show me your best writing

[Cassi]

to counterpoint my 'worst writing' post, LET'S SEE HOW FAR YOU'VE COME.

post something (or somethings) you're proud of that made to go 'damn, I'm not half bad at this.'

I want to admire you all.

[Cassi]

I'm gonna do a LOT because I'm proud of how far my babies have come and also I have a lot more of my 'good' posts saved than I do my bad ones:

"It happens like this.
The ending of the world’s long been speculated. There’s the how: will it end in fire or ice – or something else, some natural disaster unheard of?
There’s the why: will it be because some vengeful god has tired of sinners, and decided to end them? Will it be because the earth simply gravitates closer and closer to the sun until demise is imminent?
And, of course, there’s the when: in a hundred years? A thousand? A million? More?
Both of them have thought of this idea – neither are fatalists, but the idea begs to be pondered. He imagines an apocalypse, a world awash in blood and screams, the air ripe with fear. He is always in this vision, always standing proud – like an overseer, perhaps.
A conductor and his masterpiece, even.
She has a calmer idea, a simple ending of things, happening with the slow extinction of one species after another until nothing’s left.

**********

It begins like this.
They’re lovers, and have always been – wed in sickness and health, poverty and prosperity. There are no such legalities for their type, of course, and their romance has been riddled with infidelity and even blood, on occasions.
But still, they are lovers.
Ever since first meeting, they have haunted each other. He has tried, and tried again to love her like she loved him – but his kisses felt only her pulse and the promise of blood, and those images were more erotic than anything else. Still, there is a fondness for her that he has not felt for anyone else.
“What’s another word for love?” he asked once, lips in her hair, to which she replied, “passion.”
“Still not right,” he said, to which she replied, “we’re indefinable.”  "
-- part of a Carnage & Gail 'death post' circa 2008. I loved it because of the gimmick (it ____ like this) but also because it was a super good way to ambiguously kill them. of course, neither died and now carnage lives in outer space and gail is an afterlife queen.

"She is alone.
She is not alone.
She exists like butterflies encased in glass do. She exists in perpetuity. She should not exist but time itself seems to no longer be.
The chewing noise, the sound of the earth being eaten alive, always comes closer but never arrives. There is some point in time when everything resets and the day begins anew, although she has long stopped keeping time in days. She does not keep time at all.
She exists.
She does not exist.
He left her and he paused things, somehow. He paused things and left her here in this strange perpetual state where she’s forgotten the sound of her own voice and cannot remember any noise but the one of radio static, of a world long meant to end.
She loves him.
She does not love him.
She waits for him like she waits to take her next breath. He is an intrinsic part of her. It’s no longer about love, if it ever was.
(“We’re indefinable.”)
He is simply a part of her, some vital organ."
--Gail's POV from the afterlife quest back in May. I WAS SO HAPPY TO PLAY HER AGAIN

"And the corpse masterpiece, all her scars melted away by years of what isn’t quite immortality but certainly isn’t natural, she chooses them, breaks her grotesque ballet to infect their space with the pestilence that is my lunatic. She joins where she is most certainly not invited, she joins them, with their body heat and pulses beating like wings under in the skin, their arteries rich with so much blood she hasn’t seen in a long time.
She remembers the taste, though. She remembers how with him, that bastard Prince Charming, how she drank so much blood she was sick for days afterward, stomach curdled with red vomit that wouldn’t come.
The blood-drinker, vampire that isn’t, she has polluted herself within them, indeed, she is close enough to touch and she does, she draws her rubbery lips against the bay mare she does not know and certainly does not love."
--Chantale, circa 2007 or 2008. Chantale was special in that she channeled the last bit of my tendency for the melodramatic with some Chuck Palahiuk rip off but actually turned out half decent. I literally have a book's worth of her posts, in it you can see the evolution - I can't write like this now, her inception came from the dregs of teenage angst.


