Holy shit, I haven't done a writeblr tag game in so long. This is surreal.
I was tagged by @bluberimufim, you can read her response to the prompt here. I'm tagging @squarebracket-trickster, @rowancampbell-author, and @hyuccubus to carry the baton. Your prompts are: a line that describes emotion/a mental state; a line that builds suspense/tension; a line that you find funny; the very last line you wrote recently; and then any line of your choice!
The prompts given to me by the previous tagger are:
A line that physically describes a character:
The back door slides open once again, Lucretia stepping out of it with a taller woman following at her heels. A taller woman that, if I hadn't blinked, would have been identical to drapery on a wall.
In fact, she is identical, to one specific drapery — the one in the orchestra. She is the spitting image of Lady Charlotte Howl, down to each loose hair and golden accessory and sharp eyelash.
Each nerve in my body halts immediately.
A line of internal monologue:
"Let me tell you that monsterhood is not as terrible as it seems, provided you cope with it correctly. Feed only when you have to, kill your meals quietly and with mercy, and you'll be fine. The only reason it seems unbearable right now is because you've spent your time fighting your hunger. You have to cooperate with your desires. You have to cooperate with yourself. Because this is part of you now. It always has been, the day since you were turned."
I stare. Stare and stare and stare into the backs of her eyes and past that, past the wall behind her, past the yard outside the house, past the city borders I can't see, past the horizon beyond.
"No."
I startle myself. Ms. Howl raises an eyebrow. "No?"
My chest itches with the weight of the words: I cannot. Not should not, or would not, but I cannot. Under any circumstances.
That's what I told myself this entire time. And I have to stick to it, one way or another.
Maybe there is no conventional solution or simple reversal of what's infected me. Maybe there is nothing more than my pathetic, hapless wails of "no, I don't want to."
And maybe, just maybe, stupid as it sounds, that's enough.
Time fades, as does the world at some undefinable point during this hell. The last thing to run through my ears is the screech of my own stomach: a banshee's lullaby guiding me to sleep.
"I'll be going now. How long do you want to keep this one for?"
The red dims slightly, and I just barely crane my head in Florence's direction, in spite of my eyes's refusal to cooperate.
"Not for too long, I hope. You didn't make it that far last time."
I fix my gaze on him with every inch of my iron will and squeeze my eyes shut, as if to wring out the red. When I open them, the world has, at best, faded to a dull pink for as long as I can hold it.
"One day." I straighten at the expense of my aching spine. "Come back after one day."
His brows shoot up. "Hm. I spoke too soon. But, very well. A full twenty-four hours it is."
When the door closes, the pink hardens into its original color, and in the hot tempest of my ever-consuming stomach, I pick myself up, staggering and sweaty, and hang tight to restraint.
If I want to prove myself stronger than the hunger, if I want to win in this endless wrestle, I can't fall asleep to escape the pain. Head-on. I will face hell, head-on, in the most uncomfortable conditions possible, no matter what my body or instincts say.
Or so help me God.
The last line of a chapter:
"Running away again, are we?"