tws and tags: references to drowning and self sacrifice, but it's chiller than normal (?), my beloved II mentioned
a/n: chapter is not short enough to be an apology butttt i have ideas for drabbles and mini clips and stuff - girl must learn to not abandon her own page in times of stress - enjoy xxx
He'd never considered drowning until recently. How it would feel to have the water fill his lungs. Halt his breath from the inside. The panic of losing the fight but finally succumbing to it. To feel it fill him so completely to bursting, to be so full of something that it kills you. But something about the dim light of the studio left him alone with his thoughts.
One solitary down light cast itself over the room bathing it in a low, soft glow over a table strewn with scrawled papers and a midi keyboard. The recording booth was dark beside him as he sat in the plush director chair. There was a bookshelf behind him, mostly decorative, it had autobiographies of singers, a few knickknacks and titbits of some corporate choosing. The room was a rental suite from the company.
This idea of drowning hadn't come out of nowhere. He reasoned that it had probably come in tandem with his fascination with Her. That slowly the idea of sacrifice had begun to rattle around his brain. Showing itself at night when he felt particularly heroic. Not that he was likely to do anything rash - the fading marks on his forearms were proof that he'd overcome that. Or at the very least, that he was able to get through it.
But it was poetic in a way - to be so completely overwhelmed by someone or something that your body simply could not handle it. Fighting so hard against something inevitable only to succumb to it in the end. Perhaps love was a bit like drowning. Being so full of God you couldn't contain Her.
Or to give himself up to a higher power, to swear his fealty with more than words, more than song. With devotional acts so profound he would be exalted by her.
He was still on a high from Her praise. She had almost needed him. He thought about the way their blood mingled, the red and black caressing each other and they swam down Her delicate wrist. It had been so erotic. Time had slowed, the drip against the cloth so rhythmic it felt like music. His hand reached out to brush a piece of paper but as he stretched his palm, he stretched the sutures and winced.
The scar that the blade had left on his hand had been nasty, but it had healed. II attempted stitches. Sutures in his palms that had hurt like hell but he grinned through it, dizzy off the adrenaline of the encounter.
"Do you actually see Him?" II had asked quietly. The dimness of the apartment had cloaked them in a moment together. II had been aware of the ways Vessel had changed but had never himself witnessed it. To him it had been dreams and whispers, sometimes shadows, but he'd never seen anyone the way Vessel claimed to. He couldn't quite believe that it would show Itself to anyone. Though, he was not surprised it had been Vessel, no one had quite pushed themselves through devotion as he had.
"Sometimes." His voice had been a whisper when it came out of him, a touch wobbly as if he was afraid his breath would shatter his internal peace. Peace. He recognised that for once, he was at peace. His brain wasn't running a hundred miles a minute. He wasn't worrying about if he was good enough, if he was going to reach her impossible standard, if anyone on the street might recognise him. He was truly serene. Even the prick of the needle against his palm had feel relaxing in it's consistency.
But now he was alone in the studio, humming to himself as he flipped through sheets of paper, trying to piece together scraps of lyrics. The darkness outside keeping everything inside. All the emotions and words he had trouble sifting through floated about the room and settled around him. A weighted blanket to keep him tethered. Feeling anything to be proof of life..
The prose he so deftly crafts often come off more as sermon than as song. A call to action in worship. It seemed to work. The band had grown and expanded in a way he hadn't ever expected, and though many were only fascinated by the concept they had been exposed to Her and that was enough to start. The message could spread.
He thinks of Her at her prettiest. When her skin is dusted pink and her eyes are wide and rimmed with dark pencil. Her lashes are long and striking and the pink nails that scratch and scrape at him. The idea of Her washes over him in waves and he is more than content to let it. It's the first time in a long time that the idea of her doesn't strike fear within him. That he's able to sit comfortably and contentedly with the thought of Her. Perhaps he's found the peace he needs.
He knows that it won't last. It never does and that the sacred space he's built up in his head is only going to crash down upon him. She doesn't care for him truly. She cannot even bare her own existence to him - human, Godly or otherwise. She does not care for his.
Oh but the false affection she shows anyway must count for something. She must relish in that power She wields over him.
He scratches more words onto the page, still humming to himself. Figuring out the melodies and crisscrossing sections of music and verse that will piece together. It's the most therapeutic form of creativity to him. The puzzle pieces and layering of word and melody and drums and sounds that all create one cohesive piece of story.
II was in the studio earlier, creating his drum patterns. He had a more methodical approach to his offerings. He helped in many ways, with lyrics and input, he was as much of a creative part of the process of building the offerings as Vessel was - II just didn't seem to get lost in it. He always seemed to tread water.
The creation of the offerings was chipping away at him - he could feel it. The constant press to create, the write, to perform, to pray, to beg. It was pulling something from him, but he couldn't stop. He couldn't find it in himself to put the pen down, to find any other outlet. So, till deep into the earliest hours he finds himself still tinkering, still working, still creating.
In the window, on the other side of the pane, stood three figures, masked and bound by chain as they watch through the glass, into the warmth of the glow- eyes trained on him in the room. Watching. Waiting. Silent.
a/n: heyyy... how y'all doing... or wtv that gif is- hope you lovelies are well, spring has sprung and i have only a couple months left of my year abroad before i go home and have a little more time on my hands for fic writing. i get so nervy at my lack of updates that i end up abandoning tumblr and i need to like stop doing that so my lovely moots stop thinking i've fallen off the face of the planet haha - as always if you've read this chapter or all or any at all - tysm! it means tons that people follow along what with me having the worlds worst upload schedule... i'm going to try and backlog some chapters, i did that for the first six or so and it worked great! then i just lost the plot a bit..
Vessel x Sleep but it's more of an exploratory piece than it is outright fanfic.
words: 2890
tws: graphic depictions of violence, blasphemy-ish, manipulation, description of gun, minor character death, kidnapping, sleep is terrible, and so is vessel.
a/n: so i wrote this on what i can only describe as a three day writing bender, and it's the first i've written properly in a long time, so it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's something. I'm planning on writing more for this, a second part, maybe a third, sort of snippets of Vessel and Sleep's relationship as opposed to a whole linear story, part two will add on, but i haven't planned for anything more to. it's all supposed to be hella vague and unsettling because it's sleep token.
i think this is best read while listening to the instrumental version of nazareth, but the reg ver works fsfs. English is my first language, i just know 2 others and am crap at grammar in all of them x
all the weird punctuation is intentional though, it's supposed to sort of be read aloud or at least have the punctuation be followed when read. yeah anyways, i'm yapping x
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The deer is in the garden again. It’s staring right at him. It’s eyes big and brown and shining and he knows it’s her. It’s always her. Sometimes it comes as the deer, big brown eyes with its impossible stillness. He knows it’s her when the deer doesn’t run at the sounds of the city around it. It just stares, watching and waiting for him to notice it.
Sometimes it comes to him in his sleep, it did the first time. She comes in dreams less now, but sometimes it graces him with its presence, whispered praise, stroking his battered ego, reminding him of his place to follow her. Of his duty to worship her.
Sometimes it comes a woman, the most enticing woman he’s ever seen, her presence, when she makes herself known, is intoxicating, he knows she does it on purposes, changes her chemistry, her very biology to appeal to him, to keep him on the tightest leash, and unfortunately, it works.
Regardless of which form it shows itself in, it always comes. It always comes. He’s elated to see the animal outside the window, he’s been so lonely now, he can’t remember the last time he saw it, or any trace of her for that matter… probably weeks ago. She comes and she goes as she chooses, and he’s a slave to her whims.
He doesn’t bother to open the door, she knows how to get in, and he knows he can’t be too eager; she gets offended when he treats her too much like a human. If he doesn’t allow it the space to be itself.
The living room is dark as he slumps into the chair, waiting for her. The minutes tick by, the sound of the clock in the corner of the room lulls him into something of a trance.
“I know how much you’ve missed me,” The voice in his ear is honey, its caramel, its saccharine and he slumps even further into the seat at the sound of her voice, letting her take over. He wants to focus on her voice so much that it bounces around his brain. So that he’ll never forget the sound when she leaves.
