10-18-2018, 12:00 AM
<link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Parisienne|Source+Sans+Pro' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'> <style type="text/css"> .glassheart_container { position: relative; z-index: 1; width: 500px; border: solid 1px #000; background-color: #140606; border-radius: 200px 200px 0 0; box-shadow: 0px 0px 10px 1px #000; } .glassheart_grad-bg { z-index: 2; position: absolute; top: 550px; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 200px; background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, rgba(20, 6, 6, 0) 0%, rgba(20, 6, 6, 0.75) 51%, rgba(20, 6, 6, 1) 100%); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgba(20, 6, 6, 0) 0%, rgba(20, 6, 6, 0.75) 51%, rgba(20, 6, 6, 1) 100%); background: linear-gradient(to bottom, rgba(20, 6, 6, 0) 0%, rgba(20, 6, 6, 0.75) 51%, rgba(20, 6, 6, 1) 100%); filter: progid
XImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#00140606', endColorstr='#140606', GradientType=0); } .glassheart_image { position: relative; z-index: 1; width: 500px; border-radius: 200px 200px 0 0; } .glassheart_text { position: relative; z-index: 3; width: 490px; background-color: #c9ccce; margin-top: -200px; border-top: solid 10px #556671; border-left: solid 1px #556671; border-right: solid 1px #556671; } .glassheart_container p { margin: 0; } .glassheart_message { text-align: justify; font: 12px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding: 30px; color: #333535; } .glassheart_quote { text-align: center; font: 11px 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 2px; padding-left: 35px; letter-spacing: 2px; color: #556671; } .glassheart_name { font: 60px 'Parisienne', cursive; color: #556671; width: 55%; line-height: 0.4em; border-bottom: dotted 1px; } </style> <center> <div class="glassheart_container"> <img class="glassheart_image" src="https://i.postimg.cc/63wZwjyX/Glassheart.jpg"> <div class="glassheart_grad-bg"></div> <div class="glassheart_text"> <p class="glassheart_message"> (A river. A mermaid. A hazel.)
(A bloodied shoreline. A sunset. A beacon.)
A single, razor-clawed finger draws a centreline in blood down her naked belly from the bottom of her ribs to the tops of her hip bones; a teaser, she thinks, of what comes next, because that same finger could have spilled her innards the first time if it had only wanted to. They were cruel, these flickering shadow-monsters. It’s why they chose the faces of people she’s known. It’s why they’ve become all the things that are important to her. It’s why He waited, hovering above her, with a wicked sneer and his claws drawn back as though in the next second he would bring them down on her with enough force to craft that first true incision.
They wanted to see her squirm first.
They wanted to feed on her fear.
But they won’t find it. She’s counting craters on the surface of the moon illuminating them, because it brings her peace to remove herself rather than watch them spill her insides out. She’s singing, still, even when there’s no room for mercy in the vacuous black of their eyes, because she can feel the ache of her lullaby in her heart and it feels as though its drowning her fear. It hurts to bleed, to be cut open, but its been so long since she’s felt at home in her own skin. She feels it now, like its her own, like it belongs to her again. A shame, she thinks, to be reunited with her own thoughts and body just in time for it all to be taken again.
Then, before the yellowed moon clouds roll, and as a deeper darkness settles in around the violent scene on the river Glassheart can no longer count craters to distract herself from the bony hands at her wrists, and ankles - from the thing that feels like Carnage even if she’s never met him; from an inevitable demise. He brings his hand down like a hammer, and she feels his claw in her belly. She doesn’t hear her song end. She doesn’t hear herself screaming - but she is.
This is not the end, she thinks.
And it isn’t - at least, not yet.
Because then a collective shudder and resounding hush moves over their horrifying, flickering, wailing bodies like a wave breaking on the shore. Even He, with his claw deep inside her gut and ready to pull her open as easily as if on her belly there was a zipper, withdraws his hooked claw, quivers and settles. One by one the faces of the ones she knows disappear, and the monsters become shadows again. They leave her wrists, her ankles, and as quickly as they had come they are gone - floating back across the river, retreating into ash as a cool wind suddenly sweeps across the shoreline.
One by one the faces disappear, and they become shadows again. They leave her wrists, her ankles, and they float back across the river and into the shadows, retreating into ash as a cool wind suddenly sweeps across the shoreline.
