#the consuming au

[phynoma]

HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN

As a countdown to Halloween, I'm sharing the original statements I wrote for the Consuming AU! (<<click for ao3 link) The statements function as horror shorts that work on their own, and I'm proud of them, ngl

Without further ado:

Statement 1: The Chocolate Pot

CW: Manipulation, supernatural compulsion, accidental dead-naming, drowning

[Tape clicks on. Head Archivist’s Office]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Corey Garrett, regarding his discovery of a vintage, silver chocolate pot. Original statement taken August 9th, 2007. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

It was an estate auction that did it.

My cousin, Niamh Flaherty and I, would get out of mum's house by taking our bikes up and down Elvendon Lane. There aren't a lot of turnoffs, and it's one of those narrow, country lanes that seems like it keeps its own secrets. We were lonely, in the way that two young adults in the countryside could be: on the edge of adulthood and the fears of being cast into the unknown, even as we longed for it with all our fledgling desire for flight.

It was the end of summer, and Niamh was visiting from Limerick, and we were terribly bored with country life. Just eighteen, the both of us, and playing at being proper adults. Independant, all that. Both of us had a thing for antiques–though I’ve lost a bit of my taste for it, now–and we were incorrigibly curious.

There's not much that goes on around Woodcote that the whole village doesn't know about, so when Niamh and I saw the lorry at the end of a short drive, nearly blocking the narrow road into town, we stopped. The drive itself was far too small for the mini tipper to navigate; just a blind opening to a gravel track so overgrown it could have just been a path into the woods that would end, like a fairy-path, with no house or sign of humanity in sight.

My parents had moved out to the village when I was at school, and I didn’t know whose house it was that had attracted the house clearance auctioneers like flies to a decaying corpse. All I knew was folks that needed seven tonne lorries were likely old and rich, and that sounded like a magic combination. A proper treasure hunt, you know?

Maybe it was a bit ghoulish, but the idea of a dusty, mouldering house of forgotten and unwanted treasures really got to us–Niamh and me. Like I said, Niamh and I were still pretty young, but I was always impressed with her. She seemed sort of worldly, always got men's attention. She wasn't that pretty, I don't think–well, I mean, I don't know. I'm her cousin, aren't I? But she had a way about her, something that drew people in. I could never figure out if I was jealous of her or if I wanted to be her.

Anyway, watching strangers pack up a lorry with some old, unlucky geezer's worldly treasures might not seem like a good time, but we made the most of it. We made guesses of what was in the boxes, what kind of person they'd been, why they didn't have any family to collect the goods. It was an “adult” kind of fun, nothing kids would be interested in, but now that Niamh and I were grown up we could watch the delivery men carting boxes and furniture down the dusty drive and feel like we were gossiping like real people, real adults did. We were so hungry for a world beyond us.

And there was plenty to gossip about. Crates of old knickknacks and rubbish– porcelain table sets shaped like too-quaint dolls, ratty old tapestries from the 70’s made to look mediaeval and missing the mark– that sort of thing. We sat on our bikes across the lane and kept our eyes peeled for the priceless artefacts we knew we’d spot among all the junk. With our keen, young minds we had a plan that if we did see anything, we’d be the first down at the auction houses and charity shops in Reading to snatch it up. Ghoulish, like I said. But at the time we felt very clever and sophisticated as we guessed at values and made crude but cutting remarks.

We could see a bit of the house from the road–disappointingly normal, all told. Renovated maybe in the mid-90s, one of those monstrosities that was probably a fine thing when it was built two centuries ago and which had been “upgraded” nearly out of existence. We were guessing at how terribly the inside had been refurbished when a woman wearing a cream suit left the front door. For a moment, I could have sworn she looked right at us, down by the road. And she smiled. I don't know how, but I could feel it, like an itch behind my teeth. Then she turned and disappeared behind the hedges and fruit trees that blocked most of the house.

I shook off the shudder that half-imagined smile had given me, and put her from my mind. In any case, Niamh hadn’t seemed to notice the woman. I’d have almost thought I’d made her up, except after a good ten or fifteen minutes she appeared again at the bottom of the lane. She must have walked all the way down, and her cream suit was coated in a fine layer of dust. She held a small crate in her hands.

I don’t know how, but I knew that crate was full of the treasures Niamh and I were waiting to see. I tried to be subtle watching her, but Niamh and I were the only ones on a long, lonely lane, so it was pretty obvious we were gawking. I expected an annoyed glance, maybe, or for the woman to shoo us off. Instead, she looked up. Our eyes met, and I got that weird feeling again, like she was…amused, somehow. It turnt my stomach right over.

I didn’t notice that Niamh had grabbed my arm until later, when I saw the bruises, because I was so focused on that woman. She walked over to us with that little half-smile, the crate still in her arms. She said her name was…I think it was Karen? Karen…something common, I think, but like an old man name. Withers, maybe.

Anyway, she came right up to the both of us and asked if we had known the owner of the house. I don’t remember what we said–if we lied and claimed we did, or what. The answer didn’t really seem to matter. She said the owner had been old and eccentric, and he hadn’t had anyone to leave his belongings to, so they’d been called in. Hope Charities, she said, and pointed at the lorry. There wasn't a name painted on it or anything, but the men doing the loading were wearing white coveralls with B&H on the back. Don't know what the "B" stood for.

She– Karen– showed us the crate. It was open. Inside was a jumble of knick-knacks, exactly the kind of thing you’d expect: a couple of old books with faded dust covers from the 50s or 60s, some miscellaneous silverware, a snowglobe that was nearly opaque from the dissolved snow, a single Skittles pin.

She said it was a box of the things they didn’t think would sell, and offered to let us take anything we’d like. She smiled when she said it, and the smile didn’t match her eyes. Even though it’d been what we were hoping for, I was suddenly uneasy. It didn’t feel like we could say no. I wanted, desperately, to say no. I think I hoped Niamh would do it for me.