"You are a monster and there are bodies, the first plots in the graveyard you create. You are cruel at first, too convinced of your warped nature to be good to them. There is a woman you leave dying on the beach, and you do not know someday she will come back to haunt you. There are others you may have forgotten.
You know what it’s like to be painted in blood and sometimes the smell of it makes you sick and sometimes it makes you think of home, wherever that is.

You are grown and there is a woman and for the first time you realize what love’s like when met at both sides, you love her and she you, and she is delicate and fragile and you would move mountains for her. You cry when she dies, and your heart aches but there are others who flow in, like water expanding to fill the empty space and you think you might not be a monster after all.

You are a father and you are praying with your son. You think perhaps god will save you. You don’t know any real prayers so you make up your own, a patchwork of hymns and phrases. You teach all this to your son and he drinks it down, takes to falling on his knees in religious fervor.
You lay your head across his back. He smells like sunshine and grass. He is praying, but your thoughts are far from virtuous.
You are a monster.

You are alone and there is a man who breathes your name like the sweetest kind of sin. He’s the kind of man who would hurt you just to hear you scream his name and you are in love with him after an hour.
You do not kill him and you are not ashamed of him so of course he leaves you because you stink of want and need.

You are desperate and desperation breeds desperation, there are girls and boys in between. You love all of them. Some of them say they love you.
All of them leave.

You are quiet and there is a boy. He is young and reminds you of your son in the worst way. He tells you that you are good.
(You are not.)
He is shivering in the cold. You cannot take your eyes off of him.
He is a child. You tell him, ‘I could keep you warm.’
(You do. He is warm as anything you’ve ever known.)
You are a monster.

You are broken because you cannot stop whispering their names. You hurt because your body denies you even the simple pleasure of death, it persists. Your heartstrings sing their names. Your closed eyes play their faces. Sometimes they are screaming.
You find him (or does he find you?) and this one is not a boy. He is an old man, a hurt man, just like you.
Your bodies fit together like something that’s been years in the making.

You are screaming because that man, the old sea-salt gray you wanted to have a family with, he’s being eaten alive, his bones washing into the sea. The noise of his neck breaking is like a gunshot. You have nightmares for months after.
Your son – not the praying one, but a new one, your new family – presses against you and you swallow bile, thinking ‘not again.’

You are old, impossibly old. You have nightmares. You haven’t seen your son in months. You are secretly glad because he hurts to look at in ways you’re afraid to decipher.
You repeat their names to yourself. It’s almost like praying. You always say her name first.
You are thinking of saying her name when she says yours.
She smells a little like death but underneath it all is the scent you knew so well. She has a mission but you don’t care because her neck is beneath your lips and she is whispering that she loves you so.
You tell her you love her, too.
(You do. You love her enough to kill for her. To die for her. Anything she asks.)
She asks if you will follow her. It’s a stupid question.
You realize that all this time, you’ve been waiting.
You follow. "
--Garbage's death post from earlier this year
"Sweet sick boy, I called what we had destiny. When you can blame the stars for aligning wrong so we collided (and crashed, and burned – but baby, we burned bright) it’s easier. Because thinking it’s something I did – that I had a choice, falling for you – that’s too much. It’s too much. I don’t like thinking I chose to hurt this bad, that I decided my heart would break – because I knew, baby-babylove, that you were going to break my heart long before you ever did. Handsome things like you are born heartbreakers, I’m sure you did it a thousand times before you shattered mine.
Maybe I’m just a narcissist but my heartbreak was the worst. Because the rest of them, you didn’t touch them (not like you touched me, anyways – your starfire kisses, oh). You didn’t tell them you loved them. You didn’t say to them, honeychild, we’re getting out.
I got out, I guess. But I want back in. I want back to you."
--Lovecraft, circa...anywhere from 2007-2009? maybe? it's another example of something I can't quite recreate - Lovecraft's posts were all letters to a past lover, which, while fun to write, explains why nobody really posted with him

