Work Text:
When you are 10, cockroaches crawl from your mouth. Their legs puncture your pores and their slimy skin drips and drowns your voice. Your screams never break the surface. Hands are clawing at your face, pulling at your eye sockets like ravens and you look down and see claws. They are your own mutilated hands, but now they are dust and they pollute your air like the plague. Mother is not home.
When you are 12, the two year old memory is a lie and you are convinced that you were hallucinating. Psychoanalysis tells you that it was just attention deprivation that led you astray, and this is sound logic that is solid and its stone foundations will support you.
It cracks.
When you are 12 and 3/4 and too old to be measuring life with currency, you go to the beach. This vacation becomes a discarded piece in the eternal game of chess between you and Mother, while false pretences and perfect façades persevere. The rain falls like speckled tears and the sky is rotten but we shouldn't let that ruin our fun Mother says with lips like a crocodile, zipped teeth and unearned quotations. Her arms do not comfort you as well as the sea does and you revel in the unhidden frost. You swim close to the jagged rocks and think of shrill punctures, but you receive the opposite. Something slippery squelches below your feet and words that tread lightly, and latches onto your leg. Its suction cups drink you and you realise with a pop that it should be reversed. Opinions falter and your shock disappears with the tentacle. Against all logic, you dive in after it.
You dived, but you should have rose, you think as a breath of air escapes your mouth with a giggle. Almost manically you are reminded of your mother and how any attempt to prove her wrong is sought after and you belittle your namesake. The tentacle is gone and you look desperately for proof that you are mad. The ocean floor reflects impossibly and you notice that darkness becomes you. Narcissus observes himself next to you and this beauty has drowned you both. Ears burst and you relent, but your mother’s hand tugs you out of your mind.
When you are 13, you are a child prodigy and you are alone. Your tongue is too sharp and cuts the cheek of all those who lean in for a kiss and you are alone. It happens again when you have finished a test and there is still half an hour to go. Your essay is written in cursive with purple ink and your stained fingers are supporting your head, (because if you dont who will) when you feel warmth. Pricks of pain and prose pin your hand in its position and you are being torn open. Of course, your expression remains perfectly neutral and as the blood grows teeth and shreds, you continue to breathe and decide to recite the greek alphabet backwards. Experience has taught you better than any of your teachers.
When you are 16 you are on a bus and the woman in front of you is being dismembered by a crow. The beak reflects back your mirror image and its jagged edges tear the flesh. You watch as she is devoured and your calm composure has stopped frightening you and you now rely upon it. You are an anchor and you sink down to your watery grave daily, but no one is at your funeral and it can't possibly be because the waves are too strong and drag them safely to land. You see milk and lavender and your mother is alseep. Pedicured nails are pushed into her cuticles like bamboo sticks of torture and her mascara is running. You jolt awake and a few passengers are staring at you, but most of them are dying, they shouldn't be concerned with a young girl crying on a bus when their intestines are coiled around their necks and have stolen their breath.
When you are 17 you befriend a vampire romance enthusiast. Your ear drums chant 'bloody mary' thrice and you both seek solace in each other’s warped view of the world. Her hair is crisp and burnt as her skin, and you crumble together. When you kiss her, blood seeps down her throat and boils her lungs but she doesnt mind. Her enunciation is like the waves of an ocean from long ago and she says your name without expectation.
When you are an adult your hair bleeds white early and you hear their whispers for the first time, but it is like they had never left. They demand italics in your thoughts, but there isn’t much you wouldn’t give them. Kanaya and her fangs are at the top of the list, and they don’t complain at the emptiness beneath them. The word nightmare is insufficient and soon you give them the name Horrorterrors, but unlike Mother, the name you chose suits your creation. The Horrorterrors tell you of your purpose and reveal the truths and lies of the world by ripping the shielding curtains. They tell you that this knowledge demands a sacrifice, and they take your only weapon- your language. It is replaced by the tongue of the ancestors, but their words are foreign and you cannot pronounce their screams. You do not belong in this world of agony but you are not a flower and you cannot unfurl these petals.
You wither.