Niamh took a book–at random, I think–and I picked up a tarnished chocolate pot. I had half a mind that I could give it to my mum as a birthday gift, with a bit of polish. Karen nodded like I’d made a good choice and gave me one more of those little half-smiles. It reminded me of a crocodile, somehow.

“Enjoy,” she said, and brought the crate back to the lorry to be packed away.

Niamh and I went home after that. There wasn’t much more for us to do, really. We laughed about it, about how we thought we’d been in trouble. Niamh said I must have charmed her with my wicked good looks–but Niamh was always the charmer, and she didn’t seem to realise I didn’t have her way with people.

She showed me her book. It looked like it’d been a library book at some point, and the dust cover was a bit torn. It had one of those generic, oil-painted landscapes as the cover art, of a circle of grey-green mountains with a blue-grey sky behind. It was called A Very Windy Day, and I didn’t know what possessed Niamh to choose that over everything else in the crate. When I asked her, she shrugged and said it reminded her of something.

In the end, I was rather proud of my chocolate pot, and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to shine it up with some of my mum’s old Wright’s jewellery cleaner. Niamh settled down with her book–I don’t know if she was actually that interested in it, but after my teasing she made a point of reading it in front of me. She even read a bit out loud–something about big spaces and the ever-expanding entropy of the universe. It was way more dry than I expected, and it made me feel sort of funny and small, so I told her to read to herself.

The chocolate pot shined up nicely, though it took a good deal of time. By the time I looked around to ask Niamh something, she had left with her book–probably to get away from the smell of the cleaner. I was a little miffed that she hadn’t said anything to me; but then again, I had been rather focused.

I cleaned the inside of the pot, and noticed that it was in good shape but had some strange scratches on the inside, like someone had gone in with a wire scrubber at some point in the past. The scratches weren’t deep enough that I was concerned it would be unsafe to drink from, and I resolved to make some tea in it, just to try it out.

I steeped a few bags of breakfast tea directly in the pot itself–after all, if the thing was to be used for brewing chocolate, it shouldn’t have any sort of flavour itself, and there was no point in putting hot water from the kettle into the pot and then pouring it over bags from there. But when I poured the tea into my cup, it was almost black, and thick as mud. It had a strong, earthy aroma that wasn’t unpleasant– a bit like a very strong, very unsweetened cocoa.

This was rather off-putting, but I figured to myself that perhaps I hadn’t cleaned the inside of the pot as much as I’d thought, and the hot water had now cleared it out. The vaguely-chocolate-like scent could be from years of accumulated grime, for all I knew. I poured out the rest, washed out the remainder, and tried again.

The second steeping, the stuff was a little thinner, and the aroma thick but sweeter. Perhaps, I thought, the boiling water was doing its job to scrape out the inside of the pot. I poured it out again and resteeped it a third time. This time, the liquid was a warm, golden brown, like a well-sweetened and milky cocoa mixed with cinnamon or turmeric. It smelled mouthwatering.

I realised, belatedly, that I hadn’t added the teabags at all, and couldn’t help but wonder if that had been the reason for the odd black sludge the first time. Whatever the reason, the fact was now that this chocolate pot was a more exciting find than I could have ever hoped for in my attempted grown-up adventure-seeking. I allowed myself a bit of childish delight, that I had something truly special.

Of course, I wasn’t a fool– I wasn’t about to start serving this mysteriously appearing chocolate to my family without some more research. I did some internet research and found very little in the way of magical chocolate pots or cursed items. There was absolutely no record of regular chocolate pots creating chocolate from hot water, although there was plenty about cast iron and other sorts of well-seasoned kitchenware, and some tales of Chinese clay teapots being used for so long that one only had to pour in hot water to get tea.

This seemed unlikely for my silver pot, but I clung to the idea that there was at least some reasonable explanation. I would have even taken a reasonable supernatural explanation–anything that meant I wasn’t simply going mad. And, just in case I was somehow hallucinating the sight and smell of the chocolate, I figured a few other senses were necessary.

For some reason, it was very important to me that I was alone. The childish feeling was stronger; that I had something special, something precious, like a stuffed animal worn to an inch of its life. I wanted to test the chocolate pot in privacy, in a little tent of my own making, someplace dim and close and warm. I imagined sharing chocolate with Niamh like we had as children in a fort made of cushions and blankets, our small hands wrapped around second-best china, in a small, dark world of our own. Safe. Intimate.

I locked myself in the bathroom and climbed in the tub, pulling the curtain around me in as much of an approximation of a fort as I'd allow myself. I poured myself a new cup of chocolate and dipped my finger into the liquid. It was pleasantly warm, not boiling, and thick and silky smooth. I rubbed it between my fingers, marvelling at it, and then without thinking I licked it from my fingers.

It was delicious, just as rich and sweet and full as it smelled. Emboldened, I took a sip directly from the cup. Flavour exploded over my tongue, rich and complex and very clearly chocolate. I finished the cup within minutes and poured another. I was starting to rethink my idea to gift the chocolate pot to my mother, when I could just as easily share its contents with her but keep the pot to myself.

I refilled the pot only once with more water–which I got straight from the bath tap– and looking back, that should have been an alarming sign. At the time, I was simply amazed at how the flavours seemed to change with every cup, perfectly setting off the previous so that each was distinct. It was impossible to tire of, and it seemed to spread through my stomach and then my whole torso and limbs like a good scotch.

I was feeling pleasantly warm and buzzing when Niamh returned. Again, I didn’t hear her come in through the door, but she was suddenly there, in front of me, asking what I was doing. I hesitated, wondering if she would want a cup. Dare I share my magic? Of course, I decided, with a warm, happy surge of devotion. How wonderful, to share in the chocolate pot! How lovely, to be embraced together in such a remarkable creation! It occurred to me that everyone was deserving of such a gift. Perhaps I could sell it. Even better, I could give it away. I could open my home to any and all and share this incredible, magical drink that tasted like the very essence of comfort!

