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 Lethe Beltane
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5c47c9674a
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1 year ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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4dd9dbf348
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1 year ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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e4844a04dc
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1 year ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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4dea9283c1
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1 year ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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5fdd4a36b0
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1 year ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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a38cb1d46a
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2 years ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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413173e124
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2 years ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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ac72890bac
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2 years ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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2 years ago |
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Lethe Beltane
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2 years ago |
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<html>
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<head>
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<title>Terfy Shirts - Dead End Shrine Online</title>
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<link href="../style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="main" media="all">
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
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<meta name="author" content="Lethe Beltane">
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>Terfy Shirts</h1>
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<p><img class="big" src="./preview.png"></p>
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<p><b>Base Game Compatible</b></p>
|
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<p>Knife on "dead men don't rape" generated with Craiyon using the prompt "clip art knife dripping blood" and licensed under the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220830161039/https://www.craiyon.com/terms">Free Commercial License</a>.</p>
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<h2>DOWNLOAD</h2>
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||||
<p>
|
||||
<a href="./DeadEndShrineOnline_TerfyShirts.package">[DIRECT]</a>
|
||||
<a href="ipfs://QmZ1X9ePoXbyc3e3GQyAFyqatBEsQE1bM7AQP4QTWGftcz">[IPFS]</a>
|
||||
<a href="http://127.0.0.1:8888/CHK@5rKkx3l6256KhSMTrTn97w9J9Dhpbqg1xKjwXygOqP4,9RTOLWfwCH7BRJ0TUagr69Ayq01EulHxcFTsMYcCa2U,AAMC--8/DeadEndShrineOnline_TerfyShirts.package">[FREENET]</a>
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</p>
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||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
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<html>
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||||
<head>
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||||
<title>Lucas Respects Women - Dead End Shrine Online</title>
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<link href="../style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="main" media="all">
|
||||
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
|
||||
<meta name="author" content="Lethe Beltane">
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body>
|
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<h1>Lucas Respects Women</h1>
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<p><img src="./preview.JPG"></p>
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<p>slot 8 (c07/h07)</p>
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<h2>DOWNLOAD</h2>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<a href="./lucas_womenrespecter.zip">[DIRECT]</a>
|
||||
<a href="ipfs://QmT4BaqZbbZCQjgPWbCEfjHDEMPb63MFsfEChVGjPN9GRD">[IPFS]</a>
|
||||
<a href="http://127.0.0.1:8888/CHK@sBUsm8CfcpayBR4bAa6irH4oKKOwITgZM47N3t2ouik,9fDcDJg~~aGibXctVTVf7sBlsgIaGxttviiWZfOZ6EQ,AAMC--8/lucas_womenrespecter.zip">[FREENET]</a>
|
||||
<a href="https://gamebanana.com/mods/394575">[GAMEBANANA]</a>
|
||||
</p>
|
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<h2>PREVIEWS</h2>
|
||||
<p><img src="./1.JPG"></p>
|
||||
<p><img src="./2.JPG"></p>
|
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<p><img src="./3.JPG"></p>
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<p><img src="./4.JPG"></p>
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</body>
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</html>
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<html>
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<head>
|
||||
<title>Black & Gold Zelda - Dead End Shrine Online</title>
|
||||
<link href="../style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="main" media="all">
|
||||
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
|
||||
<meta name="author" content="Lethe Beltane">
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body>
|
||||
<h1>Black & Gold Zelda</h1>
|
||||
<p><img src="./preview.JPG"></p>
|
||||
<p>slot 2 (c01/h01)</p>
|
||||
<h2>DOWNLOAD</h2>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<a href="./zelda_blackgold.zip">[DIRECT]</a>
|
||||
<a href="ipfs://QmUxbrEv4RDUHBF1J3XYob6ddffQGj8fppgtK8c5itfAsf">[IPFS]</a>
|
||||
<a href="http://127.0.0.1:8888/CHK@dr7OHEnp1S-VEMLrSezkUrvfnEnMqX46r194mAH~2jw,W2Tz75e9qEW4E7QcAVfFWwZ56OBxzAPrGc2oSSzBn8Y,AAMC--8/zelda_blackgold.zip">[FREENET]</a>
|
||||
<a href="https://gamebanana.com/mods/424956">[GAMEBANANA]</a>
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h2>PREVIEWS</h2>
|
||||
<p><img src="./1.JPG"></p>
|
||||
<p><img src="./2.JPG"></p>
|
||||
<p><img src="./3.JPG"></p>
|
||||
<p><img src="./4.JPG"></p>
|