"Yes, she forgot – like Lot’s wife, she looked back, but rather than turn to a pillar of salt she was met with mad howls and snapping jaws."
-- the "like Lot's wife" analogy is a FAVORITE (from Cordis)

"First: she loved her like a blind man loves color.
She is who was there when Cordis ran from the pits, hellhounds sharp and chuffing at her heels. She is the one who led them to the river, who baptized her. The one who tried to touch her, but did not question when Cordis pulled away, told her you can’t, you can’t.
(Which told her that someone once could.)
She did not know how to love, coming from this. She ignored and denied and smothered the feelings, not recognizing them. She had no way to articulate it and besides, there had been too much fear.
(Fear that what did transpire would transpire – she had been right on that account.)
All this to say, in the beginning she had loved her without knowing that she loved her, because they were too beautiful and impossible to describe, a feeling for which no words exist.

Then: she loved her like a natural disaster.
Catastrophe had been a theme with them. A lighthouse, begging her to wreck upon her shores. A man who had hurt Spyndle, plucked the feathers from her wings, because she had spurned her.
Cordis realized she was ruined when she was leaving (again) and she looked back (again) and she forgot, for the moment, about everything but hurt. And she had paid the price for that, because her attention had been focused on the gold mare the hellhounds had found their time, they had felled her.
(She survived, but why?)
It was mostly turmoil, because she knew - had known, from the beginning – that there was no happy ending, that they were impossible.
She knew, from the start, one of them was going to die.
All this to say, she loved her and wrecked her and was wrecked by her, and it took years until she could say her name without sobbing.

Now: she loves her.
There are no similes for it, because every bit of poetry she knows falls short of her, and when she sees the form – gold and snowy-winged and impossibly there - all words leave her throat.
(will you)
The question surfaces, a hint of coherence, spoken in her heartbeat slamming against her breastbone like it’s trying to burst out and lay itself at Spyndle’s feet.
(come back)
She wouldn’t come back; Cordis had accepted that (so she told herself), and besides, her memories are gone, Cordis saw the glazed eyes as they were drained from her. But in the moment it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, what matters is she can look upon her again.
Her memory could never do Spyndle justice, and she is spellbound when she sees her, a soft ‘oh’ catching in her throat.
(for me)
For us.

“Hello,” she says, because she does not know what Spyndle thinks of her – if, indeed, she thinks anything at all, she may just be a silver stranger transgressing the riverbank.
Which she was, once, all those years ago. A terrified stranger with a jitterbug heartbeat who thought they were something other than inevitable.

She loves her, like everything that’s ever mattered."
--Cordis circa 2014 to Spyndle. Spyndle was probably one of the best things to happen to my muse but this post is favorite

[Sarah]

I have two - two very different things, I think. I'm actually bummed that I lost all of Seera's stuff except this one post. Must of accidentally trashed the Google Doc drive D:

Morphine's death post:
the world whispers
The near millenium the mage spent drifting aimlessly left an indelible mark; fire and water and earth and wind engrained itself in the framework of her soul. They passionately kissed each other in her body, defying logic and the natural order in the way that she defied both time and death and the world’s darkness. Fire came to water and earth again and again, while air touched and touched and never stayed still. Theirs’ was a paradise few had ever known.

They were one.
Morphine and the world. The world and the mage.

The elementals’ union was bliss. The better part of an orgasm, dark chocolate, the best year’s best wine, and sensual caresses all wrapped into a singular moment of being that replicated itself over and over again. She lived in an eternal heavenly cycle, so long as she never took a physical form. So long as her atoms and ions could scatter to the corners of the earth. So long as she saw without her eyes and laughed a laugh that no one could hear. So long as they (everyone, her children and lover and kingdom) never knew her as she was.