But first, I wanted to share it with Niamh. I wanted to capture a bit of that childhood we'd been so fierce in pushing away. I invited her into the tub with me, my sanctum, my fortress.

It was then that I noticed how distant Niamh's eyes were–as if she were in the room with me, but not. I felt as if she were looking at me from the other end of a very long tunnel, like a mineshaft. She stood in a square of light, while I crouched safe and warm and hidden in the dark. It pressed around me. It was deep, fathomless, but the pressure was comforting. It was the darkness of the womb, of a mother's arms who would never grow too frail, would never turn away. There was no need to fear growing old, there. It was a place where we could huddle in the dark and drink chocolate and always be children.

By this point, it felt as if the chocolate was in my very blood. Its thickness coated the inside of my oesophagus, my mouth. In a slurring, muffled voice, I offered my cousin a cup of the magical liquor. She refused, her eyes still empty.

I felt a surge of despair that she should be so far from me, when all I longed for was closeness. I took Niamh's hand, and when she tried to pull away with a cry of anger, I simply wrapped my arms around her instead.

For a moment, it felt as if I were holding a thousand stars in my embrace–or a million dandelion seeds, about to be blown away by a breath of wind. Niamh wiggled in my embrace and then, all of a sudden, slumped against me. As I hadn’t anticipated this, I could only lower her as slowly as I possibly could to the ground, where she lay curled and sobbing. Her face was a mask of fear and anguish. She draped over the tub, spilling the pot over. Dark liquid poured from it, thick and endless, clogging in the drain and slowly rising.

I righted the pot and handed her a cup of chocolate. This batch was dark as a moonless night and it smelled bitter and woody, but it was still obviously chocolate. When Niamh trembled so much that she would spill it, I helped tip it into her mouth.

At once she became still and quiet. Her eyes were wide and very dark, and she stared at me as if she had seen unknowable horrors.

I drank the rest of the cup, as she seemed uninclined to finish it, and felt the bitterness prick through me like deadly nightshade. My head swam. For a moment, I was drowning. My mouth was filled with thick nectar, and it ran down my front in muddy rivers. My eyesight blurred.

For some reason, my only thought was that I had something in my throat, and that the solution was clearly to wash it out with more chocolate. I poured another cup with shaking hands and slipping gaze, and when I spilled it I simply raised the chocolate pot and poured the sweet liquid directly into my mouth.

There was no end to the flowing chocolate, and for a moment I had a vision of the chocolate continuing to pour, and pour, until it flooded the room and down the street. I imagined the faces of the village as they saw the approaching wave, surprised and then delighted. I pictured them licking their hands like I had, or scooping up teacups full of the stuff to fill their own, hollow bodies. Like a children's story, a fairytale. All was innocent and sweet again, simple. I could save the world with my chocolate pot. All I had to do was keep pouring.

I could imagine how it would sit in us like ballast, thick and choking and so full that no one would ever have to feel loneliness again. To be embraced, inside and out, in thick, sweet nourishment. It was horrible. I had never imagined anything better, or worse. If I’d had any air left in my lungs, if the chocolate wasn’t already pouring from my mouth in an endless fountain, I would have screamed and not stopped. I sobbed, for the fear that I might never reach the beautiful image in my head, the promise of an endless, close embrace.

I felt arms around me, and then Niamh was trying to force the stuff from my stomach, my lungs. I coughed and choked and only managed to let more of the chocolate fill in the last bits of air I had. I was drowning in it. No, that's not right–it was swallowing me. I lay back in the tub that was slowly filling with chocolate and knew it would be my tomb.

I saw, rather than felt, Niamh’s hands pound against my chest. The tub could be our tomb, if only Niamh would join me. I tried to grasp her hand, to pull her into the warmth with me, but the chocolate coating my hands was too slick and she pulled away.

I wailed for her. My consciousness slipped. I was sinking into a deep, black pit of primordial warmth, and I knew I would never escape.

Except…well, I did, didn’t I? I’m still not completely sure how. I think Niamh did it, somehow.

I woke in my bed, with a horrible pressure headache, and Niamh at my side. I could have sworn, in the moments before I woke, that I heard her reading aloud to me–though I can’t recall the story, I do have a vague memory of her setting aside that little hardcover book she’d taken from the crate when I woke.

She explained that I had fallen asleep in the bath, of all places, and nearly drowned. I asked about the chocolate pot, and she seemed confused for a moment. I reminded her about the house, and the crate, and her eyes lit up. She brought to me a small, silver teapot and claimed that this was the thing I had chosen.

I was so tired that I hadn’t the energy to argue with her, and simply decided to ask about it more when I woke again. By the time I did, I could hardly recall what the original chocolate pot had looked like, and I couldn’t truly confirm whether or not the teapot she showed me was the one I had taken from the crate.

Niamh left at the end of that summer, and besides a few emails, we’ve mostly lost touch. It’s too bad, because we were very close once and I have a strange feeling that something that happened that summer contributed to her distance. She moved to Switzerland, I think, to be a ski instructor.

I gifted the silver teapot to my mum after all. She adores it, and it makes very good tea. But sometimes, whenever I’m drinking something, I get a thick, sweet taste on the back of my tongue like the finest of chocolate.

Statement ends.

ARCHIVIST (CONT.)

If I’d read this a year ago, I’d have dismissed it out of hand. It's exactly the kind of urban legend I'd expect would flood the shelves. But perhaps The Magnus Institute is a far less interesting or gratifying audience for such creators of tall tales than the usual, hungry internet forums.

(sigh) Nevertheless, there are a few details of note.

[Paper flips]

ARCHIVIST (CONT.)

(clears throat) Hm, excuse me, it seems that–Cora Garrett has not suffered any long term effects from her experience.

(to self) Note to self, re-record the intro of the statement using the correct name and pronouns.

(aloud) From the preliminary follow-up, it seems like Cora spent a few days in the hospital to get rid of what appeared to be a sudden case of pneumonia. No police report was ever filed, and we've had difficulty tracking down any relations to the original owners of 15 Elvendon Lane, assuming that number 15 was, indeed, the correct house. It was certainly the only house on auction around the correct time. It seems to have been renovated by the new owners, and there are no pictures online of the original house to try and match to Cora's description.

