like the moon, we borrow our light; chantale

[chantale]

my corrupt nature is empty of grace; bent unto sin, and only unto sin; and that continually. She should be one of those bodies, dead and rotting on the beach somewhere. My corpse queen exists as a glitch, a plastic-made thing vomited back into existence when death should have long ago claimed her. Yet she carries only a hint of death, a waxy coolness, blood that oozes rather than spurts. There is no rhyme or reason for her existence – her persistence – only the solid fact that she exists, an affront to nature, her lips against a shadow-thing’s skin, looking for all the world like she could love her. Like dark. Like shadow. She likes this, likes the idea of herself being cold and hard, a statue built, an idol cast in stone. (She lacks the megalomania of her father, but who among us doesn’t want to be worshipped, on occasion?) She rewards the girl with a smile, though her smile is often less a reward and more a prelude to something strange and horrid. Her lips have a way of curling back too much, more rictus than smile. “Good,” she purrs, though she is not surprised. Though often mad, often forgetful, my corpse masterpiece knows as if by instinct how to draw them in. She is like rotting meat to the flies. Sometimes, she almost loves them back. (If you can call it that.) “What else does Anastasia like?” she prods, still curious as to the thing’s powers. chantale how original a sin.