new mercies in the morning [pollock]

[Ohio]

What if I can’t? she thought, her hooves becoming thundering drums to her ears. The sound echoed against the dry, brittle leaves as though she walked a rocky shore. A crisp snap met each one as she crushed it beneath her weight, but she wasn’t worried about someone hearing her- she actually wished they would. Can’t what? Find the path. She’d lost the trail somewhere along the way, the trees all looked the same in this new land, the empty trails snaked in all the same curves.

Perhaps she was unwise to explore the new Beqanna, sifting her way through the lands with the interest of a child. So far, so good- until now. There was bound to be a day when she snagged that inevitable string but she felt ill prepared, why today, why here? These trees looked familiar, that rock, those were the same small bushes that grew dainty white flowers. Weren’t they?

Heavily she sighed, while she was concerned she was not yet afraid, stopping her progression and taking in the lay of the land. “Think, what did I see last?” Her teeth chewed at the inside of her cheek, the soft flesh slipping past the smooth ivories, wet and slick. “There was a creek and, and,” a moment’s pause, her eyes closing. “A boulder that had streaks of green traced through it,” he gentle brown eyes flew upon, smiling to herself at her successful remembering. The problem was, while she remembered a landmark, she had no real way of knowing which way it was. 

I’ll just backtrack

It went okay, tracing her steps, listening carefully for the sound of water. Then she stumbled, fell to her knees into a shallow ravine and the tears clung thick to her lashes. Everything was hard and barren, orange clay and prickling weed grass. “Ow,” she sniffled, wobbling to find her legs. That hurt terribly. She was lost, plain and simple, and now she was hurt. Two red knees burned bright with blood, they smarted too as small granules of dirt clung to the wound. “Hello?” she called, now desperate for assistance, a guide.

“Can anyone hear me?”

O H I O

-like endless rain into a paper cup-

@[Pollock]

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

He never feels lost.

(All those times he had felt lost have been forgotten. They are, now, the dead and discarded oral histories of an extinct organism. They make up the defunct mythology that had been replaced by a better God and scripture many lifetimes ago.)

He has never felt lost.

Perhaps, he has never felt lost because he has never felt bound. He has never felt that clenching blow of waywardness (that monster, Fear) because he does not have a navigational star, but a hundred violent constellations pulling him in a hundred different directions at once. 

Not until now. Now he cedes, to some degree (and to some degree, resentfully) to the place in the galaxy where Carnage had gone once he was done raping and pillaging. 
Now he is indentured to a land of dust and…

It is hard to be King when discord and dishonor rest in one’s heart like a pair of welcome lovers. He has been a shepherd; a lion leading sheep—he has gathered the weak under his feet like so many stepping stones and helped them learn their value. By crook, he had led them and he had named them. He had loved them, in a way a lion might love a sheep.

Simpler times.

Now, he is a snake leading rats and wolverines and tigers. Restless beasts with restless appetites and treacherous, beautiful minds. 
(‘An idle mind,’ they say, ‘is the devil’s playground.’)
And he had let them all grow idle; inert and lost. He had left them, become distant and solitary, as he contemplated the weight of their cracked, diseased atlas across his back; the heft of the crown, passed to him from a God-king’s hands; he had left to consult the sea, that clergyman whose hands he had run pink with the offerings of his transgressions.

They had been strangers, the two of them, for too long now.
When he returned to his monster-flock, he did so with a revelation.

“Everyone can hear you,” he says, softly. “Sound travels far, here.” He comes to her unseen, at first. He comes to her the way he used to; he examines, close enough for her to smell the brine on his chest and the dusty stagnation of his breath. 

It is a mere formality of the ritual, nothing more.
It reminds him the simpler times.

“It is a good thing you came,” he moves from his invisibility, feels that bitter sensation like paddling through ice water to reach the frozen surface. He stares at her with those flat, black eyes—there is no kindness there. There never was. (Or, if there ever was, it is forgotten, too.) His tail flicks against his haunches, well-muscled now from the endless climbing to be done in this godforsaken hellhole; his lips are a straight and solemn frown.