So long as the weight of the ages lay upon her shoulders, the choice was crystal clear.
How many had died on her account? (The golden girl could not make up for them, nor, unfortunately, her position as Guardian and whatever retaliation her presence might have discouraged)
A dragon
A general
A piebald king
A lesbian ex-queen
A blue boy and his jungle lover
A child
A flying midget
An amnesiac
A gentle Ima
A black queen, beloved mother
An ambassador
The unnamed wretches of the pit

The list was never ending; the grim, grossly grinning angel taunted her nightmares and thanked her for his nightly feast.  Night here held no peace, the stars could not calm her and the moon wouldn’t listen as it had before. It was in league with the grim angel, a silent onlooker without compassion or consternation for her worldly woes. She was earthbound now, wasn’t she? And therefore of no concern. She (la luna) was as tricksy as the illusionist, promising her ears if only the mage would join them again. Coaxing her with words of understanding (because their limited mortal minds could not fathom what the moon knows), she bullied the rest of the world to join her in anthem. Combined, they were more than she could resist, and they knew it. Oh, the wicked world knew it! And still she selfishly called her changeling horse-born child back again, brutally and proud of all her tricks.

The mage knew; and the mage could not help but eventually buckle (it was the dragon that did the trick, the straw that broke the mage’s back! they cackled) to their persistent whimsy.

The sun is high overhead when she makes her way out of the Desert. She keeps the heat of it upon her back long after it slips down, a small comfort on her death day. The raven woman is alone, as we all are when we die, and though she could have had a number of spectators at her exit, she doesn’t want anyone there. It is… too private. Too weak. Too hard for her to face Brennen and Yael and her daughters. She doesn’t want to count the pain in all those eyes or hear Kerowyn’s cry of confusion. She doesn’t want to be tempted to turn back.

She passes the cliffs where Grim Reaper met her death (the first notch on her skin-leather belt) and proceeds with a measure and stately grace down to the bone-white sand of the beach. The world is watching her funeral procession and she has every intention of putting on one hell of a grand finale for it. As the grass gives way in clumps to what can only be called a beach (though it is not sand beneath her hooves, but the crushed body parts of a million horses) the residual energy of all the deaths over all the ages assail her senses; she can feel their pair and hear their deaths and smell the stench of long-gone flesh (were her parents somewhere in the cacophony?). She continues to the water’s edge and watches the waves lap against the sand, sucking it out from beneath her hooves until she is buried up to her front hocks. She seems entranced by the repetitive movement, breathing in time and never blinking, as if her bottomless eyes could memorize the last moments of the symbol of life. Then with no more than a thought, she stops the sea water in an arc around her and pulls herself free.

This is no time to linger on the beauty of the world when she could be a part of the beauty in no time at all.

Her gaze travels from the water and she turns slowly in a circle, looking once more to the cliffs and the beach, back to the forest and the greenery that emptied out to the sands, and then to a lone ribcage that lay gaping up to the sky. She would not end like that. She inhales deeply, and then begins.

the death of a star
The ebony clad mage slowly pulls energy into her heart. She pulls and she pulls and she pulls, tugging not only at the muscle and skin that hold her together, but the very magic that ties her to the world. She draws upon the veins of the earth, the ley lines that criss-cross the land and make plants grow and die and diamonds form and spring water spout from bedrock. She pulls, and the light around her body begins to dim as she absorbs everything into her black coat. Whatever breeze comes off the sea is stilled, though tendrils of her mane rise and float around her, energized by an unseen force. Her slight frame begins to rise of its own accord until it is a few feet off the ground, electrified with the same power that causes her hair to have a life of its own. The darkness expands as she continues to pull, pull with all her might until the whole of Beqanna is plunged into darkness for a moment and her body is consumed, every pore of her skin punctuated with a silver light. It pours out of her eyes and mouth and from the top lines of her hooves, out of her ears and begins to split apart the inky husk along what once was her spine.

A blinding silver light quickly followed by a seismic thunderclap cut through the momentary darkness, and daytime is restored.