Karen Withers, or Smithers, or whatever her name might be-- the auction agent-- does not seem to exist–either in the Reading area or beyond. I am exceedingly curious to know who and what she is, or if she even exists. For all we know, she could be an invention of Cora and her cousin to explain away an adolescent break-in, or a hallucination like that of a (heavy sigh, dry) overflowing chocolate pot.

The most interesting piece of this statement, to me, is of course the reference to A Very Windy Day. The details are vague, but it could very well be a Leitner, and if that's the case I–

[Door opens]

ARCHIVIST (CONT.)

Ah. Martin.

[phynoma]

I'm primarily a writer, not an artist, but I attempted to draw (a version of) Rhia so here they are: avatar of the Hunger and the Flesh, a good ol' succubus ready to feed on your life potential 🥰

[phynoma]

As a countdown to Halloween, I'm sharing the original statements I wrote for the Consuming AU! (<<click for ao3 link) The statements function as horror shorts that work on their own

Statement 3: Teeth

CW: body horror, teeth, gore, illness, description of food/eating, hunger, blood, vomiting

[Tape clicks on. Quiet of the statement room]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Naadia Hamza, regarding a diner in her neighbourhood. Original statement taken 15th of March, 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.

Statement begins.

...

I've always been a bit of a night owl.

Ever since I was a teenager and I would sneak out at one or two in the morning and just…wander the streets. Got in trouble for it a couple of times, too. I didn't ever do anything, I wasn't a hooligan. I just liked to be outside at night. The streets are quiet then in a way they never really get during the day. Not silent, not completely. But when you're by yourself, and there isn't the constant noise of lights and cars and dogs and people, you can notice the quieter sounds.

Even in college, when I was old enough that most of my friends were spending their nights partying or studying or actually sleeping, I kept finding new places to walk. I got stopped by police a couple of times– something about a hijabi woman walking around at night freaked them out a bit, I think. Never got accused of soliciting, though, so that's something. But it did get me to start thinking about some proper excuses about why I was up and about at three am, and so that's when I started going to diners.

I know I just said I like night-walking for the peace of it, but that's not completely true. I like people. I do. I think people are interesting. I just…can't handle them all at once? Not when the lights are on.

But at night, in small spaces…it's sort of the best of all worlds. There's something calming about the lights in a diner when it's between one and five in the morning, and the commuters aren't in yet. Like a little buzzing island of neon and fluorescent safety amongst the dark. It makes it feel like…a waypoint in the night. You step inside, and it's like stepping into a little oasis of human nostalgia– not quite real, not the way it is in the daytime, and at the same time so much more real. Like it's the only thing that exists, a bubble against the emptiness of the dark and cold: and there you are, hiding away from the dark with a few other intrepid night wanderers like you.

I had one diner that was my favourite. I had a sort of cycle that I'd go through– Phillips on Mondays and Wednesdays, Highland on Tuesdays and Thursdays– the days of my night classes, when I was there anyway– home on Friday nights for jumu'ah, and the weekends for events and meeting up with friends. When I didn't have a path to follow, I'd make my way down to Pam's Diner.

I don't know if Pam's Diner was ever owned by anyone named Pam. Probably not. I mostly just knew the night waitresses: Maude, who could have been a prematurely aged twenty-five or a well-aged fifty, and Mabel, an older woman who wore too much liquid foundation and lip liner that never seemed to keep her bright red lipstick from trickling up the wrinkles around her mouth.

We got to know each other, in a way. Nothing personal. Nothing like friendship. But we were familiar, anyway. I was a recognizable face in that bit of transient night. Mabel went out of her way to let the others know what I could eat and what I couldn’t, in that way that happens in the midwest–where it could be real kindness, or it could be passive aggression, and the only way to know for sure is to wait until the micro-aggression becomes too obvious to be anything else.

Maybe you’re wondering why I would keep going to a place where I might have been unwelcome. The truth was, most places felt like that. And the food was good. I mean, they didn’t use bacon grease for their hash browns, and their pies were delicious.

I’d started a new schedule for j-term–that’s January term–and so I only had one class: an intensive that lasted from three in the afternoon until nine at night, with a dinner break. Lecture, then labs, then discussion. It was way too long for a class, to be honest, and by the end of it I just had to get out and walk. January in Minnesota is brutal, you know, but it didn’t matter. I kept to my smaller route, which meant I ended up more and more at Pam’s Diner.

Looking back, I don’t know when it was that things started to change. There was never any indication of new ownership, or anything like that. But despite coming in more often, I stopped seeing some of the usuals around. I thought maybe it was just my timing, or the cold keeping people in their own homes. I felt a little sad, to be honest–like I was making a stop at DS9 and the usual crew wasn't there. I tried to ask Mabel about it, but it’s not like I knew anyone’s names, and describing one hairy, old trucker in his cups describes a lot of them.

Another thing I noticed was that the waitresses were smiling a lot less. Again, that could have just been the cold, or the familiarity. Maybe they didn’t make as much of an effort when they saw me all the time? But they were always pleasant to me, asking how I was and how my family was, asking what I’d learned in class that day. Maude kept her lips close together, even when she spoke. Every once in a while, I’d see her standing in the little waystation between the kitchen and the tables, holding a hand to her cheek like she was fighting off a toothache in the back of her jaw. Mabel’s lipstick seemed brighter than before, and the red that bloomed around her mouth looked almost like broken veins.

I still didn’t think much of it until January 16th. I know the date because I’d spent extra time in the lab that day, trying to fix a group project, and I’d marked the date and time a half dozen times in my lab notebook before finally setting out into the night. My labmates, Dex and Karen, invited me out for drinks, which I declined. Besides the fact that I don’t drink, I needed alone time. I needed to walk.

