"My whole life has been a series of jokes. An unwanted tragedy; a tragicomedy with a shattered stage. But the curtains won’t close, and the conductor—God—says nor commands nary a thing. At times I fear his unshakable determination, and yet I wait; I stumble to my knees, hands folded in reverence and rapture; I ask to die; I will it; nay, I command it—and yet, I am denied, denied, and then denied again.
"When death abandoned me, I sought life instead."
Ao3 Link | Cast | WLB-verse | Previews
"I learned of God, of a savior, in that moment. I felt I had been raptured; as if all of my fantasies had suddenly become real—I, at once, had tangible reason to live—to die—now that I had seen her."
My name is Angela, director and Head Librarian of this Library. There were many things to attend to after our relocation. I apologize for my lateness.
My dear guest, let us take one last look at the books on these shelves.
Chapter 20 - The Reception of Zinnia
This might be relevant later.
Chapter 21 - Deciduous Shadow
TDY 21's title and contents were Easter Egged in the foreword.
Valerian is inadvertently calling Narcissus family.
The poem Valerian quotes throughout TDY 21 is The Suicide Prostitute by Mary Watson. It matches verses to Librarians.
Valerian visits the other Librarians in the order of their focus chapters.
The Suicide Prostitute is mentioned in Art of Suicide, which Valerian picks up in TDY 19.
Anem's portion here is him connecting the feeling in the air to the original Darkest Twilight, accompanied by the Rapture; his EGO is responding to Valerian's potential Distortion.
Lychnis is referring to her own Distortion here, and Carmen's words to her and Viscaria.
The passage she reads aloud refers to Hamlet. Afterwards, she connects Valerian to Ron Brown's thoughts on Hamlet.
Inspired by this comparison, Valerian decides to recreate the scene with Hamlet and his father.
It probably wouldn't have went through with the seance if not for the alcohol.
Whether or not Valerian, as the Undertaker, can truly see/hear ghosts is up to interpretation. Whether or not Chrys' siblings were summoned and spoke to her is up to interpretation as well.
Valerian's conversation with Chrys in TH 13 is referenced here; the impact of that conversation is why it chose Chrys to torment.
Valerian no longer knows better.
Hastur's body being granted via Rose's EGO was hinted at in TDY 1, 10, 14, and 16.
Valerian's Distortion was Easter Egged in the preview art for TDY 21 with it's navy blue reflected in Apocalypse Bird's eye. Previously, the three colors represented the Primary Colors.
Chapter 22 - A Holistic Cure
The chapter title parallel's TDY 1. The holistic cure Valerian needs, is...
Press echoes Rose's words from WLB 10.
Valerian begins to quote Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus... but does not finish the quote. Here's the full thing: But it is bad to stop, hard to be satisfied with a single way of seeing, to go without contradiction, perhaps the most subtle of all spiritual forces. The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live.
Valerian is aware it no longer wishes to die.
They really are similar.
The jumpscare was because I wanted to fuck with you. But actually, Valerian's short hair had been Easter Egged before. Valerian's hairstyle often reflects its emotional state. Braids are a connection to its family, down is indicative of its depression, and cut short is no longer feeling like it needed to cling on or it would lose everything. Freedom.
Chapter 23 - Finale (Today)
Wrecking the Library is a right of passage at this point.
Yesod was projecting on Valerian, and Valerian was projecting on all of the other Librarians; like a guiding light, they felt as if they really could be capable when others like them succeeded.
The true power in Rose's character is how her consideration towards others allows them to open up new doors in their life, that they would have previously thought unreachable... unspeakable, even.
TDY's last line parallels WLB's first. The answer I hoped you would find in the pages of What Lies Beneath Tomorrow's Yesterday was a reason to live.
Works Referenced
The Suicide Prostitute - Mary Watson (Quoted and referenced in TDY 21)
The Art of Suicide - Ron Brown (Quoted and referenced in TDY 21)
Hamlet - Shakespeare (Referenced in TDY 21)
The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus (Quoted in TDY 22)
Narcissus’ Act 2 Insults:
Chapter 21, “Deciduous Shadow"
“I did, and it was weird,” Narcissus says.
Chapter 22, "A Holistic Cure"
“You idiot!” Narcissus yells.
Narcissus snaps, “That’s an oxymoron!” And she turns to the shadows and shouts, “And you’re a moron!"
“You’re such an idiot. A helplessly moronic idiot.”
"Because you’re a fucking liar, and a bad one at that."
“You’re an idiot. You’re such a—you’re such a fucking idiot,” Narcissus hisses, and Ivy glances her way, but doesn’t stop her.
“No, you don’t know!” Narcissus yells, “You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for, you insufferable motherfucker!"
Chapter 23, "Today"
“Oh, you’re full of it!”
Narcissus Insult Count Act 3: 8
Total Insult Count: 34
Most Common Insult: Idiot (10 times), which, still according to Google, is a whopping 29.41%.
Top 3:
Idiot (10 times)
Freak (5 times)
Motherfucker (2 times)
Thank you, dear guest.
Perhaps we'll meet again someday.
-Angela
...
Dear reader,
I hadn’t forgotten about What You Missed Act 3. It simply got buried in my sea of responsibilities.
I wanted to say goodbye. I think this might be the last time I feel the freedom of the echoes in this small space. I don’t know if it meant as much to you as it did to me. But if this really is the last time, I want to be earnest. To be honest.
What Lies Beneath was initially sardonic. I had a multitude of near-death experience at twelve years old that left me unable to walk, partially blind, severely immunocompromised, and deeply nihilistic. My haughty attitude towards the futility of attempting suicide for an escape when there was nothing extended to the opening monologue’s tone: “Don’t even bother trying.”
I gave you bite-sized pieces of my heart for you to swallow. Not enough to choke you, but enough to satisfy the small hope that you might begin to love me. And then, miraculously, you accepted it. You embraced it. You were moved by it.
I have never had dreams, passions, or aspirations. I had no wants or desires. I wanted to die, but I knew the futility of death. I never wanted anything.
But in that moment, I wanted more.
When What Lies Beneath was deemed speakable, I wanted to push it further. I was told that my words had moved you. I wanted to see your eyes light up as you saw your way forward reflected in my silhouette. I wanted to convince you to keep living. I wanted to convince you that nothing was unspeakable.
And somehow, someway, I convinced myself, too. Nothing is unspeakable, even the abyss inside of my chest.
Then, I discovered that with one desire comes a thousand more, and I found my resolve to speak of my deepest shame.
In my grief, I had no time to contemplate whether or not what happened to her was my fault. The truth is, I missed her far too much to think of the ways I could’ve saved her, or prevented her death. When my grandmother passed, those feelings returned.
I want to immortalize them. I want to light your path. I want you to love me. I want to reach the stars.
I want to live.
With one desire comes a thousand more, and I have thousands of things I want to tell you and talk about. Now, and in the future, too. But with each end comes a new beginning, so I’ll leave it at this.
Greetings and salutations. My name is Schrödinger's Poet, and my motto is simple: write, or die trying.
A new journey has begun.
And I would be honored if you came along.
For more information about the Troubled Teen Industry:
The Troubled Teen Industry is a term for the different facilities for "troubled youth” that represents a multi-billion-dollar industry in th
The Troubled-Teen Industry Has Been A Disaster For Decades. It's Still Not Fixed.
Reddit - Dive into anything
Official recruitment announcement coming soon, but for those interested in joining the production as cast or crew, please email [email protected]. The production will be held in Ashland, Oregon. There will be an official pro-shot available in the future.
The upper level of the Twilight Detective Agency is quiet and still when Vivienne wakes; not an unusual occurrence, but not a particularly normal one either.
Content warnings:
None. (Rare...)
She rubs her eyes as she pulls herself out of the large bed Cornelia had prepared for her before her arrival, her tastes noted like the back of Charon’s hand, the canopy draping brushes against her as she stands in front of the mirror on the wall across her bed.
She approaches it. The mirror reflects her room, but not Vivienne herself. She huffs and touches it with her fingers, “I guess it’ll be this way forever.” Despite being unable to see herself, she adjusts her hair and white lace nightgown as if she can, twirling in front of the mirror with a giggle as she peeks her head out of her bedroom.
No Cornelia.
She steps out of her room and floats towards the kitchen; there’s a note on the table written in Cornelia’s signature ink, deep black with freckles of silver shimmer, like the expanse of a night sky. It reads, I’m out getting supplies for a new client’s case. I’ll be back shortly, so don’t run off because you got bored.
Vivienne rolls her eyes and sets the note back down on the table, “Workaholic,” She hums at the sight of the door to Cornelia’s room being cracked open just enough to peer inside. Looking left and looking right, she peeks in, and slowly takes a step past the threshold to the detective’s room.
It smelled like her, and felt like her. The bed was the same size as Vivienne’s, although it wasn’t a canopy, and just had black sheets. The whole room was monochrome, the only colors the vast expanse of books on the shelves and an envelope sitting on her desk.
Vivienne picks it up; she recognizes the seal.
And she recognizes the sender’s name.
Just as she’s about to consider opening the letter, a loud crash from downstairs makes her yelp and quickly flee Cornelia’s room, quietly closing the door behind her. Vivienne’s heart thunders in her chest as she strains her ears for the source of the noise; silence acts as barbed wire around her anxiety. After debating with herself, she makes up her mind and unties the choker’s bow around her neck.
She wraps her hand around her own neck and squeezes, just enough pressure to detach her head from her body. Her body steps back. She keeps it hovering by the top of the stairs as she floats her head down, peering all around the not-so-empty first floor. She doesn’t see anyone yet, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Ectoplasm trails behind her as she stills in front of the bathroom door left ajar. She holds her breath as she stares in, and what she sees is horrifying enough to leave her biting down on her tongue to stifle a scream.
Moss green, scaled flesh; webbed hands and feet, flesh emanating the scent of a flowing river with streaks of blood from dead fish and hungry bears. It was humanoid, but clearly not, with the large shell on its back bearing quite a few scars, revealing shamelessly its history—but what frightened Vivienne the most was the creature’s beak, like a turtle’s, sharp and pointed at the tip of it.
The creature’s wide eyes look up from the flowing sink water rushing atop its hands, the presence behind it almost tangible on its reptilian skin. It turns its head, and through the doorway sees Vivienne’s decapitated head floating in place, the look of fear on both of their faces identical as the two of them scream in sync at the sight of the other.