He wants it to control him, to make him forget every sore thing that brought him to her feet in the first place. All the worlds woes that beat him to where he is now.
“I had some things to take care of,” at her words, he finds himself nodding, telling her it’s alright, that he doesn’t mind, that she’s here now. Her rich laughter echoes off the crevices of his brain, drowning out any doubts he had about her return.
“You’ve been looking for a new task, haven’t you? A new way to prove yourself. I’ve heard your whispered prayers for me.”
“Please,” his voice comes out before he can stop it, a low, broken whisper. He’s desperate to prove himself to her, to get her to stick around longer than the few hours a night she gives him every once in a while. “I’ve prayed to you so many times. I’ll do anything you ask, you know I will.”
“I know you will.” Her voice is closer now. He holds his breath. She’s in the room. He can feel her; he can almost make out her shadow in the corner. He has to hold back a desperate whine, shove it down his throat until he chokes on the humiliation of aching for her presence, for her touch. How long had it been since she’d touched him? Longer than the last time since he’d seen her. He wished she would touch him in some way, any way but he understands the delicate position he’s in, one wrong move, and she’s gone, until he doesn’t know when.
She moves, slowly, steadily, around the room, her movements are delicate and practiced, the long cloak over her makes it seem like she’s floating, and as far as he knows, she might be. She’s stalking him now, sizing him up, weighing him up, trying to decide if whatever she’s about to say is worth being said to him. He knows this, but he’s a slave to her, a loyal worshipper, he’s a fly trapped in her web, and so, he doesn’t move.
“So, I have a task for you,” her voice is so casual as if the next words out of her mouth won’t be the worst trial he’s faced to prove himself. “You’re angry, I know you are. I can smell your rage, it comes off you in waves, especially when I leave.” She begins to pace the room again. It’s one of her tactics, he can’t focus when he follows her, his eyes so intent on finding her in the darkness that it swallows his other thoughts.
“You think I owe you something. I do not.” There’s a pause, to let the words sink in.
“Do you wish to prove yourself? Do you truly wish to be freed from this? To give up everything to follow me?”
He nods almost too frantically. Too eager, but she doesn’t say anything.
“You don’t want to be alone,” she pulls his deepest insecurity from him, tosses it into the room as if it were trivial. “If you do this for me, I’ll make sure you’re never alone, I’ll make sure you know I’m there, that I’m always there.”
His heart leaps into his throat. It’s lodged in his windpipe. He can’t breathe. “Always?” he whispers into the room. She laughs again, this time, it’s cruel, jagged and harsh, she’s laughing at him. The moonlight glints off a tooth. Proof that she’s here, that she can be tangible when she chooses. That fact melts any hurt left from her laugh.
“Yes, and I’ll make sure there’s always someone else there, for when I’m not able to be around. To be there in my stead.”
“You haven’t told me the task yet,” he reminds her, he knows it’s bold, to talk back to her, but she chooses to ignore his disobedience.
There’s a thunk as something heavy hits the floor, she kicks it and it spins across the floor towards him.
There, at his feet, the metal glinting in the moonlight, is a gun. A pistol. He picks it up, fingers trembling, and he looks up at her, trying to look for her face, for something within her. He can’t find it. He makes a twisted noise, somewhere between fear and intrigue. Perhaps wishing he’d just shut his mouth.
She retreats into her corner again, looking over him in the armchair, testing him to say no, to tell her he won’t do it. But he doesn’t. Instead, he picks it up, his grip on the barrel tightens as he nods, waiting for her to continue. Her head cocks to the side, not impressed but pleased that he’s doing as she’s asking.
“You used to have someone. She was close to you. But as mortal lovers tend to, she got in the way of us, didn’t she? She thought you were sick. But you’re not sick, are you?” Her voice makes his head spin, he’s hypnotised by the way she puts the words together, she almost sounds like she cares about him. He shakes his head in response.
“Prove to me you’re not sick, prove to me that you have what it takes, prove how much you love me,” the word drips off her tongue like a threat, it’s a trap that she’s caught him in. Love.
He was so lonely when she came to him first. He’d been left so many times before. One night, deep in his dreams, a whispered voice he couldn’t ignore, told him it would reward him with all his desires if he followed it. If he worshipped it. Over and over and over again, the voice would come to him in his dreams, whispering praise and promise to him that he couldn’t ignore. He tried sleeping more in the day, to see if the voice would come, but it didn’t, only at night. He started to hear it when he was awake too, the same voice, late at night, promising him all the attention he wanted. He’d never be alone again. Follow me. Love me. Worship me. Follow me. Love me. Worship me.
He couldn’t pronounce its name, a tongue ancient and foreign to his. It told him Sleep would do. That it’s real name would wear away at his mortal tongue like sandpaper. So, he called it Sleep, befitting for how he met it.
And worship her he did. He did anything to hear that voice again, for three weeks he did everything, put apples on his mantelpiece, said words of praise, he even tried to write letters addressed to no one. Anything that he imagined would be well received by a god.
And then one day, she showed up at the bar by his flat, he knew it was her, she was sitting alone in the corner, her finger slowly but surely tracing the rim of her glass. When he walked in, she disappeared. It was then he knew that whatever he was doing was working. So, he kept doing it, kept worshipping, kept leaving gifts and writing letters and praying.
His grip on the pistol tightened again, pulling him back to the room, but when he looked up, she was gone. He swore, throwing the gun across the room. It hit the wall with a thump before clattering to the ground. She was right. He was angry. So angry. She played with him, toyed with him, and the worst part is that he knew she would sink her teeth into him regardless. That despite what he did for her, one day, she’d grow tired of him. His resolve shattered as he pulled on his jacket and trudged towards the door. If she thought he was weak. He’d show her. He’d show her the monster she’d pulled from him. He’d show her what this rage could do.
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The tiles of the public bathroom are dirty and decaying, the once pristine white surface, is now aged. Cracked and yellowed, fading, the mould climbing across the cracks like ivy, weaving its way across the gout like an infection. The metal tap is white with limescale and the smell of disinfectant masking shit stinks out the whole bathroom.
It’s almost four in the morning when he hauls the girl in. It was a real job to get her here. He knew where she lived, given he’d lived there for two years before they broke up but hauling her down the stairs to the public toilet across the road was the hard part. Maybe his ex was right, he could have used the gym.
He leaves her lying unconscious on the floor and locks the door to the bathrooms, shutting them in and the outside world away. He looks over her, taking her in, remembering her. She had been, unlike Sleep, nice to him. She’d treated him well for the most part. She was as pretty as he remembered, despite the couple of years it had been.
“Load the gun,” She isn’t here, but her voice is clear in his ear, he finds himself obeying, opening the barrel and putting all six hollow point bullets into the chamber. He tapes her mouth and tapes her feet and ankles together.
“Take her clothes off,” The voice resounds of the tiles. He looks up and around, finding her still not there. He doesn’t ever know why she asks the things that she does, but, despite being in the dark, he follows her commands. Reminding himself why he’s here. If he doesn’t want to justify it by means of religion, he could use any of the other rewards she promises. Fame, wealth, love,
He cuts at the fabric of his past lovers clothing, peeling the layers back and revealing her body. He stills. Memory clinging to the nights they shared, heavy breathing, skin against skin, the skin his fingers remember, her fingers that touched his skin in the same way. He knows this is wrong. It’s all so wrong. It’s worse to compare the girl on the floor to the being he knows is bigger than both of them. Yet he does, if only to try desperately once again to justify the position he’s found himself in.
“Let’s fuck her up.” Let’s… Let us. As if she is doing any of the dirty work, as if she isn’t only commanding him, his body a vessel for her will.
“Put her in her place for ever thinking such things about you, you were never sick, no, your eyes were open, wide open to the truth, it was she who was blind. Wake her up.”
He does, he shakes her awake, splashing her face with water from the dirty sink till she comes to. His past lover’s eyes widen, she tried to scream but her mouth is bound by tape, she tries to run, to scramble back, but she’s bound. The thick duct tape sticky and burning against her wrists as she struggles.