I was going to skip the Diner, considering how late it was, but something about that homey, yellow glow pulled me right back in. I thought maybe I’d get a coffee and a piece of pie, nothing more. Something to excuse my sitting there in the booth. There was only one other patron, a crusty old geezer with wispy grey hair and a thick, peeling, leather jacket that had seen too many winters. He was bent over the chrome bar in the usual position of late night patrons, seeming to hug his plate of biscuits and gravy. There was gravy in his moustache and an off-white, ceramic cup of coffee in easy reach.

I sipped at my own cup and made tracks through the whip cream on top of my apple pie with my fork like it was a miniature zen garden, going over the experiments we’d run that day and the places we’d gone wrong. Biochem was a killer of pre-med students, and I wanted a good grade, to hell or high water with my labmates. I was still thinking about it when a couple walked in–high, from their self-conscious giggling and overloud voices–and Mabel swept off to take care of them.

I wasn’t really paying attention to the old man at the bar or his conversation, but when he raised his voice it was hard not to notice. Mabel was dealing with the newcomers, so Maude was the one who came out to see what the ruckus was. He kept asking her questions, “what does she think she’s playing at?” and “a long-time patron deserves better,” and “doesn’t want to make a fuss that would cost her her job, but this was unacceptable.” I felt a bit defensive–whatever it was that had pissed the man off, I resented him taking it out on Maude. It wasn’t as if she made the food.

She spoke quietly, her cheeks drawn, her lips over her teeth. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the man wasn’t having any of it.

“I don’t want a fucking refund!” he said, loudly enough to distract even the high couple from their menus. He held up something–tiny, glinting yellowish-white–and looked around the diner as if triumphantly presenting evidence to a jury. “Y’all watch your food! I’ve found a tooth in mine! An honest-to-god, human tooth! What’s next? Rat bones? A live cockroach? You makin’ this gravy from human meat?”

It was so ridiculous that I just gaped at him in amazement. Now, from the looks of this guy, he didn’t have a whole lot of teeth to begin with. I wouldn’t be surprised if he cracked the rotten thing right from his own mouth. Maude covered her mouth with both hands, looking stricken, and then rushed to the back. She looked about to cry, or be sick, and I didn’t blame her. Who says something like that?

Mabel clicked her tongue and apologised to the man, comped his meal. He calmed down eventually and left. The stoner couple spent the rest of their stay snickering to themselves about it. It’s not uncommon to see strange things in the late night diners. It’s part of the bargain of having a place to go–you share it with whoever else might be out there.

I asked Mabel about Maude when she came by to check on me, and she assured me that Maude was shaken but fine. “Thanks for askin’, sweetie,” she said, and patted my hand. “You’re a good one. Pie’s on me, tonight.”

I finished my pie and my coffee and went to use the bathroom before I left. I caught sight of Maude through the swinging silver doors to the back, with their porthole windows. She was crying, her mascara running down her cheeks. I only saw her for a moment, but her mouth was open as she wept, and I could have sworn all her teeth were rotted black.

I shouldn’t have gone back after that night. I didn’t, for a while. Didn’t go on night walks at all, and then when I did, I went to other diners. But something about Pam’s always drew me back. I think I told myself it was curiosity, and concern for the waitresses that I considered friends, in a strange way. Companions of the dark. Maybe it was just that their food was that good. I started craving it–mashed potatoes and gravy, cobb salads, cornbread, pie. Things I could get anywhere, but nothing was quite as good. For whatever reason, I made my way back to Pam’s Diner two more times.

The second to last visit, Maude was already gone. I ordered, and when Mabel had a spare minute between serving the truckers that had stopped in, I asked her about Maude. Mabel looked tired, more tired than she had before. Her foundation was caked on like paste, and she’d completely given up on lipline,r if she’d ever used it at all. The red ran up the wrinkles around her mouth like a spiderweb.

“Maude was let go, unfortunately,” she told me. “A couple of weeks back, now.”

“Not because of that man–that customer who yelled at her, right?” I asked, indignant.

Mabel assured me it was not because of that incident, although from her tone I got the idea that it might have been a factor– or a symptom of something worse going on in her life, it was hard to tell. I thought about her face through the warped plastic porthole, the dark wreckage of her mouth, and I shuddered to myself.

I’d thought I’d just stick with coffee, but instead I found myself ordering a whole meal, with dessert. Things were a little slower without Maude there, but I didn’t go to the diner for quick service. I sat and watched the other customers, wondering if there’d be another dramatic showdown that night. As the minutes crept on, I started to get properly hungry–that stomach-churning stage where you start to feel sick and light-headed. I hadn’t seen Mabel come out of the kitchen for a while.

I got up and used the bathroom for something to do, and for the excuse to pass by the kitchen doors and take a peek. I didn’t see anyone on the way in, but on the way back glanced around to make sure no one was watching me–they weren’t–and then I poked my head inside. It took me a moment to realise what I was seeing.

The kitchen was active, as I’d have expected–burners on, oven blazing, deep-fry running, dishwashing machine clattering. But only half the lights were on, and there was no one there. No one, that was, but Mabel–her scarlet lips pursed in concentration as she dashed back and forth between plates of food, preparing it all herself. For a wild moment, I thought about offering to help her. Then I thought better of it, and, a little uneasy for a reason I couldn’t explain, so I simply went back to my seat and waited for the meal Mabel had prepared.

I thought, after the weirdness of the kitchen scene and the way Mabel’s focused, frantic movements had unsettled me, that I would have lost my appetite. Instead, I ate every bite.

The last time I went to Pam’s Diner, I’d been dreaming of apple pie for a week straight. I wasn’t able to do my night walks due to midterms. Then, the stress of pulling all-nighters and studying day in and day out caught up to me, and I was in bed with stomach flu for a week. I have a few friends who always get sick around midterms, but I never had. I figured it was finally time for it to happen to me, nothing more. I could barely keep down any food at all, and my stomach felt like it was full of dull knives, sharpening themselves against each other. I dreamt about food.