Adrenaline helps her find her feet immediately, even through the wound to her gut that spills blood like those creatures had spilled disease. She looks out into the haze, clutching her wound with one hand in an effort to mitigate the bleeding. She would breathe a sigh of relief, only she isn’t stupid. This isn’t over. Something worse is next. Something much worse. She doesn’t know it, but trembling and damaged, waiting for an inevitable destruction - she and her mother are mirrored images. She should have listened. She should have kept running.
Now she waits with bated breath for the next event to unfold.
(A river. A mermaid. A hazel.)
(A bloodied shoreline. A sunset. A beacon.)
And Glassheart is not kept waiting long. It begins with the rattle of leaves from the trees on the shoreline, next, the ground seems to pulse, and here and there the orange pumpkins she’d discovered at the start of her dream begin to pull themselves up from the ground like reanimated corpses. Some have maggots that drip from their eyes, and some have heads that are squashed and over-ripe. They all wear dramatic capes. They all have thin, twiggy limbs with gnarled, clawed hands and knives jammed violently into the sides of their angry faces. They’re all horrible. They’re all seeing her.
Suddenly there are thousands of carved out eyes peering out at her.Some pop out of the ground quickly like gophers, others fall from the branches of trees and break apart just to collect themselves together again at the bottom. They move towards her and when they do frost blankets the earth, and plants wither and green becomes orange and red and violent. When they reach the river’s edge they hover a moment, congregating, and then when their fires turn blue like the water they collectively reach the knives in their heads, withdraw them, and point them at her.
“The games are done, we’ve had our fun. Now it’s time for you to run.”
There isn’t time to formulate a grand escape plan. The shoreline, littered now with monsters, isn’t a viable option - assuming that she did manage to flee and hide while bleeding out, they would surely follow the trail of dripping blood as easily as the monsters before them had followed the pearls. No, she’d have to try the river. She’d have to swim for as long as she could before she, inevitably, lost consciousness. She doesn’t think about the gaping hole in her gut, or about how the water would thin the blood spilling out of her and hasten her demise. She just plunges into the rapids, and the pumpkin creatures close in from either side.
The water changes colour with her blood. She doesn’t notice that there is something more to it besides that, that the ever-clumsy Jack has once again accidentally doused the world in even more magic without knowing it. At least, not at first. When the icy water hits her skin she only feels the cut on her belly burning, like something is seeping into her through the hole. Then the change is fast, and cruel. Gills tear slits into either sides of her neck, just behind her ears and her fingers grow a gentle webbing between them. The worst, however, is the feeling of every bone in both of her legs breaking and then reforming; they fuse together to become one, and her pink skin and sequin skirt are replaced by teal scales and a true mermaids tail. She has become a true mermaid.
And just in time.
From either side the pumpkins are closing in. The massive throng moves slowly, but each step they take makes the river narrower with the frost that they bring. First they block downstream, and with everything left inside of her she tries to swim faster, to escape in the opposite direction but she’s bleeding, and she’s bruised, and she’s swimming upstream, and before her they stretch out for miles and miles and miles. They close the path almost immediately; tighter and tighter they circle, until all that’s left unfrozen of the river is a little pool in its centre.
This is not the end, she thinks.
And it still isn’t.
Because she realizes then, while waving her long, scaly tail back and forth in order to tread the water in the pool, that a new world has opened up for her; one that gives her what she needs when she needs it. So she imagines harnessing the water all around her, and all at once she can feel in her bones that its working.
The river water spirals up and out of the pool in its centre. Glassheart swims at its peak. It spins, and spins, and spins - faster with every rotation - and if she’s lucky, this might create a wind that will blow the loosely tied cloaks around the bodies of the pumpkin creatures. Some might just swirl around them and entrap their bony limbs, others might catch cloaks with the pumpkins cloak next to him and tangle together (She doesn’t know it, but Jacks natural clumsiness and penchant for making mistakes put this strongly in her favour). And then, while the wind is at its peak she raises millions of water droplets up from the river beyond the hordes of villans and releases them overhead. It is her hope that in conjunction with the wind and the pumpkin’s natural frosting abilities that the water will freeze on impact and leave the creatures tangled in their cloaks. It wouldn’t hold them long, if at all, but it might be enough.