“Why don’t you have a head?!” The creature screams, frantic as it pulls its dripping hands close to the shell of its chest.
“What’s a kappa doing in our bathroom?!” Vivienne replies.
“Washing my hands! What’s a nukekubi doing in a place like this?!”
“I live here!!”
The door opens and shuts as Cornelia says, interrupting them both, as she steps beside Vivienne’s head. “What the hell are you even doing?”
Vivienne’s body steps down the stairs, holding the choker in her hand. Cornelia sighs and motions her body closer, helping her assistant put her head back on. Vivienne pouts, “It’s good to ward off intruders.”
Cornelia latches the choker and ties the ribbon into a bow as she sighs, “And clients. Speaking of,” She gestures to the kappa still in the bathroom. “This is our new client.”
“Huh,” Vivienne says, examining it with interest now that their fear had in tandem subsided. “I’ve never met a kappa before.”
The kappa studies her with equal interest, “And I’ve never met a nukekubi before, either.”
They stare into each other’s eyes as Cornelia stands between them and stares up at the ceiling while she muses to herself; she thinks of the odd friendship blooming in front of her eyes. It made very little sense, but she supposes that it doesn’t matter. “In any case, you might’ve noticed, but our client does have a very urgent problem.”
“I haven’t noticed anyth—” Vivienne stops short, her eyes going wide as she steps closer to their client, examining its water basin with a growing worried expression. “It’s cracked. That’s really bad, isn’t it?”
“The detective here said she could fix it,” The kappa explains, motioning towards Cornelia, who nods.
“And soon!” Vivienne says, gingerly examining the wound. “Can’t you die from that? Are you in any pain? It certainly doesn’t look good…”
Cornelia shoots her a look, “Vivienne…”
“No, it’s alright,” The kappa says, “She’s right. If this doesn’t get fixed soon, I might die. It’s not like denial will get me anywhere.”
“That’s the spirit!” Vivienne replies, enthusiastically punching her fist up in the air.
“It’s a spirit, alright,” Cornelia mutters to herself as she shakes her head. “I was doing some research to figure out what the best method for repairing the basin might be. Since it’s comparable to a human skull, I think our best chances would be to use something called bone cement; polymethylmethacrylate. It’s used in cranioplasties and other types of surgical fixes.”
“What, like brain surgery?” Vivienne asks, not hiding her surprise. Cornelia can’t help but feel a little proud of her vast amount of knowledge.
“The very same.”
Vivienne tries not to look doubtful and fails, “Don’t you need, um, you know… like, a medical license to do something like that?”
“Oh, do you plan to report me to the yokai health department?” Cornelia asks, fiendishly as Vivienne fills her cheeks with air and sticks her tongue out. “Charon left a lot of medical and research textbooks behind for me, just in case.”
“Were they a doctor?” The kappa asks, making the grave mistake of being hopeful.
Cornelia coughs, “They… changed paths and decided to become an exorcist, instead.”
“They quit because it was too hard, didn’t they.” Vivienne asks, deadpan.
“No,” Cornelia insists, quick to jump to their defense, “That’s not why. They said that in terms of serving humanity, healing has a much lower tolerance for failure, so they… decided to… pursue…” She trails off.
“So…” The kappa starts, “They quit because it was too hard…”
“In any case,” Cornelia says, “While I get the polymethylmethacrylate ready, Vivienne, will you…” She trails off, eyebrows furrowing as if she hadn’t decided the end of her sentence when she’d started it.
Vivienne salutes, “Kill time until then? Got it!” She turns back to their client, “Not to brag, or anything, but I’m really good at doing that.”
Although Cornelia isn’t entirely sure how she’s meant to respond to that, she simply nods, and says, “Thank you, Vivienne.”
Vivienne doesn’t budge, a smile still resting on her lips. She extends her hand. Cornelia sighs, stares at the ceiling, reaches into her pocket and plucks a few bills from her wallet to hand to Vivienne. “Please be careful.”
She looks excitedly over at their client, “We’re going to hit the town.”
As they walk down the streets, the kappa leans over to look at Vivienne, walking with a pep in her step. It asks, voice quiet as it looks around at all of the people around them, “Is this really okay?”
“Unless you aren’t feeling well and want to go back,” Vivienne says, “It’s long before Twilight Hour, so they won’t be able to notice you. They’d fall over if you pushed them, so don’t do that.” Her eyes whisper uncertainty, "Will you be okay with your water basin cracked?”
“As long as it doesn’t break and spill more than this.”
“So no roller coasters. Got it.” She taps her finger against her chin, “There’s a bathtub upstairs, but Cornelia doesn’t let any clients upstairs. She’s got a lot of opinions on ‘work life balance’ for someone who insists we stay open twenty-four hours a day,” Vivienne waves her hand, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t get creative. It’s no river, but a miniature swimming pool has got to be worth something, right?”
“Oh…!” The kappa says, fervently nodding its head, careful to not spill anymore in its basin than it had already lost, “That’s a good idea. I’ve never thought of that,”
Vivienne clenches her fists, enthusiastic as she bounces down the street. As they pass shops and storefronts, food trucks and stalls, Vivienne pauses in the center of the sidewalk they’re headed down and looks all around her. “Something smells good.”
The two of them follow the scent, and eventually stop in front of a small food truck, with a few people behind the window a man was sitting in. He waves at Vivienne when she approaches. “The menu’s right above you there. Let me know if you need help with anything, or have any questions.”
“Thank you!” Vivienne chirps, as she peruses the menu from a distance far enough they can quietly speak to one another without being heard. “What kind of things can you eat, anyways? I can really only eat human food during the day, but I can manage at night sometimes if I force it, or if I’m really hungry.”
“Well, as far as human foods,” It counts on its webbed fingers, bending them at the first joint, “Cucumber, eggplant, soba, pumpkin…” It shrugs. “A lot of the folks from these rivers like natto, but I can’t stand it.”
“Me either!” Vivienne says, with a gasp. “Neil likes it, but I really think she’s lying; every single time she eats it, she insists it’s good for you, whatever, but I’ve never once heard her say she’s eating it because it tastes good.”
“It tastes like some other things I eat,” the kappa jokes. It turns to see Vivienne’s expression; she isn’t making one. She turns her face away with a laugh.
“Well, that happens, but this stand does have something you can eat, so let’s get some. I don’t know what I want to eat, though… meat sounds pretty nice. Well, it’s all on Cornelia, anyways.”
The kappa watches as she casually orders. It steps by her side and speaks when the man at the window steps away for a moment, “How can they see you?”
Vivienne replies in a low voice only it can hear, “I never died in the typical way. My body’s still that of a human’s.” She adds, as an afterthought, “For the most part.”
“You don’t hate humans?” It asks.
Vivienne steps up to the window again to take their order. The yokai can’t see the face she’s making from this angle, but listens carefully for when she says, “A manageable amount. Thank you, it looks delicious!” She passes the take out container to it and opens her own. They eat as they walk. “What about you? Actually, this seems like a good time to ask. What happened to your basin to make it break?”
“I don’t hate humans,” The kappa starts, “But I don’t particularly like them, either. I know other kappa who do, or at least who feel inclined to hassle humans at every possible opportunity. And, of course, I know some others who found ones to pledge their loyalty too. It seems like a dime a dozen, if you ask me, when it comes to humans.” It punctates its words with a loud crunch of the cucumber salad Vivienne had ordered for it. “As for what happened…
“A cat came out from the dark, near where the river I’m from. It attacked me.”
“It attacked you?” Vivienne asks, her voice colored with disbelief, she frowns, “Are you sure it wasn’t just scared?”
“I’m starting to think that has to be the case. It might’ve heard my splashing and had no idea what it was. I’ve always had trouble with animals that were on the spiritually sensitive side…”
“I know what you mean,” Vivienne sympathizes as she bites off a chunk of the barely cooked steak skewer she’s gnawing at, “Most dogs can’t stand being around me, or even worse, they try and use my limbs as some sort of battery powered chew toy! And it’s such a pain getting my limbs back afterwards, because then I have to wait for them to heal…”
“They probably like it more because it’s organic.”
Vivienne nods, “But they cower in fear when Cornelia’s around, so I haven’t had that problem in a while.”
“I wish I could talk to animals. It feels like this whole thing could’ve been avoided otherwise.” It polishes off the rest of the cucumbers. Vivienne claps a loose wrist onto its shoulder.
“It can’t be helped, right? Let’s get going and try to find the pool. Cornelia’s probably going to yell at us if we show up after she’s finished with her preparations.”
“She’s quite the interesting character,” The kappa says as they continue to walk, “Although less strange than the other person I met last night.”
“Who?” Vivienne asks.
“I think Detective Mori called it the Undertaker. It found me while on a walk. It was far from my understanding to riddle out what it might be. For a moment, I almost thought it was human.”
She shrugs, “I don’t know. The last time I asked Cornelia about it, she dodged the question. Maybe she didn’t know either?”
The odd pair continue on their merry way, unfettered by the many eyes on Vivienne, a certainly not short woman in seasonally inappropriate heels and a white gown walking proudly through the streets. They stop in front of a pet store, and the kappa stills in the entryway, eyes going wide with shock and betrayal as it looks at Vivienne.
“What?” She asks, “It’s not like we’re going to sell you to the pet store. I remember, last time we came here to look at the hamsters, there was one of those inflatable dog pools in the corner somewhere. And it’s out of season, so maybe we’ll get it on sale!” She rubs her hands together, nefarious.
The kappa enters the automatic doors, wordlessly threatening to leave Vivienne outside. With a yelp, she follows it in. The pair glance around and then back at each other. They both shrug, and Vivienne squints with her hand over her forehead like a visor, “Well, let’s keep an eye out on it. It’s one of those things that’s just shoved in a corner somewhere.”
“How common is that?” It asks.
“Excitedly more than you’re expecting.” Vivienne leads them both through the store, curiously wandering down aisles to peer in at the cages and badly kept-fish; the kappa clicks its beak, a sharp clink that rattled the glass. “That bad, huh?”
“Bad doesn’t even begin to explain it,” The kappa says with a sigh as they step out of the fish semi-rectangle and down an aisle they’ve gone through four times. It looks over at Vivienne, wide obsidian eyes like marbles staring owlishly at her, “Should we check again?”