So when I finally recovered enough to eat, I decided to reward myself with Pam’s. I figured I’d take it easy, since I was still recovering–but I could barely wait to sink my teeth into solid food again.

When I arrived at Pam’s it was around midnight– a little early for me, but that’s how eager I was. Mabel was the only one working. She was thinner than I’d ever seen her, but she smiled at me with her lipstick-stained mouth and set me up in my usual booth. There was no one else in the diner but me.

I ordered coffee and pie, my usual “light” fare. I didn’t know how well pie would sit with me, but the thought of that luscious, cinnamon-and-vanilla delight was too much to avoid. My stomach churned and growled, embarrassingly loud. I couldn’t remember ever being so hungry before in my life.

When Mabel brought out the pie, I barely restrained myself before digging in. As soon as she turned her back, I shovelled in a mouthful of that piping hot pie so quickly that I burned the roof of my mouth. But it was worth it. It was perfect, everything I’d been dreaming of in my feverish week of illness. It was safety in the night. It was familiar faces in a crowd of strangers. It was the warm, yellow glow of a liminal waypoint in the endless void of dark.

I was halfway through the pie when I bit down on something hard. It jarred me badly, the ache going all through my jaw and neck. I managed to swallow most of my bite and spit out the hardness. I tried to tell myself that it was just a bit of burnt ingredients, something normal, even when I already knew what I’d see.

It was a tooth. Small, maybe an incisor. Human. The roots were missing, but it was still undeniably a person’s tooth.

I felt sick. I stared at the thing, trying to tell myself that I was imagining things, that I had somehow created this awful scenario in my own mind. I stared at the thing in the palm of my hand, unmoving, not wanting to disturb the reality of the place. I didn’t even hear Mabel’s short heels clacking up to my table until she was right beside me.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Oh, dear.”

Like it was an unfortunate accident. Like it was a bit of burnt toast, and not a human tooth in the middle of my apple pie. Were there more? Should I excavate them out? I shuddered.

“So sorry about that,” Mabel said, and her voice seemed strange and muddled. For some reason, I didn’t want to look up at her face. “I’ll get that taken care of for you. Do you want a new piece?”

“No, that’s alright,” I said. I should have been screaming, probably, but that would have been rude. “I’m good.”

“I’ll take that, for you,” Mabel said, and plucked the tooth from my hand. I realised what it was about her voice that was so strange; it sounded wet, somehow. I shook with the effort not to look up at her, to see the mess I knew would be her mouth. “Sorry again, dearie. I’ll be right back with a top-up for that coffee.”

As soon as she walked away, I grabbed my coffee to wash the memory of the pie from my mouth. I was so frantic I knocked the ceramic against my teeth and cut my lip, combining the astringency of the dark brew with the metallic tang of my own blood. It was only after that it hit me that the teeth could be in anything. I poured the rest of the cup over my plate, but there was nothing but a small ribbon of blood.

The dull grinding in my gut that had plagued me for the last week woke again with a vengeance. I curled over myself and wondered if I was dying, if I would die there in a booth in Pam’s Diner, in the middle of the night. I wondered if anyone would ever find me, or if I would disappear with the morning like a ghost. It felt like anything could be possible.

I forced myself to sit up and call a rideshare. I didn’t want to walk home, in the dark and the silence. I staggered to the bathroom, hoping that, if nothing else, I could lock myself in for the eight to fifteen minutes it would take for my taxi to get there.

I locked the door and went to the sink to splash water on my face and see how badly I’d hurt my lip, and that’s when I saw it. As I lifted my lip to check the damage, there was a dark spot in my smile. A tooth, missing. An incisor. I touched the spot, unable to believe what I was seeing. It was simply…gone. Had I chipped off my own tooth, somehow? I couldn’t understand. It was just…gone.

Then the pain in my stomach overtook me again, and I doubled over on the floor. It felt like something was tearing loose from inside of my organs, like the knives were breaking free at last. It was the pain of the last week but worse, worse than it had ever been, and I couldn’t even crawl to the toilet before I vomited.

Blood spilled from my mouth and over the fake linoleum. I spat out a half dozen small, hard, perfectly intact teeth. When I felt inside my mouth with my tongue, all of my teeth were present, save for the one. I felt the ripping again and another half dozen teeth clattered to the floor: molars, eyeteeth, an array. I screamed, then. I screamed and couldn’t stop screaming, even as I felt my throat close up with rows of sharp and gnashing bone.

It’s funny, how people expect you to forget things like trauma. I remember everything that happened after that: Mabel knocking on the door, pleading with her wet, empty mouth for me to let her in; the sirens; the paramedics forcing down the door; the empty, spotless kitchen we passed through on the way out, with its dimly flickering fluorescent lights and the mason jars lined up beneath the industrial sink, full of teeth. I remember wondering if Maude’s were there, and Mabel’s. I wondered if anyone would pick up mine from the blood on the bathroom floor, wash them and put them in a jar of their own.

I remember the ambulance, and thinking that my parents would kill me for the expense, and that I still didn’t know if I would pass my midterms. And then, finally, someone gave me some kind of gas and I passed out.

It’s been three days, and the tests are inconclusive so far. I gave my statement to the police, but there’s not much they can do with phantom teeth. I guess that’s why they’ve called you in. I don’t know if you know what’s happening to me, or why.

The hospital is taking care of me alright, but I miss going on my walks, and the food is terrible. I’d do just about anything for a piece of apple pie.

Statement ends.

***

This was the first statement I tried to record myself, just to get a feel for the flow of it. It'd need a lot of editing to actually work on a podcast! But I'm pleased nonetheless

The Consuming AU can be found here

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

[phynoma]

As a countdown to Halloween, I'm sharing the original statements I wrote for the Consuming AU! (<<click for ao3 link) The statements function as horror shorts that work on their own

Statement 2: Succubus

CW: body horror, supernatural cannibalism, manipulation, compulsion, codependency, obsession

ARCHIVIST

(steadying breath) Statement of Rhia…? (pause for last name-- doesn't come) Of Rhia, a…being of the Hunger, on how they? (pause to verify pronouns-- got it) They became…as they are now. Recorded direct from subject, July 5th, 2017.