“You are much needed here. What is your name?”

the gift-giver

[Ohio]

She waited, standing alone in the shallow ravine- watching, listening. The ridge took the sun, casting her shadow in a long, lean watcher against the dry, red clay. Her knees trembled, the sting that took hold from each shallow cut was unpleasant, like the bite of several small ants. They dripped now, having accumulated enough pooling blood to do so. Two thin trails of bright, red blood slowly snaked down her cannons like tear trails.

Was it long before he came?

She doesn’t know, it could have been moments or hours, she was helpless and trapped. It was unnerving to rely on chance, to hope someone was near in the bleak expanse of sand and thick red rocks. The terrain had changed so quickly and severely, one moment life, green grass and creeks. Then it was suffocated, suppressed under rolling winds of kicked up dust and parched earth sparsely dotted with plants she would not dare ingest.

The voice breaks the silence, and it nearly breaks her. It is so sudden, unexpected as her eyes search the painted hills that she jerks. A multi-colored face snaps like a whip as she turns to face the danger, stumbling back and away as she moved. Mother would not be so caught off guard, then again, Mother would simply fly away. Ohio can not fly, she can only fall it seems.

“I’m sorry, I just, I wasn’t sure anyone would be here,” an almost question forming in the apology. Why was he here, why were the others here, who could survive in this unforgiving place  for that matter?

Regardless she takes his words for sincerity, feeling wanted and intrigued that she, of all, could be needed.

“I am?” This time the question does not falter, it aks and it waits with baited breath to hear a yes, to be reassured.

“I’m Ohio, it’s nice to meet you. Can you, I mean- Would you be able to help me out of here please?” She smiled then, losing the momentary fear of the unknown that had accompanied his initial presence. He was a strange creature but that was nothing new, she traced the curve of his horns with bright and curious eyes.

O H I O

-like endless rain into a paper cup-

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

He sets the trap, baits it; he knows how to make them feel important.
He knows how important it is to feel important because long ago, he was insignificant, too.

(Or so they say.)

It is part of the ritual, to convince them are good enough to be god-meals, so that they go quietly.
—he likes when they go quietly.
—he likes when they go loudly.

He notices she is injured. This does not escape him. How could it? Feral-eyed, lizard-brained, wolf-mouthed. Predator-hearted, he had seen it the moment he latched eyes on her—between each breath, which rattles with dust through his grimey lungs, he plays out their dance in his mind;
(In his mind, they are in a forest. It is not the well-fed, gravid Forest he had been the woodsman and wolf of—it is a new one, bent and burnt and strange looking, occupied by spikey joshua trees and hungry succulents. It is not verdant and luscious, but it is a sanctum in the wasteland.)

He imagines each stroke, too. 
Some quiet—sanguine and easy to shed; some loud—pale and sought after aggressively. To him, she is a canvas. And what she is to him is all that matters now. Once she might have meant many things to many others. She might have been lover, mother, daughter, friend. But what she might have been is excised by what she is to become. “Yes,” he moves closer to her, those curved horns pressing heavy on his mind, “you are. This place is hungry, Ohio.” His eyes, perhaps she might notice, are slightly sad. He is not sad for her. He is sad for the moment he can do no more with her, and he must lay her down and let her rest.

There is nothing about his tone, or those eyes, that recognize the strangeness of the words. To him, they are not strange, but simple and true.

He moves closer to her, as close as he can without touching her—though his breath does, and now she will be able to smell its stench and feels its warmth across her forehead. Oh, she could run, to be sure. She could do a number of things. But, of course, she is injured and, sadly, he is faster than she ever was or could be. He blinks at her, inhales deeply, and sends them out. He sends them clawing and scenting like hound dogs, springing from his mind and burrowing their way into hers. They are single minded and persistent, and through the trappings of her psyche (the love and the sadness; the happiness for which he has no use) they find the primal cord. She is Fear and he exhales into her, pulling it taut towards him.
He does not alter himself, nor what she sees around them. What is there will do.

This, too, is simply part of the ritual.