“Maybe we should dig through the clearance aisle again. They could’ve put it in there by now,” Vivienne mumbles, peering at the shelves again. A blonde woman with equally tanned as sunburned skin passes down their aisle. She picks through a row of refrigerated dog food when Vivienne catches her eye, “Oh! Um, hi.” She giggles.
“Are you looking for something?” The woman asks. Her voice is as sweet as her face is; it has a distinct domestic corner to it, the kind of kindness that feels like freshly baked cookies. She smiles.
“Oh, um… do you know where to find those dog pools? Like the inflatable ones you can keep in your backyard?” Vivienne asks. The woman hums and leads them down to the dog beds and bends down to rifle through them with a thoughtful expression on her head. After a few moments and the crinkle of cardboard, she pulls out an inflatable pool with a damaged cardboard box, and a sale tag atop it. Vivienne beams, “This is perfect! Thank you!”
“Of course,” The woman nods, “Ah…” She glances towards another aisle and motions at them to stay where they are, and quickly returns with a reptile skin oil. “This might do you some good, too.”
Try as they might, Vivienne and the kappa miss the incredibly obvious, Vivienne chirping a thank you as they make their way to the register to pay for their things, and then with haste back to the Twilight Detective Agency.
“The chemical reaction starts as the two components meet, you know,” Cornelia says, as they walk in the door. “It’s good I figured you’d take a while, or else I would’ve just wasted—Vivienne, what is that?”
“A dog pool,” She answers. “I figured, it isn’t going to use our bath, and I’m sure it’ll be easier to do the cranioplastic like this!”
“Cranioplasty,” Cornelia corrects, unable to help herself. She glances at what their client’s holding in its webbed hands, “And what’s that?”
“Oh, it was a recommendation from a woman at the pet store!”
Cornelia face twitches. She sets down the spatula in her hand, and says, voice measured and slow, “And she suggested it because…?” She lets them finish the sentence, arms crossed over her chest as she waits for them to catch up.
“I suppose because it’d feel nice?” The kappa guesses. It seems to look forward to it, a small smile lurking on its beak. Cornelia sighs.
“A passerby in the pet store said to you,” She gestures at Vivienne, “Said that you,” she motions towards the client, “Might need oil for your skin. Please tell me you see the problem there.”
The two of them stare at Cornelia, back to each other, and then Cornelia again. Vivienne tilts her head as she asks, “What’s the matter, detec—” she trails off, her hand rising to her mouth as she gasps, and then giggles; an attempt at faux innocence. “Um… oops?”
Cornelia buries her head in her hands. “You said you met this woman in the pet store? Was there anything noteworthy about her?”
“Is it something we should be worrying about?” Vivienne asks. Cornelia shakes her head.
“Probably not. But it would be a good idea to keep track of who can and can’t see spirits, so I’d like more details on her whenever you remember them.”
“Roger that!” Vivienne says, as she artfully changes the subject. “In any case, we shouldn’t delay the treatment any longer! Our client here is so haggard, and it couldn’t possibly wait another second!”
Cornelia shakes her head, “You’re full of it…”
They set the pool outside, and Vivienne inflates it and fills it with water while Cornelia prepares the polymethylmethacrylate. She empties the contents of a tube-shaped liquid into a bowl, and quickly empties a packet of powder into it. She mixes it in quick, firm strokes as she draws the spatula in and out of it, scraping the remnants of powder into the liquid as they merge together, closely examining it before huffing out a sigh. She tests it with the tip of her gloved hand.
When the green cement doesn’t adhere to her glove, she nods and presses the tip of her finger in it again, to check. Vivienne helps their client get steady in the pool as Cornelia kneads the cement, folding a circle in half, kneading, and folding it again until it no longer sticks to itself, the cement instead pulling open.
She furrows her eyebrows as she begins to scrape it into the gap between the cracks of the kappa’s basin. She fills in each splinter and gently runs the side of her spatula against it to smooth it out, level it to the rest of the basin atop its head. “I’m going to shape it now. It only takes ten minutes to harden after it’s applied, so you won’t need to wait too long. How are you feeling right now?”
“I’m not sure, but I feel relaxed. It’s not the same sense of fear I felt before, the lingering knowledge that I was going to die.” Its eyes close, relaxed as Cornelia continues to work the cement into the cracks.
“That sounds like good news to me,” Cornelia says, with a smile. She finishes quickly, scraping the remains of the cement against the paint palette she was pulling it from. She taps it against the palette, and a metallic clink makes both the kappa and Vivienne gasp with glee at the sound. “I think we’re done. Why don’t you try standing and carefully—carefully—see if it’ll spill. If it doesn’t, we can consider the procedure a success. Don’t go doing anything reckless, though. I’ll fix it if it happens again, but if it’s just a few days from now I’ll—”
“Wow,” The kappa breathes out as it stands, tilting its head to the side as a smile blooms on its beak. “Thank you,” It says, turning towards Cornelia as tears well in its eyes. “You saved my life. Thank you.” It bows, as low as it can, without disturbing the newly repaired basin on its head.
Their client’s goodbye is tearful as it walks out into the sentence, waving frantically at a sniffling Vivienne. The kappa calls out, “I’ll see you again someday! Thank you for saving my life!”
“Come on, Vi,” Cornelia says, taking Vivienne by the arm, “Let’s go back inside.”
Cornelia stirs to the sound of commotion outside. She sits up with her eyes closed and wanders to the kitchen window, curious as to what might be making such noise. She finds her answer when she finally opens her eyes to see Vivienne and their client from yesterday playing in the inflatable pool. It’s full of water and sliced cucumbers.
Vivienne detaches her arm to gain advantage in their apparent water gun fight; she raises it well above the kappa’s reach and squirts it with water while giggling devilishly. Their once-client protests, clumsily clutching the water gun between its webbed fingers, “Mistress! That’s cheating!”
She throws her head back in laughter, “It’s my biological advantage!” As she’s about to fire another round of water at the kappa, her head turns and catches Cornelia’s eye. “Hi, Cornelia! Good morning.”
The kappa gives her an enthusiastic wave, water splashing a spluttering Vivienne as it does, “Good morning, master!”
Cornelia snorts, and although it can’t hear her, says, “Master, huh? I don’t think I deserve that loyalty just yet.” But she gives them a small, sleepy wave and shortly thereafter joins them outside, insisting that she’s just checking on how the bone cement settled.
And if they don’t believe her, well, they don’t say a word about it.
A blonde haired woman motions a stray cat closer as she softly clicks her tongue, shaking a bag of treats in her left hand, “Here, kitty-kitty… are you hungry? I’ve got some treaties for you—ah!” She flinches back when the cat kisses and lunges at her, just barely grazing her cheek. The front door swings open, and a man strides out to stand by the woman’s side.
“Are you alright, love? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” She says, looking back in the direction the cat fled in. She sadly shakes her head. “It must’ve been frightened. No cats should be outdoors,and especially not in this season. It’s only getting colder and colder, isn’t it… poor things.”
Although she doesn’t see it, the man narrows his eyes as he scrutinizes her. The color of her eyes, the shape of her ears; her pink lips and white teeth. Her hair was soft, and her eyes were warm, but…
“Come on. Let’s get back inside. It is getting cold.” He gently entwines their hands together and pulls her back inside to their warm home.
A cat pitters down the street, tail perked all the way up as it scales the side of a fence to walk atop. The setting sun cast the orange cat’s rays scattering across the expanse of trees nearby them; when the moon swallows the daylight, the cat slinks into the shadows and emerges no longer ochre but obsidian, a tremendously poofy tail flicking triumphantly behind it as it disappears into the night like any other cat.
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Twilight Hour 04:00 is currently available on Patreon.
Vivienne: Do you think I should try orchid syrup next time?
Cornelia: Didn’t she say you didn’t need to bring anything? Oh, and… welcome to Twilight Corner, where Vivienne and I tell you a little bit about the cases we handle at the Twilight Detective Agency.
Vivienne: Today’s case was pretty sad, huh? You said it was called a tatarimokke?
Cornelia: That it is. Tatarimokke are the spirits of a child who died young and loved, and went on to possess the body of an owl. Unlike some other yokai, these don’t often mean harm.
Vivienne: But there are exceptions to every rule, aren’t there?
Cornelia: Quite so. Not every child dies loved, and those that don’t hold a heavy hatred for the living. Those who do set out to curse the hand that strangles them. It doesn’t ever end well.
Vivienne: Which means that it’s extra good it ended well this time!
Cornelia: Right. It’s good when things work out as well as they can. Well, that’s all the time we have. See you next week. Until then, remember. The shadows might be more than a trick of the light. Bye for now.
I really like Twilight Corner. But then again, I love my interludes. Well, I'll see you Thursday for 03:00's preview.
-Schrödinger's Poet
Twilight Hour 03:00 and 04:00 are currently available on Patreon.
The sun has long since set, but Cornelia and Vivienne still remain in the Twilight Detective Agency’s first floor. The lights out front are on, white shining through the windows, even when the rest of the world is winding down to end their day.
Content warnings:
Child death (separate from other warnings)
Child abuse
Murder
Dismemberment
Vivienne takes an experimental sniff at what she’s busying herself with; lavender and sugar syrup, attempting to make a coffee flavoring. Her nose wrinkles up. “It smells like perfume…”
“How long did you…” Cornelia trails off, “Marinate it?”
“Don’t say marinate,” Vivienne replies, with a pout. She takes a sip. “I guess it’s not that bad.” She pours about a tablespoon into her mug, and then offers a sip to Cornelia, who raises an eyebrow but takes it regardless. “If there aren’t any customers tomorrow, I want to look around and go shopping. We’ve only gone out for groceries…”
“You don’t need permission.” Cornelia says, handing Vivienne’s coffee mug back to her, “You can come and go as you please.”
“Well, yeah, but I need money if I’m going shopping. This place,” She gestures to the stairs leading to the second floor, “Is about as decorative as a hotel. You hadn’t even bought a rug, but I’m dead. It’s not like my parents felt like leaving me behind a trust fund or something.”
“Good point.” Cornelia replies, hoping that’s the end of it.
Vivienne, naturally, continues, “It’s not like you’re doing this for money, anyways.”
“Right. It’s my duty.”
She sighs and wraps her hands around her mug, “What are our hours, anyways? Can’t we just go before opening tomorrow, since we close so late?”
