#the further

[esqueletosgays]

INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR (2023)

Director: Patrick Wilson Cinematography: Autumn Eakin

[horrorfilmflags]

Ombragender: A gender that feels like standing alone in a city at night after a storm, dropping a still-burning cigarette and crushing it under the heel of your combat boot. It is inherently anti-establishment, and feels spiteful against authority. This gender can also feel forlorn or somber. 

Image desc under the cut!

The flag for ombragender, a seven striped flag. The first stripe is desaturated grey-red, the second is a darker desaturated grey-red, the third is an almost black brown, the fourth and middle stripe is black, the fifth is prussian blue, the sixth is a desaturated dark teal, the seventh is a lighter dark teal. Underneath it is three profile pictures using the flag. The rightmost one depicts Guzma from the Pokemon franchise. Guzma is depicted in black and white, with white hair in an undercut, black sunglasses, and a black hoodie. He is smirking. The middle profile picture is of Tyler Durden from Fight Club. He is a shirtless man with short, messed up brown hair, and he has a cigarette in his mouth. The leftmost pfp is of Ruv from Friday Night Funkin: Mid Fight Masses. He is a stickperson with white skin, two grey stripes on his face, and a ribbon over his left eye. He is wearing a grey jacket with a fur-lined hood and a grey ushanka. 

[tequilahag]

The color red in 

Insidious (2010) and Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) dir. James Wan

[acciosilver]

[Halloween Series; Week 3: Places of Horror] [The Further from Insidious (2010); directed by James Wan]

Welcome to Week 3: Places of Horror! This category is returning for a second go, and we’ll explore more of the locales that gave us nightmares and made us think twice about where we’re standing and where we’re going. I invite you to travel through all of these places with me.

First in our journey is The Further from the world of Insidious. A land of the dead, lost between our world and theirs, the residents of The Further will attempt to regain their lives by any means necessary, even if it means stealing the life of someone who astral projects as they sleep. Unsettling, echoing, dark, and terrifying, The Further is atmosphere at its finest, and it made all of us wary of going anywhere in our sleep, lest we come back to an occupied body.

[thevoilinauttheory]

The Further by The Colourist

“Dreams are getting truly oh They're never gonna be revoked From the center of what's factual The room fills up with something cold Oh tell me what I'm lost in, lost in, lost in Never kind of warning (look around there's something more) Tell me what I'm lost in, lost in, lost in Never felt a feeling (look around there's something more)”

( For @astralyehga‘s X'hara! I was trying to find a song that accurately portrayed what kind of emotions X’hara might have felt, moving to Ishgard of all places - how the people might have treated her; unfortunately, all the songs I found just felt... well, too heavy? Too much rock, too much metal - I didn’t quite feel that with X’hara, it just seemed too over the top. I heard this song pop up on my Pandora radio while I played Terraria with my sister and went “that’s the one, that’s the song I’ve been looking for”! Hopefully you enjoy it as much as I did! Thank you so much for your patience and your descriptions of your characters! I can’t wait to see more of them in the future! )

[persephones-fruit]

It's not the house that's haunted. It's your son.

Insidious

[thegoblinbee]

a numbers game

I’m sitting on his lap on his couch – boxy and slate gray, modern, too big – when he asks me how many men I’ve slept with. I flinch, look away, try to change the subject but he’s not going for it.

“Come on, I’ll tell you my number if you tell me yours,” he says, conspiratorial, grinning.

“Yeah, but that’s the thing. I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Jesus, how many men have you slept with anyway, why’s it such a big deal?”

“Because I don’t fucking know!” I snap. “I’m such a goddamn whore that I don’t even know okay, are you happy?”

He’s momentarily struck silent as I climb off of him, coming to rest a few feet away, folding my leg up between us as I turn wearily to face him.

“I don’t buy it,” he says finally. “It can’t possibly have been that many.”

“That’s the thing, it’s not. It’s not about how many. I was a disaster, I was wasted, I was barely even present. I don’t know, I can’t piece it together. It’s all just a blur. The best I’ve ever been able to do is guess.”

“Go ahead then, guess.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t fucking want to. Just drop it.”

He moves closer, his thigh brushing against my shin as he takes my hand in his, kisses the back of it.

“I just want to know you,” he murmurs, turning it over to kiss the palm.

“Bullshit. You’re rubbernecking, you’re digging for dirt.”

