This house will not survive.
He walks up it. Its steps gasp a centuries’ worth through their carpeted mask. They rage beneath a ravine of auburn and carmine leaves from last year’s fall. Inside, halls bend time like the good girl it is, rooms stand empty as shot glasses, adorned with furnishings from banished decades and forgotten birthdays. All of it runs deep brown, muddled and scratched, scuffed at its edges so even curves are like ant javelins. You could poke yourself if you aren’t careful, pig-bleed all over the ragged, tattered carpet, tainting it with a ripe crimson that was mama and papa’s blood before it was his. The baize was a deep shade of evergreen back then, fit for all the fairies in all the world.
It’s just one, big, dark forever now.
He stumbles all over, vision balleting, swaying his lean frame to the bada-bada-bum of weighted death metal. He dances and sings for hours, or maybe it’s for seconds, or maybe time pauses as he gives himself over like a worthy supplicant to the thump and pump and dump.
Then Siouxsie and Morrissey usurps Hetfield, plucky strings perforating through this living room, one of many, so many for the man who has everything. Like the smell of good rot, it grips him in terrible attention. Then he slumps down, palms resting on a leather wingback that had been awaiting him and his vulgarity. Blue moonlight beats through gridded panes, celestial alien blood spreading in a cross-hatch over the floor. Indian sat, caged by india ink bars, the patient stares out into a vertigo night. His eyes are candlelights burning, but they don’t rage, for they have forgotten how. The wicks they sit on fall short now, reduced by the sleep of a reasonable man.
But the night remains a vital virgin, ripe for abattoir. Abacus stars hang up there, saying hey, how are ya. He slumps, pieces and shreds of some eldritch Before illegally occupying his Promised Land brain.
His mind is a bear stalking the forest grounds, hungry for the honey of his past.
Her, fair as Lady Justice. Orange streaming down either shoulder in sunset rivers. Lips pulling at him with every sterling flicker. Dragon eyes deep enough to dive and lie there in the dire. Hotter than hell, hellisher than heaven, and together the havoc didn’t matter, neither did dad’s games. The sky could split and the world could sunder and even then, he knew when all smoke broke, they’d still stand as sentinels do.
The bear finds the hive. It claws at the honeycomb unstopped, eggs bursting against keratin, bees buzzing and stinging. Honey, honey, honey.
A part of him knows it’s the drink. A part of him understands the weight of this. But it’s a part buried. Ignored. Cast aside. Whatever bright light he may have had earlier has been stolen by the ravaged debris of his pain.
He leans forward, clasps his arms, shuts his eyes, and thinks of a spell. He imagines dark, roiling seas of blood and gasoline. In the midst is him, the captain of his lone ship, searching for a face from his past through the howl of the storm. Then he finds her marooned on her islet just the way he remembers. He sucks in the air of his sanctuary as Ishmael becomes Ahab, as he breathes, ready for Pequod to ferry.
And thar’ she blows, traversing through the blank page, moving laterally along the chessboards of universes, astrologically projected, until density and causality breaks and meaning fails, until meaning is blood, thick, oozing blood. It chants music so brave, so mighty, so raw and magical. This is where it is, a disturbance, gnawing through cracked skin like static electricity traveling up, and down, up, and down. It moves closer, through the bleeding between things, between starlights and spit fights and bad times, until he speeds beyond them, along cosmic rails, through awful music, through harmonies he hates, through chaos and clambour of an altogether different place -
- the twin armrests of his barcalounger find their place again, gripped between hag fingers. He says nothing. In the mansion, in the music, things nap and never wake. The widower rises, cowboy-spits phlegm, takes a few more swigs of courage, then puts his head backwards to rest, tinctured bravery exacting its toll. The house goes away as he waits for hell.
You reckon it’s warmer this time of night?
wtf all of these are so unique and nearly ethereal. Your writing is dope
Oh wow