Cornelia sheepishly mutters, “We’re open 24 hours.”
Vivienne doesn’t hide her disdain, “Why? That’s crazy.”
“Half of our customer base are yokai, and the other half are dealing with them. I don’t think a 9-to-5 is going to work here. Besides, I’m not human. It’s not like I need to sleep.”
Vivienne feels herself frown at Cornelia’s insistence, and reaches out to brush her fingers against her cheek. “You are, though, in this form. You won’t last if you keep going like this, pushing yourself and pushing yourself. Life is sacred, you know. You only get one, and once it runs out…”
Cornelia prepares her response when a voice interrupts, the door to the Twilight Detective Agency opening and closing with a soft click. “Alas, not everyone can claim such a luxury.”
The pair turn to see the Undertaker, standing in the doorway of the office with two women neither of them recognize. They look similar enough to be related, and based on their ages, seem to be mother and daughter.
The Undertaker continues, “And to others, it is a heavenly curse. I’ve brought you a client. One of mine.” It gestures to the younger woman, her shoulders tense as she keeps her hands folded in front of her lap. The older woman wraps her arm around her daughter as a cavernous sorrow dims her expression.
Vivienne looks between them before she raises a hand to her mouth, her voice quiet and fractured as she whispers, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The older woman glances Vivienne’s way as she speaks, and she squints at her, not out of judgment but thought, as if she was trying to click the pieces together, searching for something, searching for a memory in the recesses of her mind. Her lips part, as if she’s about to speak, when Cornelia asks,
“Would you tell me more about the problems you’ve been experiencing?”
Vivienne cuts in, her voice with an edge of forced cheer, “And would you like anything to drink? Coffee, tea, water… I just finished a batch of lavender syrup if you’d like that, as well!”
The younger woman glances at her mother, who nods, “We’d love some. Thank you.”
Vivienne smiles at them both as she walks to their coffee station in the corner. She catches the Undertaker’s eye, who nods at all of them and announces, “Now that your consultation has begun, I’ll take my leave.”
“Do you want anything before you go?” Vivienne asks. It wordlessly stares, eyes tracing the counters.
“Do you have any pastries?”
Cornelia takes a seat across the clients as the Undertaker leaves, a bag with two pastries hanging from its arm. As the door shuts behind it, Vivienne asks, “I wonder who those are for? It really doesn’t seem like the Undertaker eats.”
“Probably for Narcissus and Ivy,” Cornelia answers, pulling out a small notebook and her fountain pen. “That’s just the kind of person the Undertaker is. In any case, I apologize for the delay. You can start whenever you feel ready.”
“Several months ago,” The young woman starts. Her hands are shaking. She takes a breath, “My son…” Her voice wavers. She takes a breath, but it doesn’t come. Her mother reaches out for her, a hand resting soothingly on her shoulder as she rubs comforting circles with her palm. “Ever since then… things have been strange. Little things. Little things, but they…” She shakes her head.
“Strange how?” Cornelia asks. The woman looks over at her mother, and she gives an assuring nod. The woman continues, although hesitant.
“Sometimes, even when I’m sure I’ve closed it—shut and locked it—I’ll walk into my son’s room and find the window open. It’ll be… cracked, or wide open. Even when I’m absolutely certain I’ve closed it, and there’s a similar situation with the light in his room. In the middle of the night, I’ll pass through the halls and—see it on, and it’s almost like—” A tear slips down her cheek, and then another. She cries as she speaks, “It flickers like a candle. But it’s mostly in the middle of the night. There are a few other small things, strange noises and an uptick in critters outside, but I’ve been finding odd things in the house.”
She opens her bag and pulls out a ziplock bag of miscellaneous items. Cornelia slips her gloves on, and peers into the bag. “A feather… a few polished coins, and…” She pulls one of the items out. It’s in pieces. “A broken child’s toy.”
It was a wooden plane with broken parts. Although it had wings, it couldn’t fly far.
“I’ve found a lot of others like it. Not this exact toy, but…” She shakes her head as she examines it, watching as flecks of dirt fall from it when Cornelia picks it up. “They don’t seem new. At first I thought it might be… a cat, or some sort of animal, because I just… can’t tell where any of these toys came from.” She takes the bag back, and tucks it away again with a soft sigh.
“Are you able to help us?” The mother asks. Cornelia looks between them.
“If nothing else, I can most certainly investigate the issue. Thank you for trusting me with this. When would be a convenient time for my assistant and I to investigate the site of the problem? We’re happy to organize around your schedule.” The pair say nothing, exchanging a restless look. Cornelia takes a chance, “We’re available today.”
“If it isn’t inconvenient for you.” The daughter says, her voice soft.
“Oh, no, not at all. This is what’s expected of a good detective. It’s no trouble at all. Right, Cornelia?”
“She’s right,” Cornelia says, with a nod, “If there’s nothing else to note, we can get going right away.”
“Of course,” The daughter says. The mother helps her stand.
“Thank you for the tea,” The mother smiles at Vivienne. “The lavender syrup was delicious.”
Vivienne offers her a beaming smile as they take their leave to their house, several streets down from the cemetery.
“I really appreciate you coming out here on such short notice, even if it is part of your profession,” The mother says, words punctuated with a comforting squeeze on her daughter’s shoulder, “I’m sorry that my son in law isn’t home and here with us yet, but he should be soon, if you’d like to make yourself comfortable in the meantime. May I offer you a cup of tea? If it wasn’t nearing such a late hour, I would offer you coffee.”
“The Detective over here is a real caffeine fiend, I’ll tell you that!”
The caffeine fiend in question cuts Vivienne off with a curt, “We’re here to investigate, so you don’t need to go out of your way for us, or anything.”
Vivienne shoots her a warning look, but it goes either ignored, or unnoticed. Instead, the mother says “Please. We don’t get many visitors these days. I’m sure you can imagine why.”
The two of them keep their glances around the kitchen subtle. The room was well loved and lived in, but there was a blanket of melancholy draped atop it, punctuated by the scent of blooming calla lilies and flush morning glories. Their darkest night was an inescapable memory; even the walls seemed to be mourning alongside their inhabitants. Sympathy cards stood in a line like soldiers on the counters, and a stack of fruit steadily rotted away in an overfilled basket.
“No one knows what to say. It’s far from their fault, but,” The mother’s eyes glaze over with a glassy sheen as she looks around the room, “It can still get awfully lonely for my daughter, son-in-law and I.”
“Okay,” Cornelia says, her voice solid, but small. “We’ll both have a cup. Thank you for your hospitality.”
“Thank you!” Vivienne chirps, as she reaches her hand into Cornelia’s back pocket, the latter whipping her head around to stare incredulously at her assistant.
“What are you—”
“You’re carrying my lavender syrup,” Vivienne explains, as she pulls the small, thankfully sealed tight, bottle from Cornelia’s pocket. It’s labeled in Vivienne’s jagged handwriting; every other letter with the ink skipped as if she lost grip on the pen, or perhaps her hand on her wrist. “I thought, since you seemed to like it…” She doesn’t look at the flowers, but her shoulders fall as if she did, “There’s nothing wrong with a little extra sweetness, right?”
The mother laughs, and the daughter smiles.
“You’re very kind,” The mother says, taking it as she begins to prepare cups of tea for all four of them. “Thank you.”
There wasn’t much to see in their clients’ home. The first floor contained the kitchen, the living room, a bathroom, and a spare bedroom diagonal across a door that led to the backyard. Cornelia’s cursory peek outside hadn’t amounted to much; just a tree in the center of their yard and a small array of a once-garden, their deciduous flowers having given way to the shadows of a winter chill.
From the moment they step on the second floor, Cornelia feels a prickle at her temples, a gyroscope pointing her to the correct direction. Neither the mother nor the daughter speak, they simply watch Cornelia turn, eyes stopping on one of the four closed doors on the second floor. She doesn’t break her gaze from the door as she asks, “It’s that one?”
“Yes,” The daughter says, her voice thin as if she couldn’t take a steady breath, “It’s… strange, to see how quickly you knew. Is there something about it? My son’s room?”
“To a degree,” Cornelia replies.
“How could you tell?” The mother asks, and Cornelia glances up at the ceiling as she puzzles her words together.
“It’s no different from those who have a good nose, or good ears. Have you ever met someone who could take a bite or a sniff of a meal, and pick out each individual ingredient and spice? It’s difficult to explain if you haven’t experienced it yourself, but in the end, it’s no different from tasting notes of pomegranate in wine, putting a name to an indescribable sense. But it isn’t a taste, or a smell, or a sound; it’s a feeling.”
“...I wish I could feel it.” The daughter says, in a voice so small Cornelia and Vivienne almost didn’t catch it. When they look at her, her mother is cradling her in her arms, holding her tightly as if she’ll be pulled away in a high tide current.
“Some of the toys you found…” Cornelia starts, changing the subject as she glances around. Aside from the flickering feeling in the air, it looked and felt no different from any other child’s room; a crib, a changing table, a rocking chair—a dresser, likely full of the child’s clothes, clothes he was meant to grow into, clothes he never would wear. “They didn’t come from here, did they? I can’t say there’s many in this room.”
“Oh,” The mother exclaims, “He had plenty, but they were all kept out of reach. It’s a choking hazard for small children like that, and…”
“He liked to bite just about everything,” The daughter says, “My husband said that he reminded him of his childhood cat. A little orange boy who chewed up just about everything in the house. He—our son—he never got a chance to play with any of his toys. Some of them are in the drawers. The rest are…” She trails off, and shakes her head as her lip quivers.
Cornelia hums as she continues to look around. His presence is far from gone. She slips one hand into her pocket, reaching for her gloves as she begins to think of where she’ll start her investigation; but the mother and daughter’s eyes burn against her flesh. She stills.
Vivienne catches her eye, and says, “I was wondering if you two could show me more about the backyard? We only got a quick peek earlier, so if it isn’t too much trouble, you two could accompany me there?” She doesn’t say, And so Cornelia can investigate here, but Cornelia herself can read it written all over Vivienne’s face, with all the subtlety of a second grader at a talent show.
“Oh, of course…” The daughter says, her voice trailing off. She seems hesitant to leave Cornelia alone in her son’s room, but her mother ushers her down the stairs with promises of tea flavored with sweet lavender syrup; Vivienne accompanies them, and waves goodbye to Cornelia as she shuts the door behind them.