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<p><img src="./5.JPG"></p>
|
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<p><img src="./6.JPG"></p>
|
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<p> </p>
|
||||
<script data-goatcounter="https://stats.letsdecentralize.org/count"
|
||||
async src="//stats.letsdecentralize.org/count.js"></script>
|
||||
<noscript>
|
||||
<img src="https://stats.letsdecentralize.org/count?p=/mods/zelda_blackgold/index.html">
|
||||
</noscript>
|
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</body>
|
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</html>
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
|
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<meta charset="UTF-8">
|
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<title>Part 10 - Dead End Shrine Online</title>
|
||||
<meta name="author" content="Lethe Beltane">
|
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
|
||||
<meta name="description" content="I'll carry you to the very end.">
|
||||
<meta http-equiv="onion-location" content="http://blapi36sowfyuwzp4ag24xb3d4zdrzgtafez3g3lkp2rj4ho7lxhceid.onion/p10.html" />
|
||||
<link href="./style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="main" media="all">
|
||||
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="./jett_sigil.png">
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body>
|
||||
<p>The bottom of the tub in my grandmother's bathroom is slippery. Slippery, and chilled, and seemingly always impeccably clean. Maybe it's because she rarely uses it, delegated for only the guests and the occasional leg injury that requires a proper sit-down bath. Maybe it's because the house sits as a snapshot of how it was forty years ago, my grandmother the only owner since it was built, first-time, only-time. The awful things this tub has seen. The many years it has served to make me clean.</p>
|
||||
<p class="blink1"><em>My rivers of blood go down the drain, never to be seen again.</em></p>
|
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<p class="blink2"><em>My rivers of blood go down...</em></p>
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<p class="blink3"><em>My rivers of blood...</em></p>
|
||||
<p>Another sharp stab of pain. My teeth dig further down into the block of wood. Hasty, picked from the burning pile outside. No time to spare.</p>
|
||||
<p>I've grown wings. And they're popping out. And Jett sits behind me in the tub. The two of us face the faucet, the drain. A scalpel rests in her hand, too natural for comfort. Normally she would use a paintbrush to paint purples and reds on a canvas, but my back is already a sunset, dripping at the two points on my lower back where the new limbs have already broken the surface of the skin. The one on the right has a thin incision going up, limb yet featherless sticking out just the tiniest bit more.</p>
|
||||
<p>She pulls down her disposable mask for a few moments to catch her breath. Red rings around her eyes where the safety glasses, ill-fitting and better meant for warding off wood shavings than spurts of blood, have pressed into her skin. "You still with me, Lethe?"</p>
|
||||
<p>"I... I wish I wasn't." I gasp for air. The block of wood falls into my lap. A crescent moon of a jaw. "I wish I was dead. I wish I was sleeping. I wish you'd knocked me out first. Why didn't you knock me out, Jett?"</p>
|
||||
<p>"Talk to me, Lethe," she insists, ignoring my plea.</p>
|
||||
<p>"It hurts."</p>
|
||||
<p>"Tell me about something else that hurts." She pulls her mask back up. Another jolt in my back. The cool touch of her fingertips. A damp towel blots away the excess blood to make the fresh wound more visible. Somewhere beyond me, a yelp that sounds somewhat like my own echoes sharp. "Tell me about your heart."</p>
|
||||
<p>"It hurts."</p>
|
||||
<p>"What about it hurts?"</p>
|
||||
<p>"It just... hurts."</p>
|
||||
<p>"Did something happen?" she coaxes. "I thought autumn was your favorite season."</p>
|
||||
<p>I've grown wings. And they're popping out. And autumn is when my mother broke it to me that we were moving, that we were soon going to leave the Forever Home forever. That the friends I'd spent a decade trying to make would all crumble into the dust of memory. I would disappear from their lives, and they would vanish from mine, and we'd forget each other in due time.</p>
|
||||
<p>"I... I wish it wasn't." I gasp for air. A fluid that isn't blood streaks down my face. A tear? Dull fire on the right side of my back. A loading bar on a monitor tilted on its side, scrolling block by block up. A slow tear of the flesh. "I've gotten too used to death and decay and people randomly removing themselves from my life. I like the chill in my bones. I feel numb. I feel finished. I want to lie down and hibernate like everything else. You'd hibernate with me, right? Hold me tight until spring?"</p>
|
||||
<p>Were the lights in the bathroom always this dim? Maybe my grandmother forgot to change the lightbulbs. I never did figure out how that chain light draped over the mirror worked.</p>
|
||||
<p>"Talk to me, Lethe!" Hanging onto a log in the middle of a lake. A pillar of ice forcing me upright. "Lethe?" Ragdolling. Something small clatters just outside the bathtub. A pinprick shattering a cover of ice. "Lethe, come on. Wake up. You haven't lost <em>that</em> much blood."</p>
|
||||
<p>"It... hurts."</p>
|
||||
<p>"I only need to cut a little farther and then your right wing will be free. Then I can stitch the wound up and get you washed off. We can get the left one free some other time." She's adjusting me, letting me rest on the side of the tub. "Stay with me just a little while longer, Lethe."</p>
|
||||
<p>"It still hurts."</p>
|
||||
<p>"Your heart?" I can't tell if she's misunderstanding, purposeful to change the subject or otherwise, but I don't correct her. She re-sanitizes the scalpel that had fallen on the floor as she adds, "Tell me what happened."</p>
|
||||
<p>I've grown wings. And they're popping out. And this isn't a universe where angels wake up in strange towns in seeds instead of wombs. This isn't a world where the angels don't have wings until their back blooms into a huge bruise late on the day they're born child or teenager or adult and then two blood-sheathed feathery limbs break out of the skin in a huge cinematic scene. Mine are just skin and muscle and bone for now. Chick straight from the egg, pink and fleshy, feathers coming later. Humans aren't supposed to have wings. Humans aren't supposed to undergo Parthenogenesis to become angels. Humans live in a town and the angels live in separate towns and the girl angels live far from the boy ones.</p>