He watches her, like a scientist watches new bacteria through a microscope. He watches her with new interest, like he’s seeing her differently. He’s so aware of her mortality, he’s so aware of her life in his hands. She shouts through the tape; it’s muffled and incoherent. He traces the gun along her skin. She starts to cry, fat tears falling down her cheeks, eyes wide and fearful as she shrieks through the tape. She looks at him, her eyes big and glassy, like she doesn’t recognise him.
“I have to do this,” it’s the calmest he’s been all evening. Sleep is whispering praise and promise in his ears and it’s the only thing keeping him from slipping away.
“It’s all her fault, no one will miss her,” Sleep whispers. He nods, she’s right. It is her fault. He thinks of all the times she nitpicked him, all the times she looked at him funny, all the times she brushed Sleep off a figment of his imagination. But they’re here now, she can’t deny Sleep now, without Sleep this wouldn’t have happened, without Sleep, he wouldn’t have had the power to do this. He whacks the gun against her, the weight of the metal causing her body to shake, her exposed flesh ripples in it’s wake.
She cries out. He does it again, watching the impact. He does it again and again, watching the bruises bloom across her skin. He feels it, the anger that Sleep talked about. He feels it rise up inside him with each whack of the metal against skin. Each bruise that flowers.
Sleep stands in the corner, a grin across her features, she watches his wrath build and manifest like the crescendo of an orchestral arrangement, she doesn’t have to say she knew, because he knows too. She knows him better than he knows himself. She knows just what to say to unravel him, to pick him apart and leave him waiting and panting and angry. She knows how to whip him up into that animalistic frenzy he finds himself in.
Each whispered command in his ear, he gets angrier and angrier, the wrath welling up and up as he hits harder and harder and her cries get louder and louder, he can’t stop it, it, the butt of the gun coming down hard against any free bit of skin he can find. The repetitiveness of the movement is almost soothing, despite the wailing in the room. His movements get more rapid, more frenzied, faster and faster and faster.
Until all at once, there’s a loud bang.
He shot her. The hollow point bullet cut through her stomach.
And for a moment, a lovely moment, everything is quiet, the gunshot rings in his ears, the blood seeps from her wound, it pools below them, staining his clothes and his hands as he dips his fingers in it. Feeling it, tasting it, smelling it. And in an instant, he’s pulled back to reality.
There’s a dead body below him in a public bathroom. He fired a gun. He beat her with that same gun. Blood is pooling out of her; her eyes are wide and blank and vacant. Her body is covered in bruises, the side of her head is bleeding from a nasty gash, presumably made in his rage. She’s dead. He can feel the anger dissipate, and in its wake. Panic. It rises like a hand around his throat, curling around his neck and choking him until he can’t breathe. He presses his hands to the wound, doing nothing but staining them with more blood.
He looks around for the voice, staring at the ceiling, trying to look through it, for Sleep to guide him.
“You’ve proven yourself,” is all it says. He’s caught between every emotion. Elation, panic, leftover anger, exhaustion. He doesn’t know what to do or how to feel. So, he does what he knows best. He picks up the gun, and he runs.
He runs as far and as fast as he can. Down streets and alleyways, past cars and hurtling into the woods nearby. He doesn’t stop running until daylight, and even then, he doesn’t stop running.
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a/n: if you read this, thank you!! i hope you to some degree enjoyed this, let me know if you'd be interested in more to this (i'd probably post regardless but still, it's nice to get feedback). overall this is messy but i hope as i sort of get back into writing, it all straightens itself out again.
tws/tags: emotional abuse, eldritch-y, body horror, transformation
a/n: shorter chapter this week! i've been uber busy with work, this is my first go of writing a proper like monster transformation-y scene so i hope the vibe comes across. next week is longer and a bit of a break (minutely) for vessel. as always, i hope you enjoy!
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He finds himself in the church again. It’s been a week since the night they shared on the church floor and this time the building is cleaner. Someone has since scrubbed off the graffiti and cut back the tree roots some, so he can get through the door without much trouble. The paint is still peeling, the walls are still caving in, and the stained glass is still broken and faded, but it’s not quite as dilapidated anymore.
The door is open and inviting and he knows that she’ll be here.
He’s wearing the cloak and the mask. The tips of his fingers are stained black; the shade covers his nails and creeps down towards his palms like veins. He doesn’t know how it got there. He doesn’t know how he got here. It’s been a week since he’s seen her, the longing has built up inside him. He still prays at night; he falls asleep with hope in his chest, a pit in his stomach and her name on his lips. And when he sees the back of her head now, in the church, he wants to fall to his knees and worship her till she can’t ignore him anymore. Sing gospel until she has to cover her ears.
The less you have something, the more you crave it. And she is well aware of this. Suspending her presence over him like a lure. And he is more than willing to take the bait. Dragging himself towards any shred of her because it may well be his last. He hasn’t seen the deer much. He’s caught glimpses through the window, still impossibly still, and it doesn’t run at the city sounds. But it scampers when he spots it. He sits at his windows when he’s free, hoping, if for only a moment, he can spot her, for any confirmation that she hasn’t completely left him alone.
She’s sat at the front pew, facing towards the altar. And he wants to fall to his knees. He wants nothing more than to crawl up her leg and rest his head in her lap. To have her eyes on him. Her fingers in his hair. But they aren’t in his hair, and she isn’t looking at him. She’s looking up above him.
He turns to where her eyes are tracked. There’s a new mask in place of the old one. The gap that’s cut at the mouth is bigger, the mandibles more pronounced, more animalic, it’s adorned with red details, curling around the jaw and jutting out, reaching out. It’s glittering in the low moonlight. He wants it. He wants to pull it off the wall and wear it, to parade around in her image. Her likeness. To be touched by her hand and to be changed by it. He already has been. He hasn’t been the same since that night in the bathroom with the gun. Even less so since that night a week ago. He’s hardly been able to stop thinking about her fingers against his skin and her lips and teeth on his body. He gave a piece of himself to her that night.
Sex is the only form of devotion where worshipper and worshipped are, for a brief moment on the same level. For the smallest moments where he can indulge in her, she allows herself to be his equal in a physical sense. She is trusting that he can bring her pleasure. And the feeling of pride that spreads through his veins each time he does is unmatched. He’s more tied up in her now than ever. Knowing she’s the only one that shares his secrets. About the gun, about their relationship and about who he is, underneath the outfit he wears on stage.
He still wakes up and goes to work every day, booking gigs and writing songs, but they’re all about her now. He wrote about those nights too. He poured everything into them. He has a drummer now. A man he’s known for a long time.
He remembers his friend’s tentative confession of dreams about a raging storm cloud, offering him wealth and fame for his talents, it told him its name and said a man close to him would know more. At the time, the drummer had brushed it off as only a dream, but when he’d seen the scribbled symbols in the singer’s notebook, he knew this was the right person to confide in. They knew together that they had something. A relationship each with this ancient form that no one could compare to. That they had to offer it music, sing its praise. Have the world sing its praise. Then maybe she’d be pleased with him.
“I cannot be what you want.” Her voice behind him is quiet and soft. Vulnerable. It halts his train of thought and pulls him back to the sanctuary and out of his head. He turns to face her, terrified for her to finish. “I cannot be the saviour you desire. I do not know softness the way that you crave it.” Her speech is different. It is inhabiting her. It is speaking through her. She is not a buffer anymore. He pauses. In all honesty, he knew, and knows now, that he is foolish to ask a god to love him as an equal. But he thinks of the stories he was told as a child, ancient Greeks and Romans, loved by their gods as they loved them. He dares wonder if she would give him that same grace.
“I know.” He contemplates his next words. “I want you to be what you are. I can’t ask you to be a person, but I can ask you to be what you are.”
“I am cruel.” The voice doesn’t come from her anymore. It reverberates around the church. “I am an unforgiving God. I am the bringer of nightmares. I am the leader of civilisations you could never imagine knowing. I am a harbinger of terror.”
“I know and--” He pauses again, eyes dropping to the floor. “And I want to see you for all you are. I want to be in awe of your power, please.” He’s begging now. It’s pathetic but he can’t help it. “Show me what you are. What you truly are. I’m not afraid of you.” He’s pushing his luck, but it’s never been this vulnerable. Never given him a glimpse of what it truly is. He tries to sound caring, soft and open. But as soon as the words tumble from his mouth, he’s swiftly taught how wrong he is.
