#self translation

[edited-for-typos]

· · · Hereditary Hunger ═ ·

+18 // TW: drug use, blood, vivisection.

Short story — 523 words (Versión en español)

“We ready?” his friend asked.

“Let me take a couple more hits.”

He stretched out from the mattress he was lying on and rolled a quick and misshapen joint. He used a lighter without the metal cap to light it and took a couple long drags. He let his head fall back, eyes closed and lungs filled with smoke; he reached for his pocket with his free hand and checked what was in there. The little money he had barely managed to cover pot, and that was something he couldn’t go without.

“All right, you can go now.”

He didn’t get to see his friend’s smile when the penetration happened. Pain filled him like electricity, starting in his abdomen and stretching far into his fingers and toes.

“Did you fucker even sharpen it?” he said, barely breathing.

“Yeah, yeah. Shut up and hold still.”

It wasn’t sharp enough, but his friend’s strength sure was. He held onto the window bars of the storefront across from his mattress so tightly that it almost felt like his fingers were going to break.

“Hurry up, motherfucker!”

“Stop moving and I’ll can go faster!”

The next thing he felt was his friend inside of him. The pain. The wetness. The movement on his insides.

“Ah... Aah!”

“Hold still!”

He wanted it to end, but the pressure, the movement, the temperature of his skin.

Cut.

Pain.

Darkness.

Movement.

Sounds.

He opened his eyes as best he could, raised his head and noticed his friend had already finished. He brought his hands to his abdomen and run his fingers through his skin, tracing it with his fingertips.

“You sewed me up like a piece of meat, you fucking asshole.”

“I worked as a butcher for three years, what else do you want?”

He used both arms to prop himself up on the mattress. He looked down, saw his bare chest and the stitches that crossed his abdomen from one side to the other.

“Where is it?” he asked.

His friend lit up the joint he had hastily rolled earlier. He pointed to the other way as he took an endless drag. Both hands covered in blood.

He looked.

It was very similar to the many times he had seen dead animals hit by cars on the street. Just... smaller.

“It’s so little. Weren’t you going to take the intestines out too?”

His friend shook his head.

“I didn’t need to. They’re all dried up. ‘Cause, when was the last time you ate? You made me hungry.”

He leaned over the mattress, still in some pain. The last time he had ingested something and felt satisfied seemed so far away. He lifted his stomach with two fingers and looked at it with a dumb smile. It was still warm.

“Eat it then, before it gets cold.”

He threw it at his friend, who managed to catch it with a single hand and threw it into the distance like a frisbee. It landed in the middle of the street like a damp cloth and he burst out laughing.

“No, you fucker! What if I get your hunger after that?”

This is the first time I post something of mine here on tumblr and I wanted to start strong. This is a short story, too short, I might say, but it's a good way to start!

I hope you liked it!

I'll keep posting short stories, because it will take longer to translate the longer ones, remember that I write in Spanish and I have to translate myself to English, and it's so much easier to translate other people than oneself!

Thanks for reading!

[savaralyn2]

Dungeon Meshi Adventurer Rooms - Marcille and Chilchuck

[edited-for-typos]

· · · The Hearers - Prototype ▒░

Short story: 363 words (Versión en español)

Since they had run into each other he had always been the same. He slept on the corner of the bed, hugging his knees, in fetal position. He woke up every time someone walked in front of his door, and sat upright, fully awake, if someone opened it in silence.

He closed the blinds during the day, but not the glass panes, so that some air might get through. He raised them at night, to look at the stars, he said.

It was rare seeing him without a cigarette on his hand. He was a constant cloud of smoke, as if that way he were trying to destroy himself from the inside. If he wasn’t smoking, he was eating; if he wasn’t eating, he was sleeping; if he wasn’t sleeping, he was smoking. He didn’t even eat much either. He was a low cost tennant.

He locked himself in his room with unpainted walls and slept in a worn out matress on the floor. He never complained about anything. He did say something once, the deepest words to ever leave his lips.

“Don’t open your door with your key when you get back, knock and I’ll open,” he said and paused. “That way I’m not completely useless.”

All the other words he said lacked importance.