“I can help you,” he affirms, low and throaty, “‘out’.” He drops his head, great and heavy, and if she does not move—if she does not run, foolish as that would be—he’ll send those ridged, cruel weapons up towards her face. He expects—urges for—the crack he knows those jaw bones can make.
If true, they will not kill her, probably.
They will knock senseless in her, and that makes it easy.

the gift-giver

[Ohio]

She is too soft for this world. Mother always said so. 

Was he always so kind, he is so kind. He really is and those doe eyes of hers look at him for more happiness. Anything that he would feed her, only to fill that empty gullet, to make her useful or important.

She could be somebody here. She knew it, he had said so.
It needed her, it was hungry.

Ohio watches him carefully, thirsty like a man who had not seen drink for weeks. He could run her cup over for all she cared because his words were liquid honey and they tasted so very sweet to her ears.

Her stained knee trembles and her naive mind fills with questions. “It is? How silly but I suppose I know what you mean.” She did not know, not at all the poor dear. She laughed though, at that silly statement, the oddity of it and how her mind had made it seem not so strange at all. This was fun, he was fun and she was sure she would like it here. Ohio looks up, first tracing the curve of the magnificent horns that curved over his brow, then she seeks his eyes. They are sad.

They really do need me.

She is breathless, flattered because he hurts for his land.(He must) She will make it better though, she can feed the land, they can grow it. “Don’t worry, it’s okay. I’ll help, we can fix it together.” Her painted neck cranes, reaching for him, her savior.

He smells like death and rot, maggots and blood and why? Her head jerks back, eyes wide with surprise.Something is wrong, everything is cold and she is afraid.

“Help me!” she yells but he can not save her, he had never wanted to. Those glorious spirals of bone are coming for her and to her mind they are sharp as any rock. They will surely crush her.

And they do. The sound much too loud, the pain too real and it is cold where they have made contact, her adrenaline flooding her body as she crashes to the earth. She would very much like to run away but she can’t, her legs don’t know what her mind tells them. The heavy brick of her head will not lift and yet she can see the dust picked up from each hurried breath that leaves her. The earth tastes foul, her tongue covered in tiny grains of sand where it has lolled out but something very wrong has taken her body from her.

What’s worse is, it hadn't taken her mind with it.

O H I O

-like endless rain into a paper cup-

have at her, this is where i bow out <33

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

He tilts his head as she laughs, his stare unwavering.

He exchanges no smiles with her. He considers her with hard, black eyes. He contemplates her softness, for of course he can smell it like a wolf smells open wounds. He considers her words and knows then that she is prey-thing, through and through. Martyr; altar—the bones around which his cathedral will be built.

The offerings on which his land will gorge itself and provide in return.

Fear seeks her—
He drops his head, bows to her and to the grace of her sermon in the waste—‘we can fix it together’. His lips part. Fear finds her.
She yells ‘help me!’—that most beloved psalm, echoing across the sandstone and emptiness that does not answer but to repeat the lyrics back in distortion.

Craaack.
Those spartan horns meet her jawline. Senselessness. She falls.
Craack.
He sends them back down, faster than her tongue can taste his kingdom. The skullcap gives between her ears and eyes and she falls with a thud to her side. Blood rushes through the fault lines that form, filling the earth with sanguinary tides. He heaves, sweat lathers his neck and chest—he is abominable. Blood spatters his forehead, dripping down the length of his bridge and cheeks. He can taste it as it slips between his nostrils and down his upper lip.
He listens to her breathe for a moment. Quaking, agonal—final. Her eyes are filmy and rolling.
He rears up, and then bears down.
Crack.
The atlas shakes loose the skull. He comes down in a bow beside her, breathing hard, nose pressed into the dust. He shuts his eyes tights against the sting and cloud, blinking several times to rid the overflow from his sight.
Death.
Crack.
The vertebrae unweave.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.

And then, only the dull, squishy sounds that come after.

He paints and sculpts, until the moon is high and he is spent. Wasted. Contented. Sated. He closes his eyes shut, inhaling deeply. “Thank you,” the gift-giver mutters. For hours more he stays by her like a hyena guarding a carcass, pacing ache into his rotten limbs.

the gift-giver

aw :[ that felt particularly mean