The church shakes, mud and dust fall down from the ceiling. The voice comes from her now. Her voice is questioning, but the anger is thinly veiled. He’s stuck in an hourglass and the sand is only piling up higher and higher.
“Are you are not satisfied with what we have? Do you ask for more?” He spins around to look at her. Her angelic features twist and contort, her doe eyes are narrowed, daring him to answer.
“I am happy! I’m satisfied!” he cries. “I just want to see what’s underneath. I know you can hurt me. I just want to see what you’re capable of. The way you know what I’m capable of.”
If his words before were a mistake, the words now are only fuel to an ever-growing fire. All at once, she has ignited. He can smell the anger on it. The sweat that forms on its skin radiates off it like gasoline. The offence at being treated like a human. At being treated like an equal. It is not his equal.
“I made this body, this form, for you. I hide behind the skin of your kind for your sake, and you ask me to strip myself of it? Do you not care for the work that I put into this?”
Her face begins to contort, but not only her expression now. The flesh below it changes and moves. Ivory antlers push through the skin of her head, pushing past her hair, chunks of it fall to the floor. Her jaw juts forward, bone tearing through the skin of its chin. A snout protrudes from her face, causing it to bear its teeth.
“You ask if I am capable? I am a God, I brought you out of the pits of your depression, I made you whole again.” She points an accusatory finger at him.
More and more jagged teeth push through its gums, breaking skin and pink flesh. Blood pools on the creature’s tongue and drips down to the floor as it mixes with saliva. Four more eyes push through her skin, and her forehead. There are six in total now, looking around and blinking in all different directions until they all focus on him.
Its bones let out a sickening crunch as her back begins to change shape, hunching her over till it’s doubled over and snarling before him. The blood and saliva spits from her jutted out jaw as she rages. Her words like a poison, burning his skin.
“You are nothing more than a petulant child to me.” Her words are slow and deliberate. Sharpening them and aiming to kill. “You ask to see me. You ask for vulnerability. You wish to prove your bravery in the face of my form?” She keeps growing bigger and bigger, her fingers fuse together and grow longer, nails growing and sharpening into claws. Her frame filling out the sanctuary and backing him into a corner. “You are nothing without me. You are useless. You are the shell of a man, trapped so deeply in his own loneliness you convene with a ghost in your dreams,” The creature in front of him is a sick reminder that the woman he loves is no such thing. That his love has passed the bounds of what could be considered religious, that his deluded visions of falling in love with this idea of a saviour does not exist. No one is coming to save him.
“Your love is a perversion of what it means to worship,” she’s right, the hiss of her words knocks the wind out of him. He- like Icarus- is reaching for the sun, and he knows the way she wants to be loved will burn him up and send him tumbling. But he wonders, that if when Icarus fell, he felt weightless. That if the feeling of the kiss of the sun he had so desperately craved had kept him company while he hurtled back down to earth. He wonders if the sun too, kissed the wounds she gave him.
But he also wonders if this had all been for naught. Before her, he had been entirely alone. Was every whispered secret, every kiss, every midnight caress, had it only been for a purpose greater than himself? Had it all been for its own gain?
He supposes this is what he asked for. He asked to see what it truly was. And what it is, is a mirage of affection. A tangle of ancient rage, ideas and knowledge that he cannot ever comprehend. But deep in that mirage, she is an oasis in his dark and sheltered life. And he is parched.
He finds himself falling to his knees, hands clasped together in front of him as he cries out his apologies. He speaks its praise. He is truly, and deeply, awed.
“I won’t ask for anything more! You do so much for me, I am an ungrateful child, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes. The fear of it leaving, of her leaving him chokes him, squeezing around his neck, pushing into his mouth and down his throat to wrap around his lungs like an iron chain. As much as he knows he doesn’t deserve this, that he should leave, that he should take the mask off. He can’t. Because at least with Sleep around, he isn’t alone. And he’d rather have nightmares every night than have no dreams at all. Because on her good days, oh, on her good days, she is something truly worth worshipping. Her skin, her eyes, her laugh. When she touches him and praises him. Those are the moments he longs for; those are the moments he holds out for.
“You are a vessel. Nothing more. Know your place.” And with its last words hanging in the air. It disappears. He lets out the breath that had been caged in his chest. Fear radiates off him like a stench and he’s sure it can still smell it.
Is it better to be broken or alone? He doesn’t quite know. At least the pain she inflicts him with is sharp. It’s biting. It isn’t the dull ache of being alone, it isn’t the longing and hopelessness of a night without anyone’s arms around him. At least the pain she inflicts him with is a reminder that he’s alive. A reminder that it is, regardless of its feelings towards him, keeping him around. And more importantly, keeping him alive.
She does not visit him that night, or the next, or even the next. She has left him to stew in the error of his ways. Beg for her forgiveness till she pities him enough to return. It enjoys this. She knows the power she has over him. And so does he. Her words echo in his head ‘I made you whole again’. He should be angry. To some degree he is, but not for the right reasons. She’s right. He was so broken, the pieces of himself scattered across the floor and he couldn’t bring himself to ever pick them up. He’d sit staring at them, watching them rot. The festering spread over them until they’d eventually waste away so he didn’t have to feel guilty for not putting himself back together. But then she came along, and she picked them up, held them in place for him. For a few hours every night, he got to feel whole again until she left, and the pieces would all come crashing back down.
The rage he feels welling up isn’t at her words, it’s her lack of presence. She leaves him alone, time and time again as cruel punishment. As if he were a child. He can learn from true punishment. He can learn from welts and bruises. He cannot learn from silence. The only way to get her attention will be to do something where she’ll have to intervene. Where her actions and his consequences won’t be the dead static of an empty room and the crackling of missed calls. No. He’ll show her what she awoke in him the night he made his first sacrifice to her. He’ll give her a week. Each time she leaves, he’ll give her a week to come back.
a/n: hope you liked! as i say, next week is looking to be a little longer, i've managed to be a week ahead or so on writing, which has kept me in good momentum. it's been really quite enjoyable to write this series and get to really sink my teeth into something, so i hope that my enjoyment in the process has come across too. thank you so much for reading! it's a pleasure to have any sort of audience/critique of my work at all so genuinely thank you very much for being here!!
I’ve been toying with the idea of narrating my fic? I know often times people prefer to listen to stuff these days, and I usually end up reading my writing out loud to check that it sounds the way I want to
idk if I ever would, but I’m just tossing it into the void anyway
I also hate TTS so bad and I’m not paying £50+ when I have the voice memos app and my god given voice box
tws and tags: blood, usual emotional manipulation, unreliable narrator, somno but no smut, sleep paralysis of sorts
a/n: fanfic author curse is real, sorry for every promise that actually became empty asf - but i bring a small updated chapter, my social life here since moving abroad has never been so busy, so i haven't had huge amounts of time or motiv to write the past wee while, but i hope you can welcome this silly story back into your arms, i won't promise an upload schedule but i will promise an eventually finished fic, even if it takes me forever to do it-
He doesn’t know what time it is when he rouses, but the sky is dark. Clouds cover the sun blocking out any light. The tears of rain streak down the windows and the sky rumbles. So deep that it shakes the panes of glass. He feels a profound sense of loss. Like something within him has gone missing, the way one would misplace a toy or a book as a child. But the feeling sits deeper. It tries to push him back down; he fights to push himself up off the ground in retaliation.
Something slithers at his leg, the long form caresses down from his knee to his ankle and he jumps back, his heart beating in his throat. When he looks down, he can’t see anything, no sign of a creature or an intruder. But he knows what that was. Who that was.
He tried so desperately to avoid her. Three days without sleep, depriving himself of her presence, of her gifts, to punish himself for all he’s put her through, for all he does to her. But his body kept the score, and he could not escape her clutches forever. How he used to function on such little sleep before her is beyond him. She saved him, and now as thanks, he cannot be rid of her. The touches of her that he can’t shake. He sleeps better with her around, breathing deep into the crook of her neck. Inhaling her, keeping pieces of her tied to him. He wants that back. He wants those nights back. Longing touches and quiet whispers. But for that- he has to apologise, for that he has to admit he was wrong. He has to admit, both to her and to himself that he truly, deeply cannot live without what she offers.