He had no phone, nor friends, nor pet. He didn’t even have lots of belongings. Only a small dark blue handbag with a bleach stain. He never said what was in it.

He went out to buy cigarettes and very seldom a beer, that he never finished and left open in the fridge until it lost all carbonation and he ended up throwing it away.

The only thing he carried on himself were his tattoos, and his scars. Oh, his scars. Those were many. He used to cover them at first, but after some time he just stopped caring, since he used little clothing when he was at home.

But just as he showed up one day, he left one day. Leaving behind an empty bedroom that smelled like smoke, a few cigarette butts in a corner and a million questions.

No one ever heard of him again.

As the title says, this is the prototype I wrote down before giving life to a short novel called "The Hearers". I want to post it here, one chapter at a time; it's not long, only around 40k words. The character in this story is the prototype of Ash, my first OC, who in the final version of the novel is called Ángel, but he'll always be Ash in my heart ♥

[savaralyn2]

Dungeon Meshi Adventurer Rooms - Laios and Falin

[ascoltus]

The Tiredness of Translating Yourself Carefully

There is a kind of exhaustion that comes from speaking in two layers at once. One layer says the acceptable thing: the concise explanation, the softened reaction, the version that will not make the room tense. The other layer stays busy underneath, carrying the fuller meaning and measuring how much of it is safe to show. This is not the same as being dishonest. Often it began as attention. You learned which words would be taken too sharply, which silences would be misread, which needs would become inconvenient if they arrived without careful packaging. So you became fluent in presenting yourself in ways other people could receive. Over time, that fluency can start to feel like distance from your own voice. You answer the question, but not quite from the place where the answer lives. You explain the feeling, but only after removing its heat. You make yourself understandable, and still feel strangely absent from the conversation. The loneliness here is subtle. People may think they know you because you communicate well. They may praise your calm, your clarity, your fairness. They may not notice how much translation happened before the sentence reached them, or how much of you stayed behind so the exchange could remain manageable. Sometimes what you want is not to be dramatic, or difficult, or even fully agreed with. You may only want a moment where your first language is allowed to exist. A place where the unfinished, less polished sentence does not have to be immediately improved for public use. It can be tender to realise how rarely you speak without editing for impact. It can also be a beginning. Not a command to reveal everything, but a quiet recognition that the part of you doing all that translating has been working very hard. If you need somewhere quiet to begin saying the part that does not fit the role you usually carry, Ascoltus is here: https://ascoltus.com

[brainslationshenhao]

I know nothing REALLY NOTHING with Chinese but.. i am really really falling in love and addicted with this Manhua (✿ ♡‿♡)

[splendida-arbitria]

Mercy and Loyalty

[The merciful leader’s], after all, is a lasting and grounded greatness, whom all know to be beyond himself as well as for himself; whose care they by experience know keeps watch daily over the welfare of individual men as well as for all men; from whom, when he comes forth, they do not scatter, as when some evil or injurious animal leaps from its den, but toward whom they fly as toward a bright and auspicious star. They are most ready to fling themselves upon the blades of ambush and lay forth their bodies, if by this slaughter the path toward human welfare will by him be erected; over his sleep does the nighttime watch keep guard; exposed and surrounding him, they defend his flank; they set themselves against the dangers that assail him.  Seneca, de clementia, II 2-3 --- I really just love the passage because of the imagery Seneca presents in contrasting the aliquod noxium animal e cubili prosiliens and the clarum et beneficum sidus An instrumental view does Seneca seem to take of mercy in this section, but like many virtues, a thing can be both good in itself and also have effects that are useful for other ends - does that render the practice of the virtue sordid?Perhaps Seneca would say no, seeing that he’s a Stoic and his school focuses, as far as I am aware, on virtue as the way or even the very image of beatitude. But I still need to read more. On the one hand, moreover, blind loyalty is unwise - but on the other, Seneca does not seem to describe a blind loyalty. These followers are loyal to the leader that is honorable because of his mercy and virtue. Loyalty for the right reasons than for the wrong.  I’m also making a choice to agree humanam with salutem rather than stragem to soften the imagery, unless Seneca did want to pair stragem with humanam lol.

[preciousghouls]

w hy? why?