“I’ll find some way to thank her later. For now…”
She takes another look around the room, with more intensity than her earlier glance. This time, she slips her gloves on as she commits the placement of each and every item to memory, so that she can return them to their places when she’s finished.
For now, though, she notes that there wasn’t a speck of dust in the room, but the bed was inmate, a yellow baby blanket messily atop the baby’s bed. She decides to start at the crib. She looks between it and the window; there was a negligible distance between them.
Cornelia hovers her hand over the baby blanket, closing her eyes as she lets the room’s energy wash over her.
Finally, she can feel the tides of her heart begin to rise as the light of the moon pulls her closer and closer to a sense of understanding. She can hear faint laughter; a baby cooing. She pulls her hand away, distracted by a sudden mundane, repetitive sound. The clock strikes twelve, and the rocking chair beside the bed is moving of its own volition. Cornelia touches it, and the direct contact is no different from a gravitational pull; she feels a flickering candlelight warmth on the tips of her fingers, “But it’s not necessarily coming from here…”
She glances around the room, and stops at the dresser, full of seldomly worn clothes and the bud of childhood dreams; toys with teething scars and dried saliva. There wasn’t enough time for autonomy, shame or doubt; only trust, mistrust, and something somewhere in between. Cornelia opens one of the drawers. The next contains about the same.
A stack of unused diapers sits in another drawer, and the one next to it is full of sealed ones and a few cloth diapers. Another held medical records, but nothing from the child’s death. Cornelia figures that the Undertaker might’ve offered to hold onto them until the family was ready; it often cited “the role of the Undertaker” as the reason for the lengths it commonly went to for those plagued by death.
Cornelia’s hand rests on the knob of the last drawer. Brighter than before, this drawer seemed to emanate life, like the sun slowly rising, a new dawn taking over twilight hour. Nestled in blankets was a small teddy bear dressed in overalls.
There’s a distinct scent clinging to it, and although it’s unfamiliar to her, she recognizes it as the scent that filled the room even when he was gone; a time capsule.
“But the presence I feel isn’t coming directly from this, which means…”
There’s a small pocket in the front of the bear’s overalls. Cornelia slowly reaches in, her gloved fingertip touching something smooth; almost velvet-like.
She pulls out a single feather that radiates warmth. With a sigh, she closes her eyes. “So that’s why. The open window, the light, the toys…” Feather in hand, she opens the window and stares out into the dark, her eyes adjusting to the darkness.
And then, she sees it.
There, in the tree.
“Oh,” She says, and steps closer, addressing the figure amidst the branches. “I’m sorry. You must’ve been scared.”
The four of them sit at the table. Their clients hadn’t wanted to discuss Cornelia’s findings until the third member of their family had returned home; he worked late, and the group sipped at their coffees. At first, they’d attempted idle chatter, but the anxiety and unknown had grown too large, and the room fell silent, broken only by a key in the door turning, as the son-in-law returns home.
He sets down his things with an eager impatience and joins them at the table, by his wife’s side, his hand finding hers like it belonged there. When she offers him a sip of her coffee, he takes it.
“Now that all of the family members are present…” Cornelia begins. “I’d like to introduce myself and our agency. My name is Cornelia Mori, and this is my assistant, Vivienne. We represent the Twilight Detective Agency, a private institution that handles the cases of human and yokai alike. And there’s more to our work than whodunits. Our true purpose is to keep balance between the two worlds. The world of humans, and the world of yokai must be kept separate.
“There are some yokai that might benefit humans, there are some that might even befriend them. There are some that cause mischief, and there are some that are worshiped by humans. But by far the most dangerous, is by far the most common: all of the rest. Humans may not be unable to see the yokai around them, but they can see how they affect the world around you, be it flickering lights, new or missing objects—shadows or sounds down the empty hallway—
“And you can see the corpses they leave behind in their wake. Those are the things that happen just out of your sight; from the corner of your eye, from the shadows…”
The son-in-law can barely stay in his seat, “Are you saying that we’re being haunted by something malicious?” He looks as if he has half a mind to cover his wife’s ears lest Cornelia speak a truth she would be better off not knowing.
“No,” Cornelia says. She pulls the feather from her vest’s inner pocket, settling it amongst the toys and trinkets gathered at the table like spoils of war. “I’m reminding you that you’re human. You aren’t being haunted. You’re being watched over by a yokai known as a tatarimokke. When a child dies young and loved, it can take on another form. There are some who inhabit or latch to the form of dolls; zashiki warashi, choupirako… and there are some who take the body of an owl.”
“So you’re saying that our son is—”
“The world of humans and the world of yokai must be kept separate,” Cornelia reminds them, her tone stolid as she eyes them, “But…” Her face softens, and she gestures towards their backyard, and the tree that had overseen the house for generations past, generations to come and go, and then be born again as time passed on, too.
An owl sits, perched in the trees, gazing into the window of his once home.
“It’s getting cold out there, so… it might be okay to leave the window open, every now and then.”
“Thank you,” The mother says, as tears stream down her face. The father squeezes her hand as he cries, too, and the grandmother pulls both of them into her embrace. “Thank you. For telling me that Aiden is still watching over us. He hasn’t forgotten us. He knows that this is his home, now and forever. Thank you. Thank you, detective Mori, Vivienne.”
Cornelia and Vivienne’s clients see them off at the door, their eyes teary and grateful. The mother waves goodbye, the bear kept locked away in a drawer nestled in her arms, the father kissing the top of her head as he thanks them again.
The grandmother, however, follows them out.
“I remember now. You,” She keeps her eyes on Vivienne, who stares back at her with an unfounded, childlike curiosity, “From forty-five years ago… the young girl who was murdered in this town. It was all the news could talk about for weeks, although no one knows about it now. There was hardly a stir when their names were in the weekly obituary recently; the parents who had dismembered their only child. It was so… gruesome, that I simply couldn’t believe it. But seeing you here, now… you’re that girl, aren’t you?”
Vivienne’s expression doesn’t change, but the innocence in her eyes had been smothered. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “It’s true. That is, or I suppose, was, me.”
The grandmother ruefully shakes her head as she takes Vivienne’s hands in hers. “You poor thing. You’re always welcome here. You can come over whenever you’d like. And that lavender syrup you made? It was absolutely delicious. Full of love, it was.”
“Thank you,” Vivienne says, simply. Cornelia can’t tell to which point she’s expressing her gratitude, and she can’t tell if Vivienne even believes a single word coming out of this woman’s mouth, but there was something in her eyes, something in the air surrounding her that compelled Cornelia to speak.
“Are you ready to go, Vivienne?”
And Vivienne looks back at her with such a softness that Cornelia has to turn away. Certain lights were certain danger.
The grandmother offers Cornelia a similar gaze, one of being held, cradled, in arms like home. “You too, detective. The both of you are always welcome here. Keeping balance between the two worlds can’t be easy. If a cup of tea and company helps ease your burdens even slightly… our doors will always be open for you. Thank you for what you’ve done for my family.”
Cornelia sighs, and just can’t help but give in. “Okay. I’ll find some time in both of our schedules to visit you again soon. Thank you for being so hospitable.”
“And I’ll bring more syrups, as thanks! There are other flavors I want to try, and, well,” She trails off, uncharacteristically shy as she fidgets with her fingers.
The grandmother laughs, softly. “You don’t need to bring anything to come here. There’s no admission fee. Just yourselves is all I need.”
Vivienne skips up the porch stairs to the Twilight Detective Agency’s front door, kicking her feet as Cornelia unlocks the door. “They sure were nice, weren’t they? Even in death, it seemed like they loved each other a lot. That’s really nice.”
“Mm,” Cornelia says, by way of reply as she takes a seat at her desk and begins a report on today’s case. When she looks up at Vivienne, she doesn’t see her. She sees a young girl with tears streaming down her cheeks as she sobs, her head detached from her neck, disembodied arms wrapped around her headless body.
“I just wanted them to love me. But I was unlovable from the beginning, looking like this—!”
A figure stands by her side, monochrome, and yet the only drop of color in the girl’s life. █████… you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s them, not you. Loving you is easy.” Eyes soft, they add, “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
All she has to say is, “It’s okay.”
And it should be easy.
But the words don’t come. Instead, she says, staring down at her report as if it had suddenly developed eyes, “Tomorrow morning… We can go shopping. If you want.”
Cornelia couldn’t predict her assistant’s reaction as she lets out a squeal that rattles the coffee mugs across the room. Vivienne all but leaps on her, wrapping her arms around Cornelia as she stiffens up.
But eventually, she relaxes into it, Vivienne’s cold hands a comfort on her skin.
The Undertaker walks through the rainy streets, its veil lifting with the wind to reveal a languid expression, ice blue eyes watching the rain fall as it walks, not noticing a woman walking on the road behind it, steadily sneaking up on it, reaching out with an adipocere coated wrist—
“Have you seen my—” She cuts herself off as she spookily raises her head. “You! You!” She backs away as she begins to walk away in the other direction, quickly putting a vast distance between them as she shouts, “I won’t let you insult me again!”
The Undertaker says as she rushes off, “I wasn’t insulting you. I was just telling the truth… she’s already gone.” It shrugs, and continues walking, paying just as much attention as it did to its surroundings earlier, thinking about nothing in particular as it walks in silence.
A groan breaks the Undertaker out of its apathy as it looks left and right for the source of the sound, stilling its movements until it hears the groan again and follows the direction it came from; below the bridge it was standing on. It leans over the railing and listens, heading down when the sound rings out through the night again, more pained than before.
It finds what was making that noise in the rushing river underneath the bridge. The river flowers, its current embettered by the rain. “The rocks clustered in the river, the rushing of the current, the gloominess in the air,” it continues, speaking to no one in particular, and for a mere moment, in a trick of the light; the Undertaker smiles. “Is quite nostalgic… hm?”
It steps closer, the shadows cast from its umbrella cloaking the creature. It speaks in a hoarse voice as it looks around, checking its webbed palms. “The pain suddenly went away…?”
The yokai turns to see the Undertaker standing behind it, its impassive expression concealed underneath its veil. The creature screams, hand fearfully gripping the cracked basin of life atop its head, voice throaty and raw as it croaks out, “A human… no… whatever you are, stay away from me! I don’t want anything to do with you!”
It punctuates its words with another scream of terror.