She doesn’t wait to find out. She’s pouring blood like she’s pouring magic, and so she uses what’s left of her to change the form of the spiral of water. It becomes two horses, and she finds her home on the back of one that she imagines to be gold. And she wills them to charge forwards from the river, hopefully collapsing then evading the army below.
(A river. A mermaid. A hazel.)
(A bloodied shoreline. A sunset. A beacon.)
</p> <p class="glassheart_name">Glassheart</p> <p class="glassheart_quote">i'll always love you the most </p> </div> </div> </center>
XImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#00140606', endColorstr='#140606', GradientType=0); } .glassheart_image { position: relative; z-index: 1; width: 500px; border-radius: 200px 200px 0 0; } .glassheart_text { position: relative; z-index: 3; width: 490px; background-color: #c9ccce; margin-top: -200px; border-top: solid 10px #556671; border-left: solid 1px #556671; border-right: solid 1px #556671; } .glassheart_container p { margin: 0; } .glassheart_message { text-align: justify; font: 12px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding: 30px; color: #333535; } .glassheart_quote { text-align: center; font: 11px 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 2px; padding-left: 35px; letter-spacing: 2px; color: #556671; } .glassheart_name { font: 60px 'Parisienne', cursive; color: #556671; width: 55%; line-height: 0.4em; border-bottom: dotted 1px; } </style> <center> <div class="glassheart_container"> <img class="glassheart_image" src="https://i.postimg.cc/63wZwjyX/Glassheart.jpg"> <div class="glassheart_grad-bg"></div> <div class="glassheart_text"> <p class="glassheart_message"> (A river. A mermaid. A hazel.)(A bloodied shoreline. A sunset. A beacon.)
A single, razor-clawed finger draws a centreline in blood down her naked belly from the bottom of her ribs to the tops of her hip bones; a teaser, she thinks, of what comes next, because that same finger could have spilled her innards the first time if it had only wanted to. They were cruel, these flickering shadow-monsters. It’s why they chose the faces of people she’s known. It’s why they’ve become all the things that are important to her. It’s why He waited, hovering above her, with a wicked sneer and his claws drawn back as though in the next second he would bring them down on her with enough force to craft that first true incision.
They wanted to see her squirm first.
They wanted to feed on her fear.
But they won’t find it. She’s counting craters on the surface of the moon illuminating them, because it brings her peace to remove herself rather than watch them spill her insides out. She’s singing, still, even when there’s no room for mercy in the vacuous black of their eyes, because she can feel the ache of her lullaby in her heart and it feels as though its drowning her fear. It hurts to bleed, to be cut open, but its been so long since she’s felt at home in her own skin. She feels it now, like its her own, like it belongs to her again. A shame, she thinks, to be reunited with her own thoughts and body just in time for it all to be taken again.
Then, before the yellowed moon clouds roll, and as a deeper darkness settles in around the violent scene on the river Glassheart can no longer count craters to distract herself from the bony hands at her wrists, and ankles - from the thing that feels like Carnage even if she’s never met him; from an inevitable demise. He brings his hand down like a hammer, and she feels his claw in her belly. She doesn’t hear her song end. She doesn’t hear herself screaming - but she is.
This is not the end, she thinks.
And it isn’t - at least, not yet.
Because then a collective shudder and resounding hush moves over their horrifying, flickering, wailing bodies like a wave breaking on the shore. Even He, with his claw deep inside her gut and ready to pull her open as easily as if on her belly there was a zipper, withdraws his hooked claw, quivers and settles. One by one the faces of the ones she knows disappear, and the monsters become shadows again. They leave her wrists, her ankles, and as quickly as they had come they are gone - floating back across the river, retreating into ash as a cool wind suddenly sweeps across the shoreline.
One by one the faces disappear, and they become shadows again. They leave her wrists, her ankles, and they float back across the river and into the shadows, retreating into ash as a cool wind suddenly sweeps across the shoreline.
Adrenaline helps her find her feet immediately, even through the wound to her gut that spills blood like those creatures had spilled disease. She looks out into the haze, clutching her wound with one hand in an effort to mitigate the bleeding. She would breathe a sigh of relief, only she isn’t stupid. This isn’t over. Something worse is next. Something much worse. She doesn’t know it, but trembling and damaged, waiting for an inevitable destruction - she and her mother are mirrored images. She should have listened. She should have kept running.