Statement begins.

[Static rises over the tape for a moment and then falls, trickling like sand back into a soft silence. There's no longer any background noise]

RHIA

Let's see. Oh goodness, it is hard to think back. I don't do it often, you know. Only on occasion, when it helps me ruminate over what I've become in my long devouring. Sometimes it's nice to remember the whole in order to appreciate the pieces–the wet, pulpy mass of what you've churned and mixed and blended into something new.

I was harder, once. Defined. I was my own person, a distinct being that longed to meld with others and could not. I don't remember details of that person, now. It's like…trying to recall the exact details of a single apple you've seen, one as opposed to another. I know it was an apple. I can, perhaps, tell you the colour or the kind. I might be able to tell you that it had a bruise, or a few sunspots, or that its stem was at a left angle instead of a right.

But maybe that was another apple I've seen. Maybe it's a composite of all the apples I've ever seen. It doesn't make the one I'm thinking of less of an apple.

I was a person, a single person, and I certainly had features that made me distinct from other people you might have seen, but in the end this is less important than what I've become, the variety of flavour I bring to the Hunger.

I am a mouth, a heart, an enveloping. I take the world into myself and meld with it, until the life of who I was and the life of who I consume is indistinguishable.

It's not an uncommon desire, this melding. A callback to our time in the womb, perhaps–when we are of a flesh with our progenitor, before our minds can comprehend the difference between us and them. It is a desire of the mind, to be more than what our bodies limit us to; it is a desire of the body, to be that expansive greatness which we know ourselves to be. Inseparable. Indistinguishable. Loved.

I believed myself very distinct, once. I made a game of it–separating myself from others. I was proud–and lonely. Proud of my loneliness, you might say–despite coming from a loving family and having plenty of friends, there was a hunger within me for something more. Something deep. All their love, all their affection, it was never enough. It spilled back out of me, regurgitated into something they could easily digest, and it was something, but it wasn't quite right.

I longed for someone who could accept me without translation. Who would be able to take me in my entirety, who could swallow me whole without crushing me into a better shape first. And I longed to be that embrace–thick and coiling and at last, at last, satisfied.

But I didn't really believe in my dream. As time went on, and I saw more of the jagged teeth of the world, a perfect embrace felt more and more impossible. I never thought to meet another who felt that constant ache the way I did. I never thought that one person could fill me up entirely.

That was before I met Violet Saccharine.

It's a strange name, isn't it? Perhaps it wasn't her real name. A stage name, an artist name. One that she took for herself, rather than the one she was given. I was fascinated by her. It was not only her name–she rarely accepted gifts of any kind. She needed no help, though she often gave it. She asked no favours. She was fiercely, undeniably, unapologetically independent.

And I fell in love with her.

It started almost at once. First we were in the basement of that dingy old restaurant that claimed to be a club, a place that could transform with the right lighting and the right alcohol into a mesmerising, limitless space of play and possibility–but when we spoke, the lights were up and dim, jaundiced yellow, and I could see the lines of Violet's makeup where she hadn't blended it all the way to her neck. Our fingernails were chipped colour, her eyes were the shade of fresh bruises, there were flecks of mascara on her cheeks. What did we talk about? Everything, I think.

A series of frequent meetings– almost-coincidental if you can call it coincidence when we ran with so many of the same troupes– theaters and fiber arts and lesbians and gays and sex workers and linguists and dog breeders and expats and Highland Games champions, all the same, all unique, all tied together with the threads that were us, that were the hunger for belonging, for being something small and manageable because no one could take us in our entirety.

And with those small meetings we found a consistency, and then we became inseparable. One of those pairs of people that become a single name, a single purpose. On the rare occasions we were not physically together, we still had an almost psychic bond. One of us could hear a joke and the other would know the punchline.

I would say we sacrificed, but we were so much in line, so much in tune, that we never had to. I could accept anything on Violet's behalf because she was of me, and she did the same. It frightened people. Sometimes it even frightened me–this intensity, this devotion, this closeness that had always seemed impossible outside of some holy person's metaphorical ramblings of oneness with the divine.

But this wasn't divinity. It was flesh. It was real. It was a person who I could hold in my arms, a person who held me back. Codependence, our friends warned nervously, jealously. As if such a thing was to be feared more than it was to be desired. I could not think of myself without thinking of her. I did not exist without her. I could not fear losing her–I knew that we would die together.

Then we both got jobs at Merlin's Brig, that same club where we had first met–and that's when everything began to go wrong.

There was a man there. I think his name was…Jack. Let's call him Jack. He knew Violet from some past, but I did not know him. I knew all Violet's friends, past and present. I knew her dreams and her fears and her mistakes and her desires. I knew her family. I knew her taste and her smell and every sound she could make and those she didn't know she made. I knew her blood and the way she bent to pick up the cherries that had rolled under the fridge and the way she sang.

I knew all these things, but I did not know Jack.

It was, of course, because he had never been any sort of important player in her life–simply a face she knew. But now, now he was a familiar face. I won't say that I was jealous. I simply expected what we had always shared–everything. And she…didn't.

The worst was that I didn't know it at first. I didn't know why the pain started again. I didn't know why I was suddenly hungry when I had been so full for so long. I didn't know that I had anything to fear, even though I did. I was afraid. I was very afraid. And the more afraid I became the more she pulled away, the more she went to him.

I never asked for anything more than what we had had. I never raised my voice–or anything worse than a voice. But she pulled away from my embraces. She stopped laughing at the jokes we shared. Her eyes became distant sometimes, and she would smile, and I would not know why she was smiling. This distance, this separation…if I had understood it, perhaps I would not have been so afraid.