The Undertaker stares down at the kappa, and says, with an almost petulant air, “Shouldn’t I be the one screaming?”
About | Cast and Clientele | Schedule
Twilight Hour 03:00 is currently available on Patreon.
Vivienne continues to feed her decapitated head with her free-floating hand, her body reassembling itself like puzzle pieces as Cornelia fills the grave back in. Between bites, Vivienne says, “It doesn’t feel like much time has passed at all.” Her eyes stop on the graves beside hers, eyes narrowing, “How long did it take?”
Cornelia wipes sweat off of her forehead with the back of her hand, smoothing the last of the dirt over the grave. “It probably didn’t feel like long because of the seal. It’s been 45 years.”
Content warnings:
Decapitation
Desecration of corpses
Gore
Vivienne’s expression doesn’t change, “It took them that long, then.” She takes another long look at the graves, as if savoring the sight before beaming at Cornelia, “I bet all sorts of things have happened in the meantime, right?”
Cornelia says nothing, dusting off her hands on her pants as she unzips the body bag, pulling out a white gown with intricate boning and delicately soft silk. Vivienne happily accepts it as she dresses herself, detached hand zipping up the back as she steadies herself on Cornelia’s shoulder while she slips a pair of heels on. “It’s so pretty…! Did you pick it out just for me?”
“I asked what kind of style you liked.” Cornelia coughs, looking away as she says, “I’m glad that you like it. And that it fits properly.”
Vivienne hums, stifling a giggle at Cornelia’s prowess in subtlety. “So, what’s the plan? If you have one, that is.”
“I’m opening a detective agency,” She replies, with no shortage of pride, “For humans and yokai alike.”
Vivienne can’t help herself, “Did you bring me back to life just to make me work?”
Cornelia turns away, extending her hand as if daring rain to fall. It doesn’t, and she nods her head as she gathers what she brought. Vivienne wrinkles her nose up.
“It’s so muddy…” Her face falls as she stares down at her dress and shoes, pristine white, “I don’t want to get it dirty.”
“...can’t you just float?” Cornelia asks, and Vivienne laughs, more sheepishly than she’d intended. They make their way through the cemetery, past rows and rows of graves, the flowers in front of them in varying stages of life and death.”
“It doesn’t seem like much has changed.”
“Comparatively,” Cornelia starts, side-stepping a vase of flowers and cordial offerings, “45 years isn’t much in the grand scheme of things. 45 more, perhaps, but even then the differences would be far from stark. Change is gradual. You don’t notice until you’re chest deep in it.”
“What about you?” Vivienne asks, “How long have you been…?”
“A little over 20 years, if I had to guess.”
“Woah,” She exclaims as she lands gently on the ground, now that the road ahead of them is finally clear. The office they’ve stopped in front of is clearly occupied, the light flickering gently in the window, casting a single shadow; a figure writing something down, and then lifting their head.
Cornelia pulls the door open, and they pass through the main office, an individual clad in a black, almost Victorian-looking mourning gown waits for them. The Undertaker greets them with a nod, setting down its umbrella. “Did you put all of the dirt back?”
“I did,” Cornelia responds.
It nods again, and rises to its feet, “You must be the one who was buried.” It extends its hand, “Greetings. I am this cemetery’s Undertaker. The guardian and watchful eye of the dead. You may not recall it well, but I was the one who handled your funeral.”
“Oh, really? You’ve aged well, then!” Vivienne replies, taking its hand. It detaches when they exchange a firm handshake. “My name is Vivienne. I’m Cornelia’s friend.”
Cornelia doesn’t deny it, but avoids the Undertaker’s gaze.
“I see,” It says. “So you’re the ‘assistant’ that she was referring to.”
“Ah… for the ‘detective agency?’” Vivienne asks. The Undertaker nods as it sits back down. Vivienne continues, turning to Cornelia, “Have you already asked Charon about all of this?”
“I have.” Cornelia replies, the look in her eyes like a cold flame, “They said that I could do as I pleased.”
She considers this, and hums, “Well… maybe it’ll still be interesting.”
“In any case,” The Undertaker interrupts, “Congratulations on being alive again.” Its eyes trace the length of her body, shameless and impassive, staring plainly at the stitching that kept her together, “To some degree.”
Vivienne laughs. “I guess so. Thank you for the congratulations.”
The so-called “Detective Agency” wasn’t very far from the cemetery. It was a red building with a fenced porch, and an array of lights that kept the place alit through any and all hours; like a lighthouse for the residents of the town to cling to in the roaring waves of the supernatural.
Vivienne turns back. The cemetery is still in view. “Awfully convenient, isn’t it?”
“I figured it would be the easiest when it was time to come and get you.” She unlocks the door and gestures for Vivienne to enter. She stops in the doorway, in idle awe of the sight in front of her eyes.
The center seemed to be where the meetings would take place—a two-seater couch across a studious looking seat for one, a redwood coffee table in between them. To the left, in the corner was a short line of counters with some spare decor and a well-used coffee machine. There was also a small room with a half-cracked open door; Vivienne could see a toilet and sink.
To the right was a desk, cluttered with papers and envelopes strewn across the desk. A newly opened inkwell sat in the center next to a capped fountain pen and an ink-stained napkin.
There were stairs leading upwards, and Vivienne could only assume that was where the actual living space was.
“Pretty swanky place you’ve got here…” She says, approvingly. Cornelia tempers her expression carefully, but still seems proud. Vivienne laughs. “So… human and yokai alike? How’s that going to work?”
“I can’t imagine it’s that hard to understand,” Cornelia replies, a heavy handed scoop of reproach in her eyes, “When a case is brought to me, I investigate the location and happenings. After that, I assess what needs to be done to bring balance back between the two worlds.”
“You still have to serve humanity?”
Cornelia eyes her, “Our duty never ended. But in time, the course may be different. As long as—”
“—balance is restored.” Vivienne finishes, with a soft smile, “So how many cases have you got since you started?”
“Your room is upstairs,” Cornelia says, turning away as she makes her way up the stairs. “It’s next to mine. I’m sorry if it’s a little small, but you can do whatever you’d like with it in the meantime. Let me know if there’s something that you want and don’t know how to get. I’ll do my best to find it.”
So, no cases, Vivienne thinks, but doesn’t say, as she quietly follows an intensely neutral Cornelia to their living quarters upstairs. She can’t help but whisper underneath her breath as she turns back to the space behind her. “...I wonder if it’ll be alright?”
Still, if nothing else, it certainly looked like a detective agency.
Vivienne stumbles on the answer to her question quite quickly, when morning greets them and they’re on their fifth hour of the third day of waiting for something or someone to show up. Cornelia snuffles through old newspaper articles, her pen breaking the silence as she marks the paper every now and again.
Vivienne watches the clock, and says, “So… haven’t really had any customers yet, have we?”
There’s a brief stretch of quiet, before Cornelia responds, “Clients. Technically, they’re clients. Not customers.”
“Haven’t really had any clients yet, have we?”
A firm knock at the door interrupts Cornelia’s attempts to defend herself, the patient pair both turning their heads at the sound. Vivienne covers her mouth with her hand, a soft gasp slipping from her lips as she whispers, “No way.”
Cornelia opens the door, revealing a pair of women. A short blonde sporting a sour expression and a tracksuit jacket, her arms crossed over her chest as if they’ve done something wrong by merely being in her presence. The woman next to her had a soft, tempered expression, her long brown hair tied into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She opens the door wider to let them in with a curt nod of acknowledgement, “Narcissus, Ivy. Good afternoon.”
She gestures for them to sit as they enter, Cornelia taking her seat across from them. Vivienne stands behind her, hands folded in her lap. She leans in to ask, “Do you know them?”
“We work together. At the cemetery.”
Vivienne can’t help her confusion, “Why would you work there?”
Cornelia wrinkles her nose up, an incredulous expression on her face as she says, “What? How else would I have bought you that dress? I needed a job.”
Vivienne proudly sports a particularly annoying smirk, “So, what you’re saying is… they’re not clients?”
Cornelia sets her jaw, contemplating a reply when the blonde cuts in, raising her hand. “Actually, something odd’s been happening at the cemetery ever since you left. Bossman told us to ask you about it.”
“Ohh,” Vivienne exclaims, clapping her fist into her open palm, “The Undertaker.”
“You’ve come to the right place,” Cornelia assures him. “We serve humans and yokai alike.”
Narcissus and Ivy lead them through the cemetery, stopping in front of a line of desecrated graves. What appears to be duct tape sections the areas off, a mess scattered all about. The graves have been dug up, and their once corpses littered the ground.
The two clients turn their faces away, but Cornelia pulls out a pair of gloves from her back pocket as she examines what remains of the bodies. Their stomachs seem to have been torn open, their intestines violently yanked out, chunks of them missing. The flesh of their necks had been brutalized, as if by rows and rows of razor sharp teeth.
There were lines on the shoulders and hips, deep gashes that betrayed the memory of force, behind held in place; the decaying corpses disrespected as they were devoured, meticulously pulling the meat off the bone; a hallmark of being starved for centuries, awaiting even the remnants of a meal; flecks left behind at the bottom of a dumpster.
Cornelia adjusts a decapitated head, narrowing her eyes as she takes in the teeth marks. Their head had been bitten off and gnawed at like a chew toy. She measures the indents left in the corpse’s decaying flesh; when her pinky brushes too firmly against it, the skin sinks in like weighted down sand. “The good news is, I know exactly what we’re up against, and I know how to take care of the problem you’ve been having.” She rises to her feet as she removes her gloves, “The bad news is that we need a corpse.”
“Where in the hell are you planning to get one?” The blonde asks. “It’s not like you can use one of the ones in the cemetery.”
“Narcissus is right,” Ivy cuts in, “The Undertaker doesn’t let anything disturb their rest.”
“Technically,” Cornelia says, “I was thinking we could use a very particular corpse from this cemetery.”
Vivienne, curiously picking through the gruesome remains of the corpses scattered across a length of graves, catches Cornelia’s eye, and looks curiously back at her.
The Undertaker’s light flicks on, a lighthouse in the sea of darkness that was the night. The air is still across the cemetery; remembrance like a forgotten note on the tongue. A figure peruses through the graveyard, claws clicking against the ground, sinking into the dirt no different than the corpses buried underneath the surface.
