Put Out The Stars [Pollock]

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

Once he had been bruised and hidden. An unloved thing made of bitter stuff.
Then he had been pink and naked; he had been of pavement and vinyl siding, posters of nude woman and electricity, instead of the simplicity of dirt and grass. The two things made themselves separate and strange from each other, only crossing now in fitful dreams that coax him from sleep and make him bitter all over again.
(—ice and snow, colourful buildings nestled in a hinterland of bears; a whirling room of steam and the animation of melted and disfigured playthings. Eyes like green headlights, and sometimes he thinks he remembers why he grows weary in his thigh and leg. Thinks he remembers a strange sensation, the vice grip of a hairy hand rebreaking bone and reintroducing venom.)

Never did he think he would be an angel, if only for a moment of gilded quietness.
Before she realizes he is pale death and he is a bastard, again.

‘I’ve given life to things more terrible than you.’
He grunts. He likes their bile before their squirm. Their spitting, like venom from a snake’s lips, as they ‘round the corner. It’s when they finally see it coming, with the inevitability of a runaway train, that he likes best of all. Faced with their dead end, he sees something nobody else gets to—not their children or their lovers or friends. They share something… intimate. They need not exchange names. She’ll be his, regardless. His to rename whatever he pleases and watch turn to leather and dust. “You think about them, then.” he mutters, a sick kind of comfort, warm near her temple and ear, watching her eyes widen and slip back. Her head turn from his.
As he knew they would.

He thinks he sees that fleeting moment of recognition. His own eyes narrow but he is too far gone to turn his head and try to see what she sees. Besides, her mind is fragile now that it knows that it is not long. He imagines it might lend itself to a sort of hysteria, if only to mask the horror of being snared. It’s why animals gyrate when they are caught, thrashing wildly and breaking themselves apart. Better to self-destruct than to be taken alive. 
He jerks his head back, away from her teeth and her mortal thrust.

“Yes,” he says, almost sadly, as she hisses at him. ‘Bastard’.

He has spent more time with her than any of the others.
Hestia he had felled in a moment. Thyndra had lasted only as long as her brittle, old bones had held—only long enough to choke out a word, or name, he couldn’t understand.
“Dacia. Hm.” he mouths it again.
Well. If he can leave her with one thing…

Just like the others, he makes great hollows of broken bone where once her cheeks had been smooth and high, or her bridge straight. Violent and repetitive. Her body remains as it has always been. Green and womanly, though bloat will come soon.

But her face is something else.


POLLOCK
Lone Artist and Phina's