The floor beneath him is hard, the ground where he collapsed is rough, splinters from old wood stick to his fingers when he runs them along it wrong. His head aches from where it cracked the floor… the night before? Two days ago? He doesn’t feel blood, but he can smell it. He raises a hand and sweeps it across his brow, but it comes off clean, he gingerly checks himself over. The blood isn’t his.
He knows deep down that prolonging seeing her is only prolonging the inevitable. That he will have to face her. For once, for one singular time in the duration of whatever terrible thing they have become, whatever horrid, twisted thing between them, he cannot the thought of seeing her. He does not want to. He knows now, he does not and never did deserve any of her grace towards him. Her gracious touches, the pressure of her kiss, the taste of the salt of her skin, the trust of her arteries between his canines.
She reduced him to his basest form- time and time and time again he crumbled beneath her gaze. He is so petrified of her, of what trusting her means. But he knows- he knows, she won’t ever be rid of him. Just as he cannot bear losing her, she cannot bear losing him. Her most loyal, her most subservient. Her favourite.
He moves, or rather, he sways through the flat, his body aches and his bearings are off but he manages to follow the smell. He nearly collapses again when he reaches the bathroom. The stench of blood is putrid, overpowering his senses, so much that it feels like a mouthful of coins. Written on the wall it reads,
Are you still mine?
He sinks to his knees on the bathroom floor. How did that get there? How did she do that? Because he knows it’s her. It cannot be anyone else but her. What burns him the most is that the question is rhetorical – they both know that he is. He knows he always will be hers. Some part of her perfectly manicured nails will always have a hook under his collar, lying in wait to pull him back.
He wishes he could be someone else, braver, stronger, find the same comfort in her presence that he used to, but now he cannot. Not after his own shortcomings. Not after knowing that he cannot be what she needs, what she wants. He wishes she’d forget about him. But they are as addicted to each other as ever. As dependent as always. She is only waiting for her moment to return to him.
He lies in bed that night, disorientated and restless. A wasted grey day spent licking his wounds, a bag of frozen peas pressed through layers of tea towels against his head. The flat smells of bleach. He had scrubbed every inch of the bathroom, careful to not catch his own fingers in it. He cannot see more blood stain on his fingers. She painted it there, against the tiles, but somehow, it’s still his fault. He can’t prove it, but he knows it to be true. It clings to every corner of the high-ceilinged hallways and follows him to his room.
He thinks of the first sacrifice. That Night, as he’s dubbed it in his mind. The same chlorine disinfectant that climbed up the walls, weaved into the gout, sticks now to his own home. A sick reminder of everything he’s taken home. Everything he’s taken to bed… everything he still hopes to take to bed.
He’s almost asleep, just about to nod off, finally used to the smell of bleach, or perhaps it’s only getting to his head, when something else cuts in, it’s soft at first, but it drifts in, overpowering the chemicals. A warmth, it’s musky, deep and warm and woody. There’s a ginger to it, a spice, a citrus-y hint from the orange. He leaps out of bed- or- he tries to leap out of bed. He cannot move. This is new, this hasn’t ever happened before. He didn’t know she could do that… His body can’t move, he’s sure he’s aware. He can feel a presence in the room.
A hand slides down his cheek, the scent of her perfume makes his head spin. He lets out a soft mumble as she presses her lips to his temple. He prays her lipstick stains, leaves a mark in the shape of her lips. Brand him with the shape of her kiss on the most vulnerable parts of him. Keep her tenderness on him as a trophy.
She laughs. God, how he missed it… deep and honeyed. He soaks in it, her patronising tone. She should baby him; she should treat him as silly and mindless and in need of only her guidance. He is so hopeless at resisting her. Resolve crumbling the moment he feels her skin; the moment he felt her presence slither into the room. Why on earth did he think he could defy her? Resist her?
He tries desperately to reach for her, pulling and hoping and clawing at the sheets to make himself move. But he cannot. It remains a fruitless effort. He is stuck under her spell. Her wishes and her magic command him to stay put, and the deep synapses of his brain that are constantly indebted to her swallow up her tricks and submit to her will.
“So… you really are still mine,” he feels teeth on his lobe, a tongue where his ear meets his neck. “And I thought you were trying to be rid of me… and yet all this time… all you had to do was ask for me,” slow, trancelike words rub and soothe him. He can’t move his mouth around words to reply so he pushes out any sound he can with lips together, it’s something of a sigh or a moan.
Above him, she smiles, calculated control plays on her lips. “You sound so pretty when you do that,” her hand comes back to his cheek, while her lips are still pressed against his neck. He tries to move his head to let her in, but he can’t even manage that.
She leaves him for a moment, he thinks he can hear her pacing the room, moving, stalking. The moment of nothing gives him time to process, barely. But he can feel the emptiness that had left come right back, sticking itself right back into his system.
His vision spots, only parts of her swim into view, the flick of her hair, the wave of her arm, all that is left when his vision fades to sleep is the sharpest of teeth in the mot menacing smile. She has him wrapped up, all over again.
tws and tags: shockingly few, manipulation and usual erotic overtones, blood, nightmares, loneliness
a/n: hey hey! thanks for bearing with the slightly late upload, i think upload schedule just isn't working for me at the minute, everything in my life is super hectic, but i'm not abandoning this, just going to be a little bit off with schedule, if it was wanted i'd be able to make a tag list? please let me know if you'd maybe be up for it and i'd be happy to do that since i won't be as on it. but regardless i'll update and post snippets, i probably won't ever go totally dark ever. but anyways, thank you and enjoy!
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The grey evenings after his dead-end job never help to alleviate his stress. He is tired. Exhausted, not just from the work, but from life itself. He wants to create things, to make things. Somehow spit out every wretched emotion going on inside of him. But he can’t, not while he’s stuck, trapped in the endless cycles he’s currently in. Wake up, go to work, go to bed and wrestle his impending insomnia diagnosis, repeat. It’s not that he doesn’t want to sleep. He wants more than anything for unconsciousness to sweep him into its arms so for a few hours so that he doesn’t have to be aware of the gaping hole inside of him. Imaginary talons that rip him up each time he’s reminded of the empty bed. Cold and unforgiving, there’s no comfort in this.
The room is clinical at best, and a prison at worst. High ceiling white walls, nothing but a bedside table and a desk to decorate the room. There’s no personality in here. He often wonders if he even has one himself. How much can one make the exploration of words their personality? He could hardly call himself a writer, much less a songwriter. He has no time for those sorts of dreams. Not with his rent inching higher and higher each month and more and more shifts to make up for it.
So, while he tries his best- he cannot sleep. Too many thoughts jumble his mind. Every day the aches in his head and his heart grow a little bigger, the bed grows wider, swallowing him up in the sheets till he’s drowning in the depths of his duvets and suffocated by his pillows. Everything is wrong. His room too hot or too cold, the sheets too scratchy. It’s never quite enough.
And even when he does sleep, dreams plague him. Whispered disjointed noises, sounds and voices a little too far out of reach. He wants to find the source, wonders if they’d grant him companionship. He sees antlers, teeth, jagged red spills on floors and trails of the substance leaving doorways. He can’t make sense of any of it.
Altars and cloths and masks. Cultists and gods all encircle each other. Holding hands and dancing around circles of candles. The snapping of jaws and the horrible stench of metal and the taste of copper.
But then he wakes, and those dreams are over, he’s been plagued with them for two years. Told by doctors it was caused by an overactive imagination or from the monotony of his day to day. ‘Go on a holiday, maybe go for coffee with someone you haven’t seen for a while.’ one had said. But with what money? With what time?