A smoking crater now smolders where Morphine once stood. The immediate tufts of beach grass are aflame, and whatever whole bones were left are now pulverized to smithereens. But what might be interesting to any onlookers (though their ears should be ringing and they might be crawling back up from their knees) is that a decently sized amber ball of energy is floating where her heart would have been. It pulses and crackles and vibrates with liquid, molten magic, radiating heat and a soothing, warm feeling. It bobs in place for a bit, and then, as if it has received some sort of divine instruction, zips off inland. As it flies to its destination it dodges trees and rocks and creatures, and with every change of direction, a small bubble is flung carelessly into the world. Freed from their original orders, they seek their own hosts.

They find new homes in Kerowyn and Caeli, giving them the eternal presence of their mother, a link to her flitting subconscious that remains at their beck and all. Her apology for leaving them so soon.. Bubbles fly up their noses and settle with a whiskey warmth in the center of their breasts.

In Kreios, a boy so thoughtlessly damaged by his twin. It is not his fault his mouth and mind are not properly linked. A bubble hits him in the forehead, hard. And is absorbed where the the damage is most done.

In Corvi, an innocent passerby. He is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and a rogue bit of magic comes flying out of nowhere to hit him in the back of the head.

The majority of it, however, seeks the golden Queen.

the world spins madly on
A quiet calm settles over the beach as the waves lap at the edge of the crater and slowly begin to fill it with sea water. The birds cautiously resume their chirping, and the sun still shines in its summer way, as if nothing had ever happened. But the world is different now; her essence soars on the blue-tinged harmonies of the wind and swims in the white-topped waves. She nestles in the blooms of tulips and buzzes along the backs of bees. She is everywhere at once, filled with the glory of the world, and always… always watching.

Morphine will always be a Guardian.
----------------

When the birds the rocks the trees the dirt and sky and clouds and allthethings began to whisper to her, she knew (knew in that it was something that had happened way way back, before this second, miserable life) the end was near. Nothing is without a price; the price of reanimation, of circumventing the fates was a second bout of insanity. This time the bastard didn’t take her heart out and shred it into steak tartare - oh no - this time the whole world chattered on with voices unseen and faces and shadows at the corners of her eyes (have you ever spent your days trying to find whatever it is behind you, whatever it is that’s chasing you and stalking you and huntingyouliketheprey you are with tiny, silent (persistent) footsteps.

But she could feel them. Ohhhh, she could feel the hot and cold breath on her flanks, their tugs at her tail strands, the way their forked tongues licked at her hocks. They were all slimey, wretched creatures with scales and fangs and had somehow followed her from the cliffs of Hell itself.

Waiting for the day she let her guard down. Waiting to slowly wear down her defenses till her eyes rolled white and sweat foamed upon her skin - till her breath came in hyper gasps and she was a broken, sorry creature like she was meant to be.

Oh Jester - Oh Rhys! Insanity was worth it for a moment (be it ever so imagined in
facades of brocade silk
and perfumed lace
dreaming of one more night when a warrior Queen stands alone
atop her iron throne and the fall is EPIC -
though all trace of her is lost
save one;
one girl more)

She lives like a beast in the wilds of the Meadow; he has left her and Abel has left her and her daughter is safe - so who the fuck cares what she does and who she talks to? The long-stemmed grass is noncommital, only talking when the wind blows, and yet that goddamn bird can’t shut up about his fucking eggs. Who cares about eggs? They crack (or don’t), and ugly little crying shitting SCREAMING unfeathered brats pop out. Worse than suckling foals, they are. Nagging, biting, clamoring for attention when all you want to do is kick them in head. It’s a good thing Lagertha -

Then the grasses part and that silver creature (with the lighting and the sparks dancing and metallic blood and metallicfire, she seemed something out of the god’s realm - but there were no Gods, so of course not) steps into view. The old gray mare scrambles to her feet, teeth bared and ears glued to her skull. Equal parts fear and anger, Grimmy pushes all the voices aside and lunges at her - all caution gone to the wind, for HOW DARE SHE intrude upon her hidey hole (the words, the curses, the commands were lost and she heard nothing but the blood pumping furiously through her heart and ears).

