How You React Is Telling.

Embedding discomfort into daily practise since 1901.

[tellnocturne]

MONSTERS, PEOPLE, MONSTROUS PEOPLE.

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All horrible, terrible, miserable creatures and rumours welcome.

Love,

Nocturne.

Welcome to the misery project of all misery projects: all horror artists and writers are welcome here. Submit your profiles to Nocturne and watch the collection grow. This blog will create character-based tags to link any and all works relating to this character or the character's story. Unsuspecting victims may choose to interact and build with any specialist services these creatures can provide.

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Submit a profile to Nocturne here.

Discomfort, horror, disgust and fear are natural reactions. Don't let them hold you back. All content created and shared within this collection will come with appropriate trigger warnings. Navigate safely.

[tellnocturne]

sometimes flesh is all you have

"I am jealous of my friends who travel from one end of the gender spectrum to the other. In other ways I am lucky: I don’t feel like seeking medical transition would benefit me, so I don’t have to agonise and break my bank over these procedures and medications. What I want is so beyond the scope of what my physical flesh can be, so all I have is my imagination. 

I see myself as an enormous, steroid-fuelled motorcyclist, impervious to gunfire. I want to spin like a mobile dissuading seagulls from perching, crafted from reflective CDs and sea-glass and shells, hanging on fishing wire. I’m a marble carving of Mary holding her dead child of a dead god, each fabric crease perfect and precise. I’m a pile of dishes in the sink, water pooling and blending morning oats with evening curry. My body is skin and muscle and fat, nerves and bones and blood. Every fibre is mine, and every day I wish it was different. This is not an easy thing to reconcile."

- Nocturne

[tellnocturne]

Recording 1323-2249-14611 “David” [#19]

VHS tape, 11hrs 26mins long. Attached note:

Continuation of Eradication project. Fourth session on Phase 5, (dismemberment). Lab Senior notes: 

We’re still recovering from the shocking fail of last session. His head was completely separate from his body. The body couldn’t move but the heart still beat and the lungs still breathed. Even without blood and oxygen flow, he could still communicate. His consciousness was only brief: the pain of a severed neck was enough to limit how much time he could spend awake. 

Given starvation and suffocation did nothing, there wasn’t much point in waiting to see if he would eventually die. His cardiovascular system saw no deterioration. His brain activity was stable. Even when we removed the heart, it just kept beating. The body continued to operate like it was still connected. The lungs breathed. The kidneys and liver filtered.

It freaked Cory out so much that he quit. I can’t blame the man. Nor can I blame my complete lack of professionalism in these notes. The bureau needs to know what they’re putting us through.

This is our last attempt at trying to kill him. We’ve tried starvation, suffocation, poison, radiation and all manners of trauma: blunt-force to the head, bullets, complete blood drainage, electrocution. He just won’t fucking die.

[CCTV footage of a laboratory. 

‘David’ is walked in by a technician. Chinese man, early 20s, holding a styrofoam cup. He is laughing. The technician, with long blond hair, wears gloves and a plastic apron. 

“This is really nice,” David says, sipping from the cup. The liquid is pale. His accent is American.

“So you’re a sweet-tooth?” Technician also sounds American. He pulls a trolley around. There are a vast plethora of tools. Mainly saws, hammers, knives, scalpels, pliers and scissors.

“I can’t remember ever having white chocolate. Certainly not as a drink.”

“Wife was obsessed with it when she was pregnant with her second kid. I can’t stand the stuff.”

David continues to drink it when he moves up onto the stainless steel table. “What’s the plan, boss?”

Technician shakes his head. “I still can’t stomach it.”

“What, brutalising me?”

“Your callousness!” 

David lowers the hot chocolate. “I know I’m not going to die. What is there to fear?”

The technician looks distressed. “You can’t know that. We chopped your fucking head off. You can’t just assume we won’t find a way.”

