The Soft Sound of Flocking Angels

Originally posted to Twitter on December 15, 2021   .

“Did you know,” she says, “that the average person can endure less than five minutes of direct exposure to Her before their timeline is completely overwritten?”

You, bound and gagged on the floor of the temple’s airlock, can only nod in response. Everyone knows that.

She grins at you. “Unintelligent matter is rewritten faster, of course, and living wood endures surprisingly well—that’s why your rebellion was so excited when they found the asteroid forest, right? Sucks for you that we got here first.”

A Migraine is like A Throne

Originally posted to Twitter on January 18, 2022   .

Fleeting waves of mirage haze sleeting across my eyes like rot’s reeking spore, each flexing the world’s bounds further still—walls bow against absent pressure and cracks grow into gaping doors, and all the while the shimmering gem of aura’s heart eats and eats and eats—

That brightly lit not-mouth, an angel dancing at the center of my vision; it’s odd how similar a mouth and a wing and an eye can look, you know, how feathers are just teeth seen by someone who’s still waiting to be taught how to be a victim.

scour the flesh with cleansing heat

Originally posted to Twitter on August 13, 2022   , and a week earlier on Patreon   .

content notes: child viewpoint, cults, grooming, gaslighting, vague body horror, self-harm as worship.

“Mommy!” You cry as she’s just about to walk out the door, “I want to go worship with you!”

Her scarred flesh wrinkles into a smile as she laboriously reaches down to ruffle your hair.

The Morning’s Pains

Originally posted to Twitter on August 7, 2022   .

Pain attends her even in her dreams, a writhing tapestry thrown all across her dreamscape—buried in scraps of imagery, hidden in the shattered rooms of her failing dreams, and nestled all about her not-body. Stranger than in her waking hours, both more and less urgent—

But when dreams end the pain remains.

She groans as she wakes, feeling the knots curling through her back and the bundles of unoiled needles flexing in her joints; her elbows burn and her knees scream and hungry-mouthed snakes curl in her thighs and all through her belly—

The Devil’s Calling Card

Originally posted to Twitter on August 13, 2022   .

The devil is not so crass as to wait outside your door. She leaves a calling card pinned to it and is gone before the doorbell’s chime fades into the city’s rumbling heartbeat—disappearing into a cab, or behind a truck; denying you any glimpse of her.

The card is heavy in your hand; thick paper, expensively printed. Embossed with a curving floral pattern that doesn’t pretend to match the elegant red ink.

Eight Polaroids

Originally posted to Twitter on July 21, 2022   .

When investigators finally broke into Fran’s apartment, they found little of note. A fridge empty save for a bowl of wrinkled grapes, a collection of unused hair care products, and a bed that hadn’t been made or cleaned in months.

They also found a collection of eight polaroids.

The first photograph is of Fran standing in front of an exhibit at the Wasp Museum; a corpse infested by the ghosts of countless beehives. She’s smiling, obviously having a great time, but the spotlights illuminating the hive cast a strange pallor over her skin.

The Doll’s Gifts

Originally posted to Twitter on July 13, 2022   .

There’s a doll in the alley behind your apartment building. It’s an old thing, limbs and mask shaped in a style that’s almost old enough to be retro; in another few years it will probably be fashionable again.

It’s been there for years and years, just as long as you have.

Mostly it spends its days curled up next to the dumpster.