The sheets were hot dead prisons - Kingslay

[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

They are such good company when he sleeps.
—some nights he dines with them, around tables made of old wood and splintered bone, on jellied liver and sweetmeat.
—some nights, he stands in the center of their pyres and dances; even with the ones who made it out, whose holes are as uncovered and expectant as a virgin’s. (In time.)
—some nights, they pay tribute to the bacchanal god; wine, seed and madness, just for its sake.
—some nights he quiets them, each in succession, and then builds gothic fantasies in peace, so like a god tinkering away.

That is, when he sleep. Because when he does not, they surround him like ghouls with many-claws and many-lips – Medusas, with their many-heads. They are insidious, disquiet and disruptful things; like air, except with tiny teeth that bite and drive him to distraction. Their screams mutate from chamber music to banshee wails and everything that was once holy and good turns to ash around him
—death is not enough.

Pollock has brought it upon the earth like a plague-bringer, scythe-handed and discerning
(they were the best: jewel skins and soft crowns)
—and he has seen it undo itself.
He has seen it repaired, imagined a seamstress (perhaps it is She, the bitch of land and sky) pulling the hides together with cords of arteries and sinew. Turning his fine work into defiant adversaries. 
He can understand this, admire it even. He had done the same thing in another universe. He understands war. And consequences. So when he saw her again – though it had been like seeing something beautiful defiled – alive and well, he had been almost glad.

What’s better than one night of fun?
Opportunity! Doors thrown open, again.

The ones who were never purged? They walk like second courses with life breathed into their lungs. (Jellied liver and sweetmeat.) And always, he finds their lambs, and is reminded that their nature is inflexible and monolithic. Such carelessness.

Such neglect
Fine. He’ll take them.
(‘My name is Etro,’ she had said, and then she sucked the fear from his heart
and Etro begat Bruise, who came to his father like an apple dropped so very close to the tree)

He watches his breath on the air, those great, glossy wings hugged against his sides. He cannot deny the quiet of this place. It is not the endless, whistling quiet of Pangea, but a smothered, close quiet, one that writhes with memories. Every once in awhile, they are good company.
(‘No, oh god. Please, no. Don’t leave,’ she had whined, and then she had fallen into him
and Etro realized he was not who she thought he was – he had taken her anyway)
he exhales from his nose, and the air clouds in front of his face like steam.

POLLOCK
the gift giver

@[Kingslay]