind of excitement that only Death Themselves can feel for such a thing. Up this close, they smell like a creek bottom, the crispness of wet river stones, the wafting fragrance of honeysuckles, and the too-sweet smell of something floating in the water. "What are you making today?"

( from milobelladonna :) )

How unsettling.

Feeling the hand rest upon her shoulder, the tingling, cool sensation coursing through her porcelain skin ... As if piercing itself through each little nook and crack of her body to explore her very core. Wrapping around her like a constrictor. As if seeing into the very being of her form.

It wasn’t the eeriness of death itself looming and soaking itself up within her, but, merely, the sensation of any sort of physical intimacy, no matter the context ... On top of someone as cool as Milo seeming interested in whatever she’s doing.

“Oh, uhm ...” she’d begin softly, feeling her head lower and bangs beginning to falter over her eye. “I was just ... Trying to piece together some of these... I found them scattered around on my morning walk,” she’d begin to explain quietly. Poppy found the absolute massacring of this creature to be beautifully interesting. ” I wanted to figure out what kind of animal this was, and, uhm ... Try and find out what killed it and how, is all ... I thought it’d be a nice exercise for my analytics.”

[foulflames]

[mnstrss]

@milobelladonna​ asked: There. Open the door to the bathroom, and there it stands, in the deathly quiet. Unnervingly quiet. The kind of quiet that sticks to everything and anything it can, infecting it, destroying the world of sound and sense and understanding and only leaving the otherwise unheard noise of one's own organs working when everything else fell away.

It is a horse. That's what the shape is supposed to be, anyways. Its eyes are a horse's eyes, and for a moment it might have been reasoned to be albino, for the pinkish red of those eyes and the ghostly white of the skin... But it's not. There's no reason it's not, but just by looking at it, anyone would be able to tell it's not. It's skin is not the pigmentless white of albinism, but rather... Sticky. Sticky and cold, veined with black and tainted with purple and green, slick with corpse wax and bloated like a drowned body with the hair slipping off of it. It doesn't breathe. It doesn't move. A stillness so complete and so entire that one would be able to measure the slow march of the universe through the expanse of space before that Horse moved.

Now, it stares at Sawyer. Mouth open wide, pitch black inside. Dog's teeth. It has dog teeth, shoved there in place of a horse's grazing teeth, and as it stares, there is a hatred. A malevolence. Despising them not on a personal level but on a fundamental level. A fury so deep and thick that it burns cold, focusing on them, on this existence that spoke of light and warmth and being and sound, and at once would rip it to shreds with those slick black dog jowls, would hunt these beings that lived and moved until they too were just as silent and still as it.

Its feet do not move as it stands there in that bathroom, staring at Sawyer with those hating eyes. It doesn't need to move with feet so unlike a normal horse, tipped in four toes ending in hooves. It doesn't need to chase prey.

It has better ways to hunt.

When the world is at it’s most still can either be the most comforting moment or the most terrifying. Waking up at night expecting to be greeted by a noise filled world, only to discover silence has taken the place of every comforting sound that lulled Sawyer to sleep is one of those terrifying moments of stillness. Where before Sawyer would awaken to the sound of quietly rumbling thunder echoing from Susanne sleeping above them or to the sound of constant chitters, screams and growls of their siblings late night activities; tonight they awoke to none of that. Silence filled their senses heightening the sound of their own heart pounding. Their instincts told them to check on Susanne and the rest of their family. Yet instincts seemed overridden by this silence as they were pulled instead to the bathroom.

They found themselves standing in the doorway their hand hovering over the light switch. Light illuminates the creature bringing to Sawyer’s mind all the past bodies they’ve sat above. No movement of the chest to indicate breath or flash of the eyes to take notice of the world around them, no reaction to the light that has suddenly filled the once darkened room. One could compare it to a statue but Sawyer recognizes this stillness far better as death. Yet this sort of death is infectious. Less like a disease and more like the cold. Like a tundra wind that blows through the entire world freezing Sawyer to their spot.

They recognize the hatred in it’s eyes but don’t recognize the cause. In the past they’ve known every reason why they were hated. They were hated because they tricked another, because they hurt someone or forced them to face the truth about what they were. They’ve been hated for simply being a demon. They’ve seen all those forms of hatred. But never have they seen a hatred like this horse’s before. As though the horse hates them for simply existing, no excuse, no reason. Simply because the horse hates and there is nothing more then that.

Movement finds it’s way back to Sawyer as they reach for their own throat, hand covering it as though that might protect it. The teeth in the horses mouth reminds them. Of their beloved hell hound ripping apart sinners while on a hunt. Digging her way into their throat to rip the light from their very eyes. Sawyer wants to cry out for Sophie, call her to come take care of the beast that stands before them. But even their vocal chords feel too cold to be used. So instead they simply stare.

Sawyer has always been the hunter, the demon that stole life from prey all because of their decisions in life. They’d never known what it was like to be prey before. Yet standing before this thing they finally understood. They finally knew what it was like to be in their victims shoes. The fear their victims must have felt when Sawyer’s true nature was revealed and they ripped them apart. Was this a nightmare? Brought on by the guilt of their past actions? It was too real to be a nightmare. The silence was too much to be constructed by Sawyer’s mind alone. Were they finally to live through hell as a punishment instead of as a home?

But this was not only their home. This was their family’s home, Susanne’s home now too and they could not allow this thing to punish them for the wrongs Sawyer had done. A determination they only feel when on the hunt thaws their limps and they step forward into the bathroom. Locking the door behind them. As though to taunt them the first sound they hear, that is not their own heart racing, is the sound of the lock clicking into place behind them. Reminding them of the decision they’ve made to trap themselves in with this beast.

[atropaanimus]

👁 ( milobelladonna )

Soul Exam 

“There is... something. A void, a welcome blanket, a hole, a home. A well, empty and full. Overflowing yet with drawing as well. It’s a paradox at it’s finest. Wary and bold, terrifying yet afraid. I seem to have run out of words to describe it. Truly fascinating.”

@milobelladonna

[atropaanimus]

There is a sound like the hiss of old, dry bones, the shake of a rattler's tail long-mummified, and in a motion like a striking snake, there Venti is, eyes vivid and electric as a lightning strike. "I have heard you need someone to cover your shift while you teach someone just how much their life is worth? How lucky it is, for both of us, that I just so happen to be the perfect person to handle such a task. Tell me how it went afterwards, and we have a deal." ( milobelladonna )

“Oh bless you... me... bless us... no we’re already blessed.”

This wasn’t confusing at all. Ignore the fact there are two Milo’s, and that one is taller than the other. Also that taller one exudes far more thembo energy than the one that was already there.

Just ignore it everyone.

“Thank you so much. I shouldn’t be long. Temporal anomalies have their benefits after all. Oh, and if Asier asks for me... feel free to invade dispatch. Should distract her long enough to forget all about me partially bending the rules and abusing my powers again.”

They really needed to get going before someone caught on there was two of them. “I’ll text you when I’m about to head back. We can do the swap with finesse.”

@milobelladonna