He doesn’t really have friends either. He knows a man, they used to be friends at a music school they both attended. A greying building in a town he couldn’t ever quite call home. They’ve kept in touch here and there, but they drift in and out of orbit, never quite close enough for friendship. He did have a girlfriend- he’s had a few- but she broke up with him when his sleep deprivation got bad. Insinuating she couldn’t help him with it while he babbled about noises and deer and blood. Images he’d never been interested in before. He stopped writing music after she left, too caught up in the pit inside of himself.
Two years they were together, and for a year and a half, he was the best version of himself he’d ever been until six months before she ended it. He was inconsolable. Always angry, always upset. Too tired and irritable. He didn’t know what to make of what was going on inside of him. And then after six months of him in that state, talking about hearing the voices of women he couldn’t see. She left.
He started to get better at once point, stopped hearing the voices and the giggling so much, but now it’s back in full force. And the dreams are worse than ever, even after he wakes, he can still taste blood on the tip of his tongue.
The days blur into one, menial tasks like food shopping or buying clothes to replace the ones he’s worn through feel Sisyphean. Cyclical in a way he can’t see ending. The voice keeps whispering to him in his sleep, the laughter echoes in empty hallways “follow me, worship me,” and he wants to, he really wants to follow it, but he’s never found himself lucid enough in his dreams to be able to.
Tonight, he hears the humming trail after him as he readies himself for another turbulent wrestle to get himself to dreams. It follows him into the kitchen as he makes a cup of tea, it follows him still when he showers. Eyes dart about the bathroom for a woman that isn’t there. He really hates this, the feeling of being watched, he’s amusing something he conjured in his own mind. Night after night, he wakes in cold sweats, a lingering presence just leaving his room, the smell of smoke and sugar embedded in his senses. Something is watching him- he doesn’t think it’s human.
He tucks himself into bed, but falls asleep far faster than normal, he still tosses and turns, but there’s a presence in the room that quietens his racing thoughts, it comforts him, relaxes his enough to fall into the clutches of sleep.
There was none of the fight he expected and none of the usual distractions that inhibit him.
There’s a strange sensation of waking up. He knows he’s still asleep but everything about this space feels real. It’s an odd sort of darkness but he feels in enough control of his body. The dream he has is lucid. The voice that’s been following him around, the humming, the giggle, it’s embedded itself into his dream. Much clearer, as if across the room. This time, he can follow it.
He walks through darkness, perhaps void is more apt. It’s negative space. Nothing stretches before him, behind him, above or below him. He wanders, feeling his way through the space, he knows it isn’t dark because he can look down and see himself. He’s clad only in the pyjamas he went to bed in, as if he was plucked from his bed and placed here. The humming follows him, even here into this void. He wanders towards wherever it comes from, finally allowed to glimpse the source of her siren call.
There’s no corner to round, she just appears before him, materialising right before his eyes. She’s gorgeous, so striking he forgets to breathe for a few moments, she’s catlike in the way she lounges a foot in the air, as if lying on an invisible sofa, she regards him with interest.
This is who has been following him around.
“I wondered when you’d stop by,” her voice is sticky sweet caramel in his ears. “You’ve been so tired recently, you really should have let me in sooner,” she tuts, she looks up at him through her lashes, her eyes big and staring. He doesn’t know what to say. He can’t stop looking at her, the tight dress she’s wearing clings to her figure, he doesn’t have it in him to stop staring, his eyes roaming the exposed curves, feasting on the exposed flesh- this woman is perfect, the embodiment of every late-night fantasy, every childhood on-screen crush, the most enchanting being he has ever met. He’s so tongue tied he can’t get anything out other than a choked whisper,
“Who are you?”
She laughs, deep and rich, like melted dark chocolate. “I’m everything you need.” she isn’t upselling herself; she says it like a fact. That she knows she is everything he is missing. She moves from her languid place, she’s fluid like water, she floats up, righting her position before him. He can properly see her face now and his knees buckle. She truly is divine. A work of art. Her gorgeously deep eyes watch him. Watches the way he maps out her features. She lets him take her in. He follows the slope of her nose down to the most disgracefully kissable lips, pouty and full, freshly glossed. She is going to be his ruin, and he’d follow this woman into the depths of hell if she asked him to, if only to have her eyes on him again.
She moves towards him in that gracefully lazy way and the scent that comes off her rolls in waves, crashing into his senses in a dizzying, thick sweetness. Woody and warm. Ginger and jasmine and sandalwood wafts towards him filling up his senses. Warming his brain and his body from the inside out.
“You look nervous,” she teases, predatory grin tugs at her lips, “I don’t bite,” she throws her head back to laugh, her hair cascading around her in waves, “Not unless you ask nicely, anyway.”
He tries to get any semblance of words out, but he can’t, his brain can’t catch up fast enough. His mouth opens and closes like a fish, brain too melted. God, if he could dream like this every night.
She regards him, taking him in. She looks at him with interest, like she’s reading all his secrets off his micro expressions alone. He doesn’t doubt she can. He feels incredibly out of place and underdressed. The hem of her dress slides up her thigh, exposing the softest looking skin. His eyes greedily follow as the trail is exposed. He wants to see more.
He almost reaches out, but he is harshly reminded of the striped pyjamas doing little favours for his own appeal. He fidgets with the hem of his sleeve, trying to figure out where to keep his eyes in a respectful manner. Her presence is suffocating. Heartbeat thudding and his breathing constricting as he struggles to grasp this situation unfolding. This gorgeous woman has materialised in his dream and claims to be what’s been following him? It doesn’t feel right, this can’t be real, can it? She’s too perfect. This is too perfect. Too good of an explanation for his deprived state. Something about her feels so familiar, but he’s sure he’s never seen her before. He shakes his head, trying to dispel her, maybe wake up. It doesn’t work. The hand that catches his wrist snaps his eyes open. Long nails trace the lines of blue green veins.
“You’ve been lonely, haven’t you?” she tilts her head, eyes still piercing and form still fluid. “It covers you, I can smell it,” she leans in close, hair brushing his shoulder as she leans in, nose in the crook of his neck as she inhales, he feels the air change slightly, a charge that wasn’t there before. She comes back up, her eyes are dilated and her lids heavy, intense gaze directed at him.
“You’re so jumpy,” she notes as he steps back. “I can make it so you’re never lonely again,” she steps towards him, invading his space again. She’s too close. Far too close. He can see the flecks of colour in her eyes, the way each of her eyelashes split and dance around as she bats them toward him. “You’ve felt more company with my voice alone than you have in a long while- think how good it could be if I was always around, just like this.” It’s an offer wrapped in flirtation, to prove her point, she trails her fingers up his arm, looping her arm around his neck, pulling him close, their faces inches apart. “All you have to do… is worship me,” she smiles.
At the look of confusion on his face, she smiles. “I can give you anything you want, I’m not just a dream, that’s just what I’m good at. All those visons of yours? They’re all gifts from me. A long time ago, I was powerful, more powerful than this. But now, I’m reduced to this, a whisper in your mind.”
He would hardly call the dreams gifts. They’ve done nothing but plague him. He hesitates, unsure. Her gaze never leaves him; the deepness of her eyes swallows him up.
She leans in, breath brushing the shell of his ear, “Are you going to help me?” but before he has a chance to respond, she’s vanished and the moment she’s gone he jolts awake. Back in his bedroom. The door clicks softly closed, as if someone’s just left. He bolts out of bed and throws the door open, but no one is there.
The next few nights are dreamless, but he does sleep better. Finding himself falling asleep faster, and the loneliness that’s weighed on his heart so long feels a little lighter, the hum follows him around some, only in his quietest moments, a reminder of the creature he hasn’t been able to find again. These nights feel more like gifts than the nightmares he usually has.
The few weeks following the first dream blur together, night after night she visits him. He’s slept better than he has in months. In the nights he spends in that void realm with her, he’s learned a lot about her. She told him her name, her intent to grow a following, become a real god again. The way she laments about missing helping those that follow her. Her visions seem so grounded, he wants to help her. Despite all her otherworldly beauty, he thinks he sees something in her, something helpless. He wants to help her- so he agrees. He agrees to worship her and to follow her. She is delighted, clapping her hands and smiling, as if she hadn’t expected him to. But he knows that she knows he was never going to say no. he’d agree to anything if it meant keeping her around.