“Luke,” David leans forward. “You chopped my fucking head off. And I’m still here. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

‘Luke’ hangs his head, lacing fingers over the back of his skull. He falls away from trolley to gently hit his head against the sealed door of the room. 

“Are you alright?” David sounds like he is genuinely concerned.

“I fucking hate this job.”

“Hey,” David puts down the cup. Slides off table. “Hey. They’ll give up on me eventually.” He moves up to Luke, putting a hand to his shoulder. “They have to give up eventually.”

“I don’t even know why we’re trying this!” Luke throws his hands up, raging. “We took out your heart, we took out your lungs and your liver and your kidney. You’re completely fine. Why would chopping your brain up into pieces be any different? We’re just going to have bins and bins of your segmented flesh that will slowly stitch itself back together.”

“I wonder how long you’ll keep me in pieces,” David muses. “I don’t think I’ll be able to be cognizant if you keep my brain in chunks like that. Maybe it’ll be refreshing.”

“Stop it,” Luke shoves him back. “Stop saying this shit. You sound fucking insane. You should be terrified. You should be angry!”

David shrugs. “You’re the one chopping me up.”

It is a simple room, though the grout between the white wall tiles is rust-brown rather than white. The floor is linoleum, with a drain in the centre. David gently puts a hand on Lukes upper back and soothes him. 

“It’s okay,” David says. “Get it done. Then it’s over.”

“Your mind is so irrevocably fucked,” Luke retorts, moving back to the table with David. 

David finishes his hot chocolate. Then he lies down. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

Luke shakes his head. 

“Have some of that white chocolate shit ready for when I’m back.” David closes his eyes as Luke picks up a needle and prepares a clear fluid. 

“Of course,” Luke promises, siphoning the anaesthetic into Davids arm. 

But this young man doesn’t really go unconscious. He’s still moving, still reacting, still feeling pain as the technician starts his work. 

It starts with the skin. The technician is a practised man, the only one in the world with such extensive training on the world’s first living cadaver. He is careful, precise, and administers more anaesthetic whenever his subject starts to twitch too much. The skin is carefully peeled away from the fascia, the musculature hidden beneath what little protective fat remained. 

The skin is hung up with an ordinary coathanger, the Y suture pinched closed with a clothespeg. 

Each muscle, tendon and ligament is removed and placed into separate containers that are brought in by technicians with less gumption than he, rushing out quickly without looking at David on the table, still breathing. Sometimes mumbling. 

Tongue, intestine and colon, pancreas. This patient still has his appendix, which reappeared after it ruptured not long after his sixth birthday. Like a bizarre biological clock, it ruptured again at seventeen. The infection should have killed him, but the fever lasted only forty-eight hours. The doctors couldn’t understand how his appendix had reconstructed itself. Gangrene, his mother called him. He was the pervasive rot that haunted their family.

Not that this could be gleaned from the CCTV itself. One could just watch how the intestines curled on the floor after accidentally slipping off the table and know - when he said he was where he wanted to be, David wasn’t lying.

This is where the technician is more generous with the local anaesthetic, procuring small needles that he sticks between the vertebrae, around where he cuts the esophagus from the stomach, when he dislocates each joint and places each individual bone in a plastic crate. External genitalia he’d already removed when skinning, testicals and cartilaginous penis too fragile to leave after skinning, sit delicately on a pile of trachea and teeth.

He leaves cleaning the skull for last. He has to saw across where the cranium is sealed, resorting to tapping on a stone chisel to cleanly separate the delicate facial bones. He is careful with the inner-ear organs and their tiny bones. He is gentle with the eyes, plucked from their sockets with practised fingertips. When he can finally siphon the fluid from around the brain and gently pry it free of the skull, it seems so insignificant on the table. Everything is caked in blood that refused to dry. Two halves of the skull are put aside in favour of finally holding up the brain.

“I know you cannot hear or see me,” Luke says. “I keep forgetting to tell you what a marvel you are before I chop you to pieces.”