It breathes in a heady breath as it crawls on all fours, nose pressed to the ground as it sniffs the dirt, beginning to dig as a river of saliva pools out of its mouth. “A shallow grave…” It cackles, rubbing its stomach as it cracks open the casket as one would an egg, “That damn Undertaker has finally lost its touch…”
The wood splinters gashes into its flesh as it pulls the limp corpse out. She felt warm, fresh; delicious. It sniffs up the length of her arm into her neck, fangs glinting underneath the starry sky above them as it groans with relief, finally, finally about to eat, finally about to satiate a need abandoned to such a degree that it was almost forgotten; so eager that it almost doesn’t realize when the corpse moves.
“Do you think that just because it’s been 45 years, it’s no longer my territory?” Vivienne asks, with a calm smile as she takes the offending yokai’s wrist in a harsh grip. Its eyes widen, reacting too late as Vivienne smashes their foreheads together, one hand tightening around her own neck as the yokai’s head detaches. “Gotcha.”
She reaches out for the wisp of ectoplasm trailing from its neck and grabs hold, swinging their head like a bat against one of the nearby headstones; a grainy crack ringing in its ears as it fumbles out of her grip, slithering out like a snake and flying away, its body left behind. Vivienne dives for it, delivering a swift kick to the center of its sternum, but the body, a mass of limbs, twitches as a layer of ectoplasm pours from its neck, pulling the body into the air as it flings a piece of headstone at Vivienne’s face; she doesn’t dodge in time, and she recoils as the yokai escapes.
“Holy shit!” Narcissus shouts, she and Ivy peeking out from behind the headstone they were hiding behind. Cornelia’s by Vivienne’s side in an instant, gingerly examining the new wound on her forehead with her fingers.
“Are you okay?” Cornelia asks. Vivienne grimaces, but nods. “Good. It got away, but I can still feel its presence somewhere in the cemetery. We have to find it. Do you need help up?”
Vivienne takes her hand regardless, pulling her to her feet as the pair look around for any trace of the yokai they’d lost in the chaos. The cemetery stayed as silent as it was before, but the weight of the air was tangible, grazing against the tips of their fingertips. It’s Ivy who speaks up, pointing to the beacon of light that was Undertaker’s office.
The Undertaker’s shadow, proudly stretching across the window, had disappeared; instead, it was reduced to a pitiful slump, as if it had fallen asleep.
Ivy’s voice betrays her anxieties, “Is it still in there?”
“We’ll check,” Cornelia says, but Narcissus snaps,
“No way in hell you’re leaving us here!”
“I’m not,” Cornelia insists, “Humans die easily, especially at the hands of malicious yokai. I’m not going to leave you alone, and I’m certainly not going to leave you somewhere unsafe. Don’t leave our side. If we separate, find Vivienne. She’ll bring you back to the Detective Agency, and you’ll be safe there. But for now, we have to check on the Undertaker.”
Ivy nods her head, and the four of them make their way to the Undertaker’s office. The light is still on, and the door is uncharacteristically left cracked. Cornelia enters first, Vivienne on her heels; blocking the door from the sight that makes their clients gasp, and stifle their screams.
The Undertaker sits slumped in its office, veil cast aside just enough to reveal its neck; jugular ripped clean with tooth and nail. Cornelia gingerly touches its neck with two fingers. She catches Vivienne’s eye, and shakes her head. “No pulse…” She trails off, examining the scene around them. It was just as fervent and harried as the other crime scenes.
A folded black umbrella sat hooked onto the Undertaker’s desk.
Vivienne appears by Cornelia’s side, peering over at the Undertaker’s corpse and remains. She follows her gaze to the umbrella, “That was your boss, right? I’m sorry.”
“There’s always something underneath the surface,” Cornelia says, adjusting the Undertaker’s veil to cover it properly. She touches the umbrella, just grazes it, really, and feels herself shudder; repelled, or perhaps repulsed. She looks down at her finger. There’s a small burn where a fingerprint would be. “Makes sense to keep it close.”
“What’s the forecast, then?” Vivienne asks.
As if on cue, the window rattles as if plagued by a windstorm. It rattles and rattles, the frame bouncing as the glass threatens to break; Cornelia shouts, grabbing Ivy by the arm as Vivienne, too, pulls Narcissus out of the way as the window shatters, shards and shrapnel scattering across the room like hail. Cornelia leaps to her feet, peering out the window just in time to see the yokai’s trail. She hoists herself up, and leaps out of the window.
“We have to go!” She shouts, and extends her hand to Ivy and Narcissus. The former looks hesitantly at the latter, but Vivienne takes action without another word; she scoops Narcissus into her arms as Ivy takes Cornelia’s hand and pulls her out.
Narcissus thrashes against Vivienne’s hold, “We can’t just leave it there!”
“We’ll come back for it!” Cornelia assures them; this doesn’t stop Narcissus’ flailing, but it does temper it just enough for them to shorten the distance between them and the flighty yokai. The four of them stand amongst graves, the air electric as Cornelia’s eyes dart around, searching for a single sound. Vivienne gingerly sets Narcissus down; she steps beside Ivy, and the pair link their arms, holding onto each other as if it was second nature.
“Vivienne,” Cornelia whispers. “Can you feel it?”
Her expression changes, her kindness melting away like candle wax. All that remains is an untempered fury as Vivienne charges forward, flying towards a grave with rumbling soil—she sinks her claws into the dirt and pulls the yokai out, nails digging into its flesh as she yanks it from its faux slumber.
“You can’t hide,” Vivienne says, each word pronounced, her teeth like a row of razors. “You can give in now. All we want to do is talk.”
“I’m not interested in discussions. Why would I give in—you don’t know what it’s like, starving, praying for even a droplet of blood on my tongue. There’s nothing left of me; I’m skin and bones, no humanity left to be found. And I’m starving. I’m starving!”
It charges at Vivienne, who pulls her torso away from her legs. The yokai’s eyes go wide as it exclaims, “It isn’t just your head?”
“I may be like you,” Vivienne starts, her leg, detached, races towards the yokai; she plants a firm kick to the yokai’s ankle as it hobbles off balance. The pieces of her body click back together as she grabs it by the throat, holding its head in place as she wrenches its mouth open to grip its canines in between her fingers, threatening to tear them out. “But I’m much better than you are.”
The yokai’s words are mumbled between Vivienne’s fingers, “You—wouldn’t know the first thing about better!” It bites down, tearing her fingers off as she hisses and pulls her hand away, her fingers scattering in different directions as they stand off against each other. Vivienne charges at it again, her disembodied fingers flying towards it, claws digging into the whites of its eyes as it howls in pain.
She pulls her fingers back with a harsh flourish, her stride towards it purposeful as she grips its neck again, and this time, wrenches its head from its body as she digs her heel into its abdomen with enough force to carve a sphere in its stomach.
Cornelia steps forward, one hand in her pocket, and the other outstretched to the yokai. “My name is Cornelia. I serve this town as a protector; the protector of the balance between the world of humans, and the worlds of yokai. Never shall they spill over, but if they do, I’ll be here to clean it up, and put everything back in its rightful place. You cannot get your meals here, and you cannot dine on even a hair from a resident’s head.”
The yokai’s expression contorts into one of visceral, humiliated fury. “Who do you think you are, some kind of God? Telling me what to do, where I should go, what I should do—I was never accepted as a human, not like this, and no matter where I go, no matter what I am—human, or yokai, I’m told again and again that I’m doing something wrong, when I’m no different. And you!” It points at Vivienne, thrashing against her hold like Narcissus did, only this time with pure venom. “You and I are no different, so why do you belong when I don’t?! We’re the same!”
Powered by rage alone, it breaks out of Vivienne’s grip and rushes Cornelia, who reflexively stiffens at the impending attack. Just as the yokai makes the motion to sink its teeth into her neck, a figure appears from seemingly nowhere; from the deciduous shadows of the trees of the cemetery.
The Undertaker swings the tip of the umbrella into the yokai’s neck, piercing a hole through its throat as it calmly pins the creature to the ground. It stares down, eyes a shuddering winter chill as it says, “Do not disturb the dead from their rest.” The Undertaker yanks out its umbrella and pierces the creature again. A hole through the stomach, a hole through its shoulders, and finally, it slams its umbrella through the yokai’s heart. “If you show yourself in this town again, I will find you. I will find you, and you will burn like a helpless maggot in the Underworld, squirming underneath the Devil’s feet. Do I make myself clear?”
It chokes out a, “I killed you.”
“Much like every other aspect of your life, you failed.” The Undertaker repeats itself, “Do I make myself clear?”
“This is your last chance at mercy,” Cornelia says, straightening her back, “Why not take it? Don’t come back to Crepuscule. Blood isn’t the only thing you survive on. You can eat human food, too, during the day.”
“It’s not the same!” It hisses, although its voice betrays an air of helplessness, of sorrow. “It isn’t the same as blood. You understand, don’t you?” It asks, looking up at a sympathetic Vivienne. “I’m not human, and neither are you. We’ll never belong here, so how am I meant to exist? How am I meant to feed myself as if I’m no different from them?”
“I don’t know,” Vivienne says, honestly. She pulls her legs up, sitting with her legs crossed in the air. She offers them a smile, her voice gentle as she continues, “But I think you’re focusing on the wrong point. We aren’t human, and that isn’t going to change. We just have to work harder to be accepted.”
It whispers, “But what if we never are?”
“Then all it means is that you aren’t accepted by them.”
The yokai, after a moment of silence, mutters, “I normally wouldn’t bother with leaving just because I was told. But there’s something wrong with this town, and it’s getting more wrong each day. I don’t want to stay and find out the details.”
Vivienne and Cornelia share an amused look as the yokai takes to the air and disappears. The Undertaker hooks its umbrella onto its arm and says, “Good riddance.”
Ivy steps closer towards the Undertaker, who gazes at her from behind its veil. “You were dead. You didn’t have a pulse. And your neck…”
“I am immune to an ailment such as death.” It says, by way of explanation. The Undertaker seems to ignore Ivy and Narcissus as it turns to Cornelia and Vivienne, voice languid as it speaks, “I do not recommend relying on my assistance in any sort of combat. That, as you may understand, is a far cry from what my role entails. I trust you understand this, Detective Mori.”