But Seera hears her. Seera hears everything. Seera talks, and Seera is waiting.

And Grim Reaper hasn’t the logic (anymore) to run. The hot (so hot, they burn, they sear her very soul to the core) bolts lace up and down her body, racing to cleave foreign matter (like antibodies and chemotherapy, they must destroy anything foreign, any malignant infestation) from good.

She doesn’t even know what hit her, the body crumpling mid-leap to the ground at Cordis’ feet. The body is now an empty shell. Its eyes are glassy, but it breathes and beats and waits to be infused again.

Seera rejoices, screaming at the top of her lungs, hoping against all hope that the silver magic girl could hear her.





Hm. Even now, I think I could do better, given the time to do rewrites ,and without hundreds of document pages to go through :/

[Calli]

I know this was recent and all, but I seriously loved this post. This quest gave me so much muse and I spent hours on this post, perfecting it and agonizing over it and I'm really happy with how it turned out. This was Minette's final post in the Carnage torture quest two months ago.

----------------------------------

She hears the echo of his laughter with dread. Her body is aflame from within. Perhaps all she will ever know is pain. Perhaps that is exactly what she deserves. Why else would she be here? Surely heaven would have intervened if she did not deserve this fate. Steps echo outside her cell. They are strange, lighter and slower than those of the dark god. She cowers in fear of what fresh torture he has fashioned. She is broken. What more can he do? What more can he take from her?

The cell door slides open and a figure enters. She enters. She stands eye to eye with Minette, a mare of middling age with a white coat and black speckles who appears like a wraith, unmarked except for a brand on her left haunch. It is fully healed, red hairless lines shining in bold relief against her pale skin; a triangle encasing a star. The younger mare's brand is still dripping blood. But for age, they would be identical. A kaleidoscope of emotions collides in Minette's heart. She would swear the universe is still, that the stars are dropping from the sky. Nothing she knows about the world can explain the appearance of her older self in this tenth circle of hell.

The wraith mare speaks, saying what Minette already knows to be true.

“I am Minette.”

“You are not me.” the mare whispers, wishing she did not believe. There is a wrongness here, hiding beneath the too flawless skin of her older self.

The elder mare, the Not-Minette sighs. Minette is shocked to see a flash of pity in her eyes. But Not-Minette knows what is to come. She moves forward, speaking softly but without compassion. She has very little of that left after her years as the plaything of Carnage. “Let me show you. I will protect you from some of the pain, but I cannot keep all of it from you. You will experience what I have. You will see the future as I have lived it.”

The two wretched creatures touch. The cell disappears, and a life of torment materializes.

He takes her eyesight and they play a game, she and the dark god. She is held in place with the living chains. He tortures her, asking her to tell him what he is using to rend her to pieces. A correct answer yields a new device, a wrong one begins the process again. Her agonized screams echo through the lair. She is a quivering mass of shredded skin at the completion of the game.

He uses her body to test the mettle of his hell hounds. She is let loose, allowed to taste freedom (this is early days, when she still believes she might escape) before the monsters descend hungrilly, tearing her flesh from the bone . Always, the dark god calls them back just as she is at death's door.

He enters her mind, forcing her to watch the death of her daughter, the only one she loves, again and again. Each time Minette is powerless, watching as various fates befall her child; drowning, murder, hunted by wolves. After one, a vision so dark it cracks open her heart, Minette tries to take her life, but he will not allows his plaything to escape him. He lets her believe she will feel death's sweet relief before rescuing her from the brink.

He transforms, becoming a two legged creature, uncurling a length of metal tipped rope and creating criss cross patterns up her legs and down her back with his whip. He relishes the sound of her begging, her terror a symphony to his ears.