With delicate precision, the brain is divided. Occipital, temporal, frontal, parietal, hypothalamus, cerebellum, even the little hippocampus, each left and right half of the pieces splayed on the red table. It is a level of skill beyond even artistry. 

The technician is diligent with the containers. He labels each part with every single piece of the body within.  

This recording is eleven hours long. The care put into the carving is evident. Luke moves all the bloody tools onto the bloody table and stacks the bones, muscle, organs, brain tissue, connective tissue and skin up onto the trolley, ready to be transported. It will be a waiting game, to see who gives up first: those who want to see David finally dead, and those who are desperate to see him remade. For now, he stays in tupperware.

No one sees this footage. No one sees Luke drop behind the door, the trolley finally handed over to an assistant for delivery to a random refrigerated vault. He holds himself so still. He is on the verge of screaming hard enough to fray his own vocal cords. If he moves, he may shatter into pieces. 

Then he stands, and he leaves.]

Addendum from Lab Senior:

This will be the final footage addition to this project. It is being closed. Either #19 dies or we pour him into a vat and wait for him to climb out, whole once more. I made Lucas resign before he did something drastic. His exit bonus is enough to put his family into a Hawaiian villa and shunt his children through Ivy League colleges. All he has to do is keep his mouth shut and not fall to pieces. 

#19 will be our first long-term resident. Keeping him contained will cost less than these trials. The bureau can come for my fucking ass. I don’t give a fuck. They gave me an impossible task. I can only hope that they will fund my lab whilst running Phase 6. They didn’t point out the small print where I’d written that it’ll be another 60-70 years, so I have reason to hope. This boy might be unkillable, but he does age. Time might be his only weakness. 

I will see his heart finally stop beating, so help me God. Let this nightmare not be in vain.

[tellnocturne]

A simple email recruitment:

From [CENSORED] to Nathaniel Fyrwrit, 02/02/2014.

A very important opportunity has presented itself. Surely nothing can go wrong.

[tellnocturne]

The Most Honest and Trustyworthy Academic

Meet Dr Irene Sachs, a master of psychological manipulation, researching myths and nurturing obsessive tendencies. If you need access to an obscure journal article, a proof-reader or someone to remind you of why you are worthless, Irene is regularly available.

Learn more about Irene here!

[tellnocturne]

Enjoy creating horror? Come join us!

Welcome to Nocturne!

This is a collaborative horror-themed collection, where we prioritise misery, nastiness, grief, pain and all things monstrous.

What is a collection? A single place built to contain similar things! A creative collection endeavors to feature and foster creative skills. Nocturne is no different.

The aim of this collection is to:

a) be a space for horror artists and writers to gather and create

b) be an interface for people to get to know characters and creatures outside of mainstream horror media

c) collaborate and contribute to future zines and events run by Nocturne

d) build skills, connect socially and professionally

e) immerse audiences and collaborators in horror!

If you'd like to join us, advertise your character(s) and get to know other horror-themed creators, check @tellnocturne's pinned post for the character submission form or check it out here.

Love,

Nocturne.

[tellnocturne]

Finally Confront Them Face-to-Face!

Ever wanted to go back to an argument you fumbled and tear them to shreds? Is your ailing mother dying and you want one last day with her, just how she used to be? Want to confront someone who was cruel to you or someone you loved?

Maybe Nath can be of help. He's somewhat young but already talented, charismatic and strategic. Partner with him and he'll help you reconnect with your long-lost whoever - and then he'll make sure they never bother you again. If that's what you want. And even if it's what you don't want.

Learn more about Nath here.

[tellnocturne]

Free Local Childcare

Exhaustion making you wish your children didn't exist?

Join dozens of mothers in your local area with Post-Partum Depression who are letting Her look after their children after sun-down. Sleep easy knowing your child is safe, your husband still loves you and your body was never torn asunder.

Call Felicity Floripondio, maternal specialist, today!

[tellnocturne]

Dead People Make Great Listeners

See one of our famous Australia-based psychologists either online or in-person in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne!

Read more about our psychologists here.