“I understand,” Cornelia replies, ignoring her. The four of them watch as the Undertaker gives them all, or perhaps only Cornelia, or perhaps no one at all, a curt nod as it walks away, disappearing into its office as the light flicks on, and its shadow returns to its home on the walls of the cemetery.
“So our boss really isn’t human?” Narcissus asks. Ivy does a double take.
“You never thought there was something strange about it?” Cornelia asks, curiously. Narcissus shakes her head.
“No. Honestly, I just thought it was a freak, or something.” She says, plainly, met with blank stares from the three of them. She purses her lips, and huffs, “What?”
When the clock strikes twelve, the barrier between the world of humans and the world of yokai disappears, and Twilight Hour blooms. Whether it be a trick of the light, or a stray sound in the melancholy of the dark…
Cornelia and Vivienne sit upstairs in their kitchen, the sunlight filtering through the curtains and filling the room. Vivienne passes Cornelia a scone from the bakery they stopped by on their way back from the cemetery, and they click their coffee cups together. “I’m kind of surprised we got thanked. Like, actually thanked.”
“It’s easy to expect from Ivy,” Cornelia says, taking a long sip from her mug, “Narcissus less so. It’s a job well done, then.” She nods to herself, as if pleased, and the conversation trails off. Vivienne traces the handle of her cup, and glances over at Cornelia.
“What do you plan to do next?”
“As thanks, the Undertaker put up some signs advertising the agency at the cemetery.”
Vivienne blinks. “Huh. I suppose that’s a pretty good place to start.”
“There’s always death when there’s yokai around.” Cornelia’s expression darkens, but it clears up as she forces the words out, “What about you?”
Vivienne hums, tilting her head.
“What are you going to do next? Because…” She stretches the silence out as if struggling to swallow, and then abruptly continues, “You don’t have to stay here. Not if you don’t want to. Charon told me… whatever makes you happy.” It’s hard to look her in the eyes, but Cornelia manages, “Because you’re free now. You can go wherever you want.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Vivienne says, with a shrug as she stares down at the pastry in her hand. Her shoulders slump, but she laughs, tilting her head again, double the force pulling her head apart from her body. Her hand sets the scone down, too far now from her mouth to eat. “But I think my first move is going to be figuring out how to keep my head on.”
“Oh,” Cornelia says, a shooting star flickering in her eyes as she jumps to her feet. She disappears into her room for a moment before returning with her arms full with the same body bag from several days prior. She unzips it, and rifles through the empty bag until she finds what she’s looking for, accidentally nestled into the crumbled corner of the bag. “I forgot to give it to you when we were at the cemetery.”
She reveals a choker made out of two lines of pearls and a shiny black ribbon that’s exquisitely soft to the touch and squeals with delight. There was a golden hook and eye, as well as the ribbon closure.
Cornelia’s voice comes out a little strained, “It’s a gift.”
“Is it now?” Vivienne asks, with a giggle as she puts it on. She clips it closed, and ties the ribbon with a graceful yet energetic flourish. Pleased, she takes the hem of her dress in between her fingers and does a twirl. “What do you think?”
She stares, for a moment, in silence, as if revisiting a long-forgotten memory. And then she smiles, and says, “It suits you.”
Vivienne beams, and nods, clearly having made up her mind. “I think I’ll stay here. You need an assistant, don’t you?”
Cornelia replies with a soft laugh, “Of course. Thank you.”
Vivienne’s mouth falls open as she gasps, “Oh, right! It completely slipped my mind. I’m sorry if I seemed impolite,” She extends her hand, and smiles. “It’s nice to finally meet you, detective.”
Cornelia takes her hand. “Likewise, Vivienne.”
When the clock strikes twelve, the barrier between the world of humans and the world of yokai disappears, and Twilight Hour blooms.
In the uncanny town of Crepuscule, nestled on the corner of Center Drive stood the Twilight Detective Agency. Within its walls were Cornelia and her assistant Vivienne, who take on cases big and small at the behest of humans and yokai alike, to keep the balance between the two worlds.
Whether it be a trick of the light, or a stray sound in the melancholy of the dark…
Blink, and you’ll miss it.
About | Cast and Clientele | Schedule
Twilight Hour 02:00 is currently available on Patreon.
Well, here are, having triumphantly heard the cold open! Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed. If you did, feel free to like, reblog, send a reply or an ask. I'd love to hear from you!
I'll see you on Tuesday for Twilight Corner. Until then, bye for now.
A young girl carefully tiptoes through the boundless cluster of corpses as one would avoid stepping on a blooming flower. It smells foul; overripe fruit and threatening, metallic maroon. She stops at the existence in the center of it, gazing up at it as it devours all around it, grasping tightly onto the deceased with eight limbs, pulling them into pieces for good measure before closing its mouth around their rotting flesh. The holy insect looks down, blood dripping like rainfall from its open maw; teeth a row of daggers as it says her name, garbled through blood. “██████… I protected you."
“I know,” she says, and reaches up to take the god’s hand. “I know.”
Content warnings:
Grave robbing
Amputation
Decapitation
Implied murder/abuse
A woman walks through Crepuscule’s cemetery, a sealed, full body bag slung over her shoulder as she drags a shovel behind her. She looks left and looks right as she walks, scanning each grave for the names she seems to be looking for; eventually, she stops, and drops the body bag unceremoniously on the ground with a sigh. In front of her were a family’s graves, two of which still glistened with disturbed soil; recently buried, recently deceased.
The woman props the shovel up on one of the graves as she kneels, unzipping the body bag and pulling out several cans of coffee, all the same variety save one, which advertised vanilla oat milk and a splash of syrup on the label. She eyes the pastries, back at the grave and the dirt and all that crawled underneath the ground, and shakes her head, leaving them in the bag. She cracks open a can of coffee and takes several swigs before setting it down on the grave in front of her, the name on the grave far more muddled than the two beside it.
She sighs, slams the shovel into the ground, and begins to dig up the grave beneath it.
It’s hard, tiresome work, and after a while it begins to rain. In the far, far distance, she can see the Undertaker in its office, not unaware of what was occurring underneath its watch. The woman wipes sweat from her forehead, and finds herself speaking aloud as the square-nosed shovel begins to sink further and further into the dirt, scraping layers of grass and dirt away like leftover candle wax, “I really should’ve sharpened the shovel more. Maybe that’s why.”
She knows the casket’s height, and carves out the proper shape, although she can’t recall its corners nor color past the fog of memory and absent time. She breathes out, setting the shovel down to polish off one of the cans. When she finishes it, she opens another.
“They could’ve at least done some of the hard work for me,” She mutters, bitter like the coffee finally rushing through her veins. Now caffeinated, she continues to dig, further and further down, setting aside roots and insects as she scrapes the dirt away into an ever growing pile. “You know, now I’m suddenly worried I left the kettle on, or something.”
She shakes her head, glancing back at the body bag. “I guess we’ll handle it when we get back.” Slowly but surely, she begins to stand deeper and deeper into the dirt, glancing upwards as the pile of dirt greets her. She raises her shovel and lowers it into the ground, a metallic clang sending her ears ringing. “Finally,” she says, sweeping the dirt away to reveal the casket she couldn’t recall. She mumbles something to herself and climbs out, wiping the dirt off her vest as she ponders aloud, “Should I use a pulley? No, if they…” She turns her head to the other two graves, and feels her heart do something odd in her chest.
“I hope I’m wrong.”
She steps onto the casket, clearing enough dirt beside it for her to stand next to it, and forces the end of her shovel underneath the gap, and slowly forces it open, pressing her tongue up to the roof of her mouth to dull her senses even by a small fraction as the reality of what must have been done oppresses her.
The body inside the casket had been dismembered, each piece shoved unceremoniously into dirty plastic bags and tied with frayed rope, scribbled wards written in crimson on the side of it. The cruelty of an afterthought makes her chest burn as she stares down at the pieces, voice a harrowed whisper, “God, Vivienne. What’d they do to you? I knew it wouldn’t be pretty, but this… is inhumane.”
She shakes her head as she begins to collect the scattered pieces. She finds a leg, a part of fractured bone sticking out of it. She picks up an arm, lopped violently off. By how jagged the wounds are, it must have been erratic, harried; so violent it made her stomach churn. She finds a shoulder, and thinks of how they must have held it while chopping her arms off. Each hand is in a separate bag, and the left seemed particularly violent, the cut lines jagged across each tendon; the bare ring finger a reflection of their impossible expectations.
Although the corpse had been utterly brutalized, it shows no signs of decay. She sets the pieces onto the ground above as she herself climbs out of the grave, leaving the empty casket behind. She sets down the plastic bag containing the head as she turns her back, pulling out one of the two pastries and taking a bite, the crinkling conveniently concealing how the head’s plastic bag began to rustle; easily passed off as the wind, had the head’s eyes not just opened.
The silence of the cemetery begins to sink in, and in the distance, the Undertaker flicks the light off, no longer an observer. The woman, with her back turned, doesn’t hear the rustling of the leaves, the hushed whispers of the night, nor the newly revived flesh bearing weight, sinking the dirt down behind her.
She stretches, and turns back to see a disembodied hand crawling towards the open body bag, disappearing inside of it before reappearing, triumphantly holding the second pastry. The woman stares down at the hand that’s appeared before her.
Her expression doesn’t change as she flits her gaze to the head, black eyes open wide; the decapitated head floating in the air, smoke-like ectoplasm a shadow behind her. The floating head offers her a wide smile, and says, “Good morning! Thanks for the pastry. That was for me, wasn’t it?”
The woman sighs, and beckons the body parts closer as she releases them from their plastic confines. They scatter towards each other like long lost lovers, the pieces clicking into place like a puzzle, or perhaps a shattered porcelain doll collecting its own pieces. The brutalized limbs find their home in each other, upper leg connecting to lower leg connecting to the abdomen, her arms cracking back into place as she searches for her foot, and finally, her body walks over to the awaiting decapitated head.
Cornelia offers the sweetened coffee to her, and replies, “It was. Good morning, Vivienne.”
Vivienne carefully attaches her head to her neck, and happily takes a bite of the pastry held in her still-detached hand.
About | Cast and Clientele | Schedule
Twilight Hour 01:00 is currently available on Patreon.
It begins.... thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed. If you did, feel free to like, reblog, send a reply or an ask. I'd love to hear from you!
As a note, our first Twilight Corner will be after 01:00... so I'll see you on Thursday! Bye for now.