He rapes her. He finds new ways to make this invasion of her self a fresh terror. He likes for her to struggle, and he does not bind her. He is savage, not satisfied until she is weeping tears of blood. Other times he soothes her with false hope and gentle touch, before mounting her, fucking her and shattering her hope with the delight of a sadist.

He tortures her with fire and with ice and with wind and with the sound of his voice.

She will never forget the sound of his voice.

And in every year that comes, the Not-Minette, her future self, follows him willingly to her torment because as each day passes, she believes that she deserves nothing more. This is all there is for her. She was born only to know agony and despair at her master's hand. She forgets who she once was in the reality of who she is.

Each time he tears her asunder he patches her up, remakes her, so she can be repainted as his masterpiece. But even he, the great magician and the dark god, cannot do so forever. Time is disappearing for Not-Minette, and she knows her end of days is coming.

The vision fades. The cell of thorn and iron returns. Tears gather in both pairs of eyes

“This is what you become,” the voice is matter of fact, incongruous with the trickle of liquid dripping from her eyes. “But this fate does not have to be yours. You can escape.”

“How? How can I?” Minette's voice is parched. She feels as if she has lived an entire lifetime in a moment.

“I am the key, use me.”

Cold dread creeps up the younger mare's legs, settling in her chest. She says nothing, only waits.

“It would be a mercy.” The Not-Minette says gently, or as gently as she can manage, “killing me. And when I am gone, you will be free. We will both be free.”

“I can't do it.” Minette whispers, horrified. “I can't kill you.”

She thinks of Gryffen then. He would kill this mare without a thought, would probably relish the pleasure of blood staining the ground beneath his hooves. Perhaps anyone would kill this mare, especially if she held the key to freedom from hell, but Minette can not. She is not sure what holds her back. The thought of taking her own life fills her with a great revulsion. She has not yet reached the point where despair is so great that only ending it all will satiate her soul. And perhaps, she thinks, freedom will not be any better than what she will endure in the dark god's lair. He will be waiting for her. The white wolf.

Not-Minette would laugh derisively if she could summon the energy or the will. She knows what her younger self thinks. She knows that the white wolf is but a pale imitation of the terror she has known. Her younger self is a fool, naïve. But Not-Minette understands. She was once that mare. She knows what must be done.

“I can't.” Minette repeats, breaking their silence, her voice stronger.

“I know.” Not-Minette says, her body weary and her mind broken. She feel stretched over time and space, every cell of her being invaded and subdued. “Foolish girl. And so I will make the choice, and save us both from hell.”

Not-Minette closes her eyes for a long moment, and then whirls out of the cell and begins to run, leaving the open door behind her.

The hell hounds catch her scent immediately. They are always prowling, waiting for their master's playthings to be made available to them. Without his command to stay them, they will hunt to the death.

Minette follows at a short distance, as if drawn by a leash. Her fate is inexplicably tied up with the mare she could have become. She will not abandon her other self in her darkest hour. It will be her shame, held tight to her chest until the day she herself dies.

The wolves catch Not-Minette quickly. She is not a match for them. Even as she screams her anguish, she kicks and bites and bucks, spurring the hell hounds on to greater blood lust. They tear out her eyes, they rip chunks of flesh from her bone, but still they want more. In a final concentrated attack they pull the older mare to her knees, and then to her side, ripping open her stomach and devouring her steaming intestines. Long moments pass before Not-Minette's screams fade and her body stills.

Minette's soul feels shredded. She cannot tear her eyes away from the murder scene before her. She can only watch helpless from the shadows as the wolves feast, and wonder if her refusal to murder her Self was truly the right one.

Her last sight of Not-Minette is a broken, half eaten body sprawled on the ground, torn to pieces by hell hounds. She cries as if she will never stop, scrambling out of the cave to freedom.