And, when I discovered the cause, I wasn't afraid. It took me weeks. Weeks of torment, of inadequacy, of all those fears and loneliness building back up within me because perhaps I had ruined the perfect thing that we were, and I didn't know how to stop it. Weeks of seeing them talk, and laugh, and it was never much and it was never too much and yet it was not for me and I knew.

She was pulling away because I could not be her everything. But she was still mine.

I knew what to do. I liked Jack. There was nothing offensive about him. He was kind, and competent, and placid. He always needed help of some kind. He vaped and talked bad philosophy from a half-remembered degree he'd never finished. Most importantly, however, he was not me.

So I found him, one day after the performance was over and we were sweeping the streamers and confetti from the floor, and I absorbed everything from him that I could possibly need to know. I watched his habits, I took his turns of phrase, I interrogated him on his life and his wants and his desires and his needs, and I consumed them. As I did, I felt a weight within my gut. I felt my chest expand as my ribs pressed outward, taut against my skin. I spoke with him until I could almost feel him within me, a pulsing heartbeat of what-I-was-not.

And when we had finished speaking, it was late, far too late, and I had to hurry home. I was full of secrets. I needed to tell Violet at once. It never occurred to me not to tell her. We shared in everything. How could she not know?

But when I reached our apartment she was asleep, and I, bloated from the meal of experiences, fell asleep beside her. And in the morning, Violet was not beside me.

I found her in the kitchen, with her phone in front of her and a single cup of tea prepared, as usual, for us both. Her eyes were the colour of bruised plums. She looked tired, and she looked afraid.

What had I done to Jack, she asked.

I told her we had spoken the night before, that I had gotten to know him. I told her that I knew her better now–that I knew why she had needed him.

Jack was her friend, she said. Not mine. Hers.

He wouldn't stop talking about you, she said. He texted, last night. He texted thirty-seven times. He left voicemails. It had sounded like he'd been drinking.

He'd never felt so appreciated by someone, he'd said. Never felt so loved. So heard. So seen. He wanted to see me again.

He talked about you, Violet told me. It was all about you.

I told her that he meant nothing to me, that all Jack was to me was a connection to her. She shook her head.

He had been her friend, she said again, emphasising. She took a sip from the cup of tea, and then she stared at it. I could see the questions in her eyes. I knew her so well, you see. I knew when she began asking herself why she had only made one cup, instead of two. Why we always sat folded together onto one couch, one chair, one bed. Why she was never only herself.

I felt a weight in my chest, a hollowness in my stomach. That hunger that had plagued me all my life grew, and grew, and grew, as Violet pulled away. For one desperate moment, I thought that I should have become more of Jack–that if I had left no trace of him, this would not have happened.

But that wasn't true. There would be another Jack. There would always be another, because the dream wasn't true–the hunger would always win. It would always win, and I could not be everything. I could not guarantee that I would not lose her. I could not guarantee that our lives, our deaths, would be as one.

She told me she loved me. She told me I was her world. She told me she wanted to make things work, that I was too important to her to lose. That even if we had different friends, different paths, that it would not matter to the love we had shared with each other.

And all I could think was that she was mine, she was mine, and I was so much hers that I could never let her go.

I wanted her to be within me, kept safe. I needed it. The fear of losing her, of being a part, grew great and hollow and bloated within me until I could contain it no longer.

I pressed Violet to my body, tight, so tight that she could barely embrace me back. She wheezed. She told me to let her go, that that was enough. Her words hurt, but not as much as losing her would hurt. I told her I could keep her safe.

The hollow place grew. My ribs expanded, pushed against the inside of my skin until each one was outlined in my flesh. And then, they burst through my skin one by one, pale and reaching.

I opened like a great Venus flytrap, the jaws of my chest torn wide. Violet was still against me. I knew what to do. How to keep her. How we could become so much one that we could never be separated again, not in any way that mattered.

She was pulled into me, chest-first. Her head and shoulders were forced back with a crunch as I swallowed her into the protective cavity of my chest. She did not scream. She was far past screaming, even before her neck snapped.

And when my ribs had closed back over her and my skin reformed, I felt her shift inside me like a foetus. I felt her die, and I infused her with my own blood, my strength. I kept her life within me. And I knew what it was like to be a god.

I knew then, that Violet had only ever been my pilgrim. She had begun to fear my immensity. She was a world, my world, but a god cannot be contained by a world. So I curled myself around her, instead, and I devoured her.

We sustained each other for many months. Sometimes, I would run my hand over the remaining bulge in my abdomen and I could almost swear I could hear her begging me to let her go. But of course I couldn't. We were one. I could never lose her. She was my first pilgrim, the first devotee to a shrine of hunger and need and a fear of loss that I kept deep within myself.

I took others, after her. Of course I did. A god, even a loving one, must be sustained. None were as satisfactory as Violet. A few died before I could suspend their life, and I was forced to spit them back out from the shelter of my flesh. A few were almost as long-lived as she had been. At first I thought that length of time knowing them made the communion better, but that wasn't always true. I never have figured out what it is that makes one joining rapturous and another dull and instantly fatal to my pilgrims. But they still come to me. They come to know me. And I know them, so, so deeply.

But that is my story. I have sheltered many within me. I will shelter more. We will sustain each other.

ARCHIVIST

And…Rhia? The name.

RHIA

One of theirs, maybe. Or perhaps it has always been mine. Hard to tell, anymore.

ARCHIVIST

And these victims, your…pilgrims. Lovers. Do you always kill them?

RHIA

I do as much as I can not to kill them. But yes, they always…die. Eventually. But not before they are so much a part of me that they can never truly disappear. You are what you eat, and all.

ARCHIVIST

Statement…statement ends.

[Jon exhales]

RHIA

You seem disappointed, Jon.

ARCHIVIST

I was hoping…hoping for something a little less monstrous, to be honest.

RHIA

Is loving so monstrous?

ARCHIVIST

The way you do it? Yes.

***

The rest can be read on ao3! It was hard to find a cut-off for this one. Fun facts, this was the statement/fear that launched the whole fic! It's one of my favorites

Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4