Now she waits with bated breath for the next event to unfold.
(A river. A mermaid. A hazel.)
(A bloodied shoreline. A sunset. A beacon.)
And Glassheart is not kept waiting long. It begins with the rattle of leaves from the trees on the shoreline, next, the ground seems to pulse, and here and there the orange pumpkins she’d discovered at the start of her dream begin to pull themselves up from the ground like reanimated corpses. Some have maggots that drip from their eyes, and some have heads that are squashed and over-ripe. They all wear dramatic capes. They all have thin, twiggy limbs with gnarled, clawed hands and knives jammed violently into the sides of their angry faces. They’re all horrible. They’re all seeing her.
Suddenly there are thousands of carved out eyes peering out at her.Some pop out of the ground quickly like gophers, others fall from the branches of trees and break apart just to collect themselves together again at the bottom. They move towards her and when they do frost blankets the earth, and plants wither and green becomes orange and red and violent. When they reach the river’s edge they hover a moment, congregating, and then when their fires turn blue like the water they collectively reach the knives in their heads, withdraw them, and point them at her.
“The games are done, we’ve had our fun. Now it’s time for you to run.”
There isn’t time to formulate a grand escape plan. The shoreline, littered now with monsters, isn’t a viable option - assuming that she did manage to flee and hide while bleeding out, they would surely follow the trail of dripping blood as easily as the monsters before them had followed the pearls. No, she’d have to try the river. She’d have to swim for as long as she could before she, inevitably, lost consciousness. She doesn’t think about the gaping hole in her gut, or about how the water would thin the blood spilling out of her and hasten her demise. She just plunges into the rapids, and the pumpkin creatures close in from either side.
The water changes colour with her blood. She doesn’t notice that there is something more to it besides that, that the ever-clumsy Jack has once again accidentally doused the world in even more magic without knowing it. At least, not at first. When the icy water hits her skin she only feels the cut on her belly burning, like something is seeping into her through the hole. Then the change is fast, and cruel. Gills tear slits into either sides of her neck, just behind her ears and her fingers grow a gentle webbing between them. The worst, however, is the feeling of every bone in both of her legs breaking and then reforming; they fuse together to become one, and her pink skin and sequin skirt are replaced by teal scales and a true mermaids tail. She has become a true mermaid.
And just in time.
From either side the pumpkins are closing in. The massive throng moves slowly, but each step they take makes the river narrower with the frost that they bring. First they block downstream, and with everything left inside of her she tries to swim faster, to escape in the opposite direction but she’s bleeding, and she’s bruised, and she’s swimming upstream, and before her they stretch out for miles and miles and miles. They close the path almost immediately; tighter and tighter they circle, until all that’s left unfrozen of the river is a little pool in its centre.
This is not the end, she thinks.
And it still isn’t.
Because she realizes then, while waving her long, scaly tail back and forth in order to tread the water in the pool, that a new world has opened up for her; one that gives her what she needs when she needs it. So she imagines harnessing the water all around her, and all at once she can feel in her bones that its working.
The river water spirals up and out of the pool in its centre. Glassheart swims at its peak. It spins, and spins, and spins - faster with every rotation - and if she’s lucky, this might create a wind that will blow the loosely tied cloaks around the bodies of the pumpkin creatures. Some might just swirl around them and entrap their bony limbs, others might catch cloaks with the pumpkins cloak next to him and tangle together (She doesn’t know it, but Jacks natural clumsiness and penchant for making mistakes put this strongly in her favour). And then, while the wind is at its peak she raises millions of water droplets up from the river beyond the hordes of villans and releases them overhead. It is her hope that in conjunction with the wind and the pumpkin’s natural frosting abilities that the water will freeze on impact and leave the creatures tangled in their cloaks. It wouldn’t hold them long, if at all, but it might be enough.
She doesn’t wait to find out. She’s pouring blood like she’s pouring magic, and so she uses what’s left of her to change the form of the spiral of water. It becomes two horses, and she finds her home on the back of one that she imagines to be gold. And she wills them to charge forwards from the river, hopefully collapsing then evading the army below.
(A river. A mermaid. A hazel.)
(A bloodied shoreline. A sunset. A beacon.)
</p> <p class="glassheart_name">Glassheart</p> <p class="glassheart_quote">i'll always love you the most </p> </div> </div> </center>