“I’m not,” he says, tugging at me, trying to cajole me back onto his lap but I won’t budge. “It matters to me. Where you’ve been, what’s happened to you. I won’t judge you, or think less of you. I swear to you, I won’t.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I sigh, pulling my hand away. “Sensitive Concerned Guy stopped working on me years ago, sorry to say. Just drop it.”

“Why do you get so angry with me when I try to show you I care about you, huh? Why do you always think I’m trying to work you over? I’ve never given you any reason to and you know it.”

“Everyone works everyone over. Constantly.”

“Not me. Not now, here, with you,” he says, his sincerity disarming me such that my hand hangs limply in his when he takes hold of it again. He starts playing with my fingers, wiggling them, working their joints like puppetry.

My eyes gloss over as I struggle not to cry, hating him for the way he keeps wearing down my defenses in the gentlest of ways, makes me think of an archaeologist with his brush, delicately dusting the crevices of ancient bone that he might know its true shape, that it might be exposed without bearing the marks of his excavation.

“What did they do to you, huh? What’s got you so scared?” he asks softly as tears spill over to trickle down my cheeks, tickling me there.

I shake my head no, pull my hand away, don’t say anything.

“I don’t get you, I really don’t. I want to, but I don’t. You’ll tell your deepest secrets and fears and desires to a sea of total strangers, yet you’re scared to tell me how many men you’ve slept with? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nothing about me makes sense, it never has.”

He reaches out, his hand falling on the crown of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair as he strokes it, pushing it back over my shoulder to expose my neck when he’s done. He traces the line of my jaw, lays his fingertips on my lips, teasing the space between them.

“You know,” he starts, letting his hand fall to take hold of mine again, “your love of hyperbole serves you well when you write, but it damages you outside of it. You see everything in absolutes, everything is polar, everything is ‘never’ or ‘always’ and it’s not accurate, not at all. You’re not broken and you’re not some unknowable, nonsensical oddity. You’re just… traumatized, and terrified, and way too fucking hard on yourself.”

“Yeah, well,” I sigh, staring at his wide, rough fingers plying mine, the mere sight of them sending a thrill through me, makes me long to rewind, to intuit this turn before he took it, stuffing the words back down his throat with the skilled undulations of my tongue in his mouth.

“All I want is to know you better. That’s it, that’s all, I swear to you. So much of what I know about you comes from things you say to everyone, anyone, total strangers. I don’t just want to know you like that, I want to know you better than that. I want to know you differently than that.”

“You know I’m just gonna turn around and write about this too, so what’s the difference?”

“That’s a total strawman and you know it. I don’t care if you write about this. Knock yourself out. It has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”

I stand up on my knees and straddle him swiftly, spreading my legs wide, pressing my crotch into his. I try to kiss him but he resists, says, “I can understand why this would be your next gambit, but it’s not happening. If you’re not gonna talk to me, then, well… I can’t do anything about that. But this? This is not gonna work.”

I groan in frustration, climb back off of him, though he tries to hold onto me, to submerge me beneath his crushing sincerity.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I say, standing and grabbing my bag, upending it angrily at my feet when I can’t find my keys quickly enough, sending a flurry of notebooks, pens, lighters, lipsticks, God knows what else clattering to the carpet.

I crouch down, paw my keys from the pile, start to hastily shove my shit back in my bag. He stands over me, his shadow casting me into a deeper darkness in this dimly lit room, says, “You don’t have to leave, for Christ’s sake. It’s fine, I’ll let it go. Stay.”

I fight with a stubborn pair of earbuds tangled with tissues, yanking them aggressively from the strap of my bag, ignoring him.

“Please. Don’t run away.”

And the truth is, I want more than anything to stay, want more than anything to be seen in the clear, true way he says he wants to see me, but I’m too scared to trust it, too raw to bear the exposure. Running is easy. Hurts, sure, but it’s easy, it’s something I know how to do, seems the safer pain to endure.

So I stand up, run my hands roughly through my hair and give him an impassive glance, all vulnerability neatly stashed away behind my eyes as I cross my arms protectively. I look down at my breasts, cleavage rising up, spilling sumptuous over the shelf I’ve made beneath them. I make a subtle adjustment so they jiggle a little, give him a look like, ‘Last chance,’ but he doesn’t go for it, chooses instead to wrap me up in a hug, sighing into my hair.

“You make me so sad sometimes,” he murmurs into my ear.

I keep my arms folded up in between us, sigh my own beleaguered sigh, only allowing myself to fall into this feeling of safety and sweetness for a moment before pulling away.

I sniff back tears as I turn, throw a barely-audible, “I’ll see ya” over my shoulder without looking at him, then disappear into the cold, lonesome night.