He hasn’t had companionship like this for so long. He can feel her presence like a blanket around him, the knowledge of her around him. Her voice and her song keep him warm from the inside out. He wanders through his days revigorated. Her presence enough to get him through the day. A balm that salves the torn hole in his chest, enough to dull the bruising around his battered heart and ribs.
He finds himself in that state with her so often now. Safe in these moments with her. They sit together, discussing everything from his fears to her plans. He talks of his loneliness, or she tells him of how she used to be. The domains she ruled and the power she held.
But something eats at him. How can this woman be so hungry, as ravishing for attention and starved as she is when he’s right there? He- in the last few weeks- has come to realise he would lay his life down for her and her cause if she asked. She almost has; she’s asked him to become her mouthpiece. Her face to the world. He agreed. Her conditions were for him to start making music again. He told her he couldn’t, not with the amount he had to work. he couldn’t afford it, but how he wanted to- he had already been scrawling lines about her in margins of extra notepaper and the back of napkins when the inspiration struck him. She only laughed, saying she’d make it happen.
“Do you think about what I taste like?” she asks, she doesn’t turn to face him, content to stare into the void stretching endlessly before them. He often wonders what would happen if he walked in.
He balks at her question. “In what way?” he asks softly, he copies her, staring forward. He doesn’t want to face her either. They often have their most intimate conversations facing away from each other.
“Any way.” She hums, head tilted, waiting for his response.
“Well… yeah, I mean- of course, yeah.” He tries to control his breathing, to not say half the things he wants to, but something probes him to, pulls at his inhibitions a little. “I think about tasting you,” he says softly, looking down at her lips, he can see the tip of her tongue behind her teeth. “I think about all the places I could taste you,” his eyes drift down to where the hem of her dress is still hoisted up her thigh. He’s decidedly vague. A part of him doesn’t want her to read into it. A part of him is desperate for her to read into it.
She nods wordlessly, unsurprised by his response. She knows how deeply he feels. She can see all the dreams his brain stores locked up, he can’t remember what happens in those late-night intervals in the morning. She can. From his darkest nightmares of hooded cults and bloodstained antlers to his brightest dreams of flashing lights and headliner shows.
She makes him wait for her response. She lets him sit with his own desire, stewing in bubbling feelings he cannot shake. At least not in this dream with her presence surrounding him from what feels like every angle. Even if she doesn’t have eyes on him, she can see him.
Her silence makes his skin crawl. She gives him everything in a few words and pulls the rug from under him. Picks at the fraying edges because she knows he won’t fight it. He plays into it. Hoping she might respond. Might give him some semblance of it back. But she doesn’t. At least now when he expects it. Her lavishing words and praise come when he’s low. Never when he’s up. Never when he wants it. Only when he needs it.
“You believe that one day you’ll get to?” She asks, it comes from her- not hesitantly but as if she’s piecing thoughts together while she asks. Quick-witted cogs turning faster than he can keep up with, so he nods, unthinking of consequence.
“Belief is strong,” she states, her voice is hollow and clinical, outside of herself, “if you must imagine my form to satisfy yourself, you may.”
She turns back to him, more spring in her movements, animation returning to her figure, her joints move with less friction, and she smiles again, warmth returning to her voice. He sits jaw slacked at her words. He couldn’t possibly do that to her. Could he?
“I’m just playing with you,” she grins, before brushing him off. “Tell me about your new song?” And he does. He tells her all about the new lyrics and ideas he has planned. But something in that chills him.
Over the weeks it happens more, moments, cracks, seeds of doubt. She’s hollow and mechanical in moments he can’t form a pattern to. Her eyes glassy and staring, never ever looking at him, choosing to look away when she bares… whatever it is of herself she does.
But the moments where she’s warm and caring are what he sees in her most often. She’s touchier than any girlfriend he’s had. Sometimes her touch makes his head spin. He can’t tell if it’s because of her or because he’s gone so long without. Regardless, she’s mending something in him. And he needs her to keep doing it.
hello! this is a masterlist for all the chapters for my Sleep Token fic, it's where i explore the lore of the songs and the relationship between Vessel and Sleep by basing my writing on songs and moments between the two of them. i'm trying to keep it semi linear, but i think you could read each part standalone if you like a specific song. but it would make more sense as an overarching plot if you like that sort of thing. i'm going to try to upload chapters every friday, and an excerpt from the next every monday to pace myself so i don't burn out (currently i have no upload schedule because i am a busy girl updates have been much slower, but they will come!) (this is very much baby's first long fic so ty if you're joining in)
ao3 link
pinterest board
playlist - sleep playlist
disclaimer
general tags and tws: blasphemy, unreliable narrator, manipulation, whump, minor character death, eldritch, a lot of references to animalistic tendencies, angst, non-explicit smut, power imbalance, mental breakdown, religious imagery and symbolism, cult themes, obsession, violence as devotion, sex as worship. chapter specific tags will be included in chapter intros
Masterlist! (under the cut)
chapter one - nazareth - narrated ver
chapter two - the way that you were - narrated ver
chapter three - jaws - narrated ver
chapter four - the night does not belong to god - narrated ver
chapter five - dark signs - narrated ver
chapter six - gods - narrated ver
chapter seven - blood sport - narrated ver
chapter eight - thread the needle - narrated ver
chapter nine - atlantic - narrated ver
chapter ten - decending - narrated ver
chapter eleven - high water - narrated ver
chapter twelve - the love you want
chapter thirteen - chokehold
chapter fourteen - granite
chapter fifteen - vore
chapter sixteen - euclid
(rough draft of chapters so things may change slightly as the plot changes! i decided to omit EIA because it feels like a slightly different world/story than the one i'm creating <3)
tws/tags: emetophobia (mentions of throwing up), arachnophobia (spider mentions) heavy angst, like it's basically whump, mentions of body/viscera in a semi body horror way, lots of guilt, panic attack, romanticised violence, vessel is ten times more unreliable than normal
a/n: this felt like a return to form. this felt better to write than the last chapter, maybe i've channeled a little too much of myself into parts of this silly story. but that's the curse of art i think. i would love to say hope you enjoy, and i will, because despite the angsty nature of this chapter, i think it's important for the plot of this story, that has grown so much from what i'd originally envisioned for it. i will say, this is one of the more intense chapters i've written so take care of yourself if the tws aren't your cup of tea <3
He hasn’t slept for three days. It’s haunting him. He can’t eat. He can’t sleep. He won’t eat. He won’t sleep.
Everything is crashing down on him. The temple he built with mud, has finally met its match in the rains of Her bitter disappointment. He rocks himself back and forth in the armchair. Gripping at his sleeves, scratching his skin. It feels like there’s spiders, crawling ever so slowly up his arms. Hundreds of tiny legs meander his exposed skin. He keeps falling in and out of microsleep. His body betraying him. Trying to give him up to the jaws of the very being he is trying to avoid. He can’t give in, not now. The mug of half-drunk coffee is long cold next to him, he doesn’t know how many he’s had- evidently not enough. His hand shakes as he reaches for the mug. He retracts it when he can’t still the tremor. Hiccupping breaths shake his whole diaphragm. He doesn’t think he could swallow it anyway. he doesn’t have the strength.
He doesn’t want to see Her. Not because She was ever angry, but because his own guilt is feasting on him so deeply. Gnashing teeth and poisoned tongues torture his insides, twisting up his guts and eating up his viscera, the guilt swallowing him up.
She is so cruel, so arrogant, She has never cared about the dizzy states She leaves him in, only caring to come back when the need suits Her, if it suits Her. He hates her. He wants to hate Her.
He can’t hate Her. Not when She is the only thing that ever gives him the attention he so desperately craves. A dog that comes back each time he’s kicked because the boot is the closest thing to a kiss he knows. Tail between his legs as he begs and pleads to an open and empty sky. Praying and offering and gifting. He will take anything. A whisper in his dreams. he won’t even ask for all of Her, he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve anything.
