❝inside my blood and bone / and their network of tendon and meat
we have / you and i / our histories of hunting / and being the beast.❞
— emily jungmin yoon, from a cruelty special to our species: poems.
PAIGE BUECKERS AND AZZI FUDD HAVEN'T SPOKEN FOR YEARS.
Once, they were wives—married young into the same rotten branch of an old, wealthy family tree whose estate sits like a landmark at the edge of the world, wide windows yawning beneath thin light. They knew each other only in passing: across dinner tables, in corridors, in a quiet office, as their unions were severed by the swift hand of the same lawyer. Divorced and discarded, they left. They did not look back.
So when invitations arrive, penned urgently and oddly careless in familiar handwriting, they are quick to distrust the promise of reunion. Bloated with dread, the two women return separately, summoned under the guise of necessity, and find Khmelová House unchanged: beautiful, sheltered, eerily still. Spring is coming on, and with it something The Family will not speak of outright, only circle tightly with odd stretches of teeth and trembling hands. The Family is still cordial despite the months passed—in the way a knife can be cordial.
The same blade that spreads butter over bread also slaughters the lamb.
And then Paige begins to change.
A curse has resurfaced—nearly as old as the land, and far older than the bloodline that claims to possess it. It promises death by the turning of the season unless The Family is wedded to their true soulmate: sealed, bound, made legitimate. For generations, the estate has survived by keeping the curse fed, its power contained and passed hand to hand through ceremony and sacrifice. Paige and Azzi were never meant to matter.
As the days lengthen, the house seems to turn inward—toward them—attentive and hungry. Paige and Azzi find themselves drawn into one another’s orbit. Pain migrates from body to body, while dreams repeat and are exchanged. Their bodies begin to respond to an invisible tide, as if something inside them has recognized its mate and locked its jaw. Uneasy proximity becomes a tether, threaded through the body like a primal instinct, and the curse—starved for a rightful vessel—aches to slip its mouth around them both.
When The Family realizes what's happening (what's been awakened and what might be stolen from them), it is decided quickly and quietly that there is only one way to ensure and reclaim their inheritance.
Kill the women who carry it.
As spring arrives bright and merciless, time dwindles. Paige’s transformation encroaches. Desperate to outlast the fate closing in around them, the two women become unlikely allies. But love, once bitten into, is rarely anything but monstrous.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
And whatever is waiting for spring has been waiting a long time.
❝i'll say it like emergency exit, like/dismemberment. yes, i love the girl. i love her like / glowing in the dark. i love her like animal.❞
— topaz winters, from "trigger".
A. F., FORMERLY KHMELOVÁ — 28, TRANSLATOR. 𓏺 EX UXOR: GALINA KHMELOVÁ.
( ❛ CLYMENESTRA: and are you happy? ; CASSANDRA: i could kill you. ❜ )
P. B., FORMERLY KHMELOVÁ. — 32, ARCHITECT. 𓏺 EX UXOR: LIDJA KHMELOVÁ.
( ❛ alive or in decay—i’ll appear / like a thundering, i’ll save / myself. and you. and you. ❜ )
ACT V.┊ SITE OF RELATIONSHIP.
cw: this work contains adult themes, explicit sexual content, violence, body horror, and depictions of relationships that are psychologically intense, unstable, and at times deeply unhealthy. (not primarily between the main pairing).
( author's note: it feels nearly relieving to be able to finally push the masterlist for this out. i'm deeply excited for you to enter the world of this miniseries, and thrilled to be returning to my horror roots. as always, i hope you enjoy yourself. please ensure to comment if you would like to be added to the taglist. )
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