He thinks of his past lover. It’s the first time he has allowed himself to. He hasn’t been able to. He doesn’t think he can now. But he owes it to her. He rocks back and forth more frantically. He hasn’t thought about her. He hasn’t looked her up or anything since he left her body in that bathroom. Maybe she was found. She probably was. He isn’t afraid of being caught. He has always been a man of consequences. He would do the time for it if it ever went back to him. He owes her that much. But he’s terrified. Terrified to face her in turning himself in. Terrified even more that facing the consequences of this would mean facing himself. He cannot do that, despite how wrong he is for it. The feeling of disgust still crawls through his intestines, weaving its way through his insides. He wants to be sick. She deserved more. Far more.
The girl from the club deserved more. Sleep deserves more. His bandmates deserve more. He cannot be what anyone needs him to be. He has done terrible things. In the name of what? A God that doesn’t even care for him. He has doomed himself and everyone else to the disappointment of a deity that he cannot get back. He is not scared of a It, but he is terrified of himself. He wants to crawl out of his skin and pick himself apart until he bursts at the seams. Scratch up his skin till it bleeds. Hurt himself the way he hurts everyone else. He looks down at his arms. Red and blotched and nicked from his ragged and chewed nails trying to scratch off bugs that he can’t feel anymore.
He gets up, paces around the room, shaking his hands. The sensations around him get more intense, pressing into his body as if there are forces in the room he cannot see. Poking and prodding him like a patient in surgery. His breathing quickens. Jolting and stunted. He shakes more, scratches harder. He can’t cope. He can’t cope he can’t cope He can’t cope.
He screams. He stands in his living room and wails.
He cries for his lover, he thinks of her pretty face, her infectious smile, her gentle touches, and he thinks about the way she was there for him. So keen to help him through his bouts of loneliness, so happy to stay by his side through his worst moments. He cries harder. She didn’t deserve that. He should not have ever been able to do that. To take her future from her. She loved him for how he was and how he had been. She had accepted his love and his guilt and his shame. She had cloaked him in warmth.
She would wait for him -- in the early days, curled up in the corner of the studio couches while he recorded the original demos. Fell asleep to the sound of his voice and praise-soaked words. He’d wake her up and drive her back home, eyes heavy from her interrupted sleep. There was a lightness in his chest as he watched her there, small smile tugging on her lips with her eyes closed. She’d stay till he left, pour over the lyrics with him, content to watch him weave his magic into the music.
Tears slip down his cheeks, salty and covering his skin, he doesn’t move to dry them off.
He wants her back, now more than ever, but he cannot have her.
He wants to be sick, he wonders if he could expel the guilt from his body through his own vomit, he wants to shove his fingers in his throat, be rid of everything inside of him. watch his intestines, his guts, his lungs, his heart splatter onto the floor and cover it with the blood. Watch his own blood bleed into the carpet, soaking it. Spilling his own blood won’t fix anything, it won’t ever settle the debt, but it might make him feel some ounce of what he’s inflicted upon others, however selfish it makes him.
He thinks of the girl from the club. How he used her. Desecrated her. Left her in the dark about his intentions. He claws at his face as he remembers the shy blush that spread across her features when she handed him her number. The giggled invitation for more. She was so lovely, so kind, so understanding. He didn’t harm her, but he feels like he did. She’ll wait by her phone and wonder why he didn’t call, why he didn’t text, what she did wrong.
He has failed. He sings of reverence for women, one woman. But his hands have brought about nothing but pain. He hates himself for it. Sleep is right. She is always right. Every relationship he touches turns to ash. He managed to cause a God to flee from his clutches. He ruined Her as much as he ruined the other two.
He thinks about his members, all so much more well-adjusted to this dynamic than he. II so content to appreciate the music, his worship is secondary to his craft. And III, happy to serve It so long as he could continue to be himself. Be himself. A concept so foreign to him. Now only a vessel. The first vessel. She only ever refers to him as such. As Vessel. Stripped him of whoever he used to be and made him up into the image of her disciple.
And IV, the guitarist, so stoic, a knight, talks less but his words have always held more weight. Even in his stretching silences, he doesn’t ever seem phased by the false promises hanging over his head like a sword on a thread.
Why are they not haunted? Why doesn’t She torment them the way She torments him?
And finally, he thinks of Her. Thinks of how deeply ensnared he is. He doesn’t think She’ll want him back. He wants her to want him. He wants to go back. He wants to crawl into Her arms more than anything. Smell Her sugar and smoke perfume. Taste Her on his tongue. He needs Her fingers in his hair and Her whispered words against the shell of his ear. To feel Her breathing close to him. He doesn’t deserve it. He wants it so bad it’s tearing him up, splitting him apart with the ache to be seen. To be known by someone. Anyone. Even if that someone is a deity with no real care for him. At least She pretends, he hopes She’ll pretend forever.
They will never get that September night back. He will never get it back. He won’t get Her body wrapped in his, Her fingers in his hair and Her lips meshed with his. Falling asleep with Her legs entwined with his. He won’t ever see love bites on Her neck or watch the way Her eyes stare at the walls of his room.
He never waits, he always acts out, but he doesn’t know how else to love but to bite. To sink his teeth so deeply into something that it cannot escape his clenched canines and molars. And even if it does, he’d leave a mark so deep they could never forget him, carry a piece of him wherever he went so he couldn’t ever be forgotten. He would choose Her to leave Her mark on him every time, the teeth of her jaw the only pain that dulls the rest of his aches. He knows he is Her favourite regret; he is the best worst thing to ever happen to Her. The biggest mistake She ever made was crawling into his dreams that very first night, but he knows, despite how much he disappoints, how much he angers her, that deep down, he fascinates It. And fascination is the closest thing that he will get to It sticking around.
He should be punished. He wants to be punished, he has done terrible acts, horrible acts that he should never have been able to commit in the first place. He needs Her warm hand around his neck, delicate fingers caressing his throat, pink nails hover over his rabbit-quick pulse. Her soft-spoken disappointment, sugary sweet berating words. From Her, any attention is good attention, isn’t it?
He sobs, rock himself, tries to soothe himself as the panic truly sets in. The recognition of how trapped he is. Back and forth thoughts. Does he want to be? Yes. No. Maybe. Fear settling so deep in the marrow that it chills him. He catches a photo on the mantelpiece, looking for anything to tether himself to. Himself as a boy. He stands by a bike with skinned knees and a big grin. Tousled hair from a parent, he can’t now remember which one, perhaps whoever had taken the photo? He cries harder. He weeps for the boy in the photo, how he has sentenced him to the same slaughter as he. The boy in the photo doesn’t know what’s to come. He doesn’t know of the loneliness that will entrap his heart and wrap around his ribs like iron.
He has sentenced the women in his life too, each unaware of the pain he is capable of causing, so caught up in his own need, his own selfish desires that he cannot stand to not try to control it. Bend his lovers to his will. To make them stay until they don’t.
He has condemned his bandmates. He is the thread that binds. The one that ties them together into this divine chaos. He has them ensnared by Its practice. They don’t know they cannot escape, and he doesn’t plan to tell them.
And he has condemned the whole world by parading her message across so many stages.
It hits him like a ton of bricks. There has not been love in his life for a very long time. And nothing he can do will stitch the ache back together again if it cannot be Her. He needs to find something of hers, to bring him close to her again. He needs it.
He stumbles out of the chair. Brain feeling like it’s melting in his skull and pouring out of his ears. He feels heavy. So heavy. His head feels too big for his body, like someone tried to blow him up with helium. It lolls as he tries to keep himself attached, head to body, arms to torso. He drags his way into the study. Crashing into walls and trying to steady himself. The room is dark, the pictures still line the walls, maw and antler and canine. Eyes and eyes and eyes. Watching. Judging. She is judging. She can see him. She has to see him. Please stop looking. He can’t- he can’t think- think think think.
He blinks, closes his eyes, scrunches them to try to bring himself back but he can’t. The room spins, the world swimming, he looks up for the lightbulb, it’s spinning and spinning. He feels sick again. When did he last eat? The room gets darker and darker. He sees the floor is coming at him. He tries to shout but he can’t get the words out. It’s faster than he can process. His head hits the floor with a dense thud. Everything turns black.
a/n: as always, it means the world that you read or are reading this! i won't harp on, anyways, hope you enjoyed <3