|
||||
<p>"I've gotten too used to losing friends." The loading bar is almost at the end. Maybe I will split in two once the wing pops out from its prison of skin. "I don't know why I ever let any of them be men. They always protect their own in the end, always choose their own."</p>
|
||||
<p>"Is this about..." Jett shakes her head. "Lethe, you put three years into a friendship and got betrayed in the end. It's okay. You're alive. All you have to do is turn off the computer monitor and he ceases to exist. Would you tell a pig who loves to roll in shit that it shouldn't? Let it suffer the consequences of its actions. And <em>let yourself move on.</em>"</p>
|
||||
<p>A ripcord snaps. I'm falling. I'm freefalling and there's nothing for my limbs to grasp hold of. There's a crow tugging, trying to slow my fall, but I keep falling and falling and-</p>
|
||||
<p>-and then hail comes. Thick and stinging all over. Constant pelt. Stoning to death. Blades are reaving my scalp, front to back and then all over again, a plow leaving no bit of dirt unturned. My lungs are already raw. Is this the sound storms make? Is the sound from it or from me?</p>
|
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<p>"Lethe, it's a <em>shower</em>."</p>
|
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<p>Dry-heaving. I shake my head to dispel the blades, but then something holds my head still to allow them easier access.</p>
|
||||
<p>"Your hair is a blood-matted mess." The blades stop. An arm snakes around. A purple hairbrush, one designed for long wet hair, comes into view. I haven't had hair down to my waist in a decade. Maybe that's how it's still in such good condition. "It's just a brush. You make it sound like I'm clawing out your internal organs one-by-one." The brush retreats. The reaving begins anew, but subdued this time. "There. I'm yanking less. Trust me, you'll feel better once I'm done."</p>
|
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<p>But it's still hail. Pea-sized crystals falling on my head in a steady stream.</p>
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<p>"Lethe, tell me the rune that means 'hail'."</p>
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<p>"H-Hagalaz?"</p>
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<p>"And what does it signify?"</p>
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<p>The hail keeps coming.</p>
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<p>"Lethe?"</p>
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<p>The hail keeps coming.</p>
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<p>"Damn, you really <em>are</em> delirious."</p>
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<p>The hail slows and then comes to a stop. I'm slumping. I'm falling into the crook of a perfectly-shaped segment of a fallen tree, leaves as wide as towels, just as dry, just as eager to invite. One wraps around. The sun comes back out from behind the clouds. It has a face. I can't quite place it, but it's warm and comforting all the same.</p>
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<p>"Creative destruction," the sun whispers. "Rebirth through death."</p>
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<p class="blink1"><em>And you know I'll carry you to the very end.</em></p>
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<p class="blink2"><em>I'll carry you to the very end, Lethe, whenever that may be.</em></p>
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<p>"You need rest. Let me carry you to bed."</p>
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</body>
|
||||
</html>
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||||
@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
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The bottom of the tub in my grandmother's bathroom is slippery. Slippery, and chilled, and seemingly always impeccably clean. Maybe it's because she rarely uses it, delegated for only the guests and the occasional leg injury that requires a proper sit-down bath. Maybe it's because the house sits as a snapshot of how it was forty years ago, my grandmother the only owner since it was built, first-time, only-time. The awful things this tub has seen. The many years it has served to make me clean.
|
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*My rivers of blood go down the drain, never to be seen again.*
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*My rivers of blood go down...*
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*My rivers of blood...*
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Another sharp stab of pain. My teeth dig further down into the block of wood. Hasty, picked from the burning pile outside. No time to spare.
|
||||
|
||||
I've grown wings. And they're popping out. And Jett sits behind me in the tub. The two of us face the faucet, the drain. A scalpel rests in her hand, too natural for comfort. Normally she would use a paintbrush to paint purples and reds on a canvas, but my back is already a sunset, dripping at the two points on my lower back where the new limbs have already broken the surface of the skin. The one on the right has a thin incision going up, limb yet featherless sticking out just the tiniest bit more.
|
||||
|
||||
She pulls down her disposable mask for a few moments to catch her breath. Red rings around her eyes where the safety glasses, ill-fitting and better meant for warding off wood shavings than spurts of blood, have pressed into her skin. "You still with me, Lethe?"
|
||||
|
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"I... I wish I wasn't." I gasp for air. The block of wood falls into my lap. A crescent moon of a jaw. "I wish I was dead. I wish I was sleeping. I wish you'd knocked me out first. Why didn't you knock me out, Jett?"
|
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|
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"Talk to me, Lethe," she insists, ignoring my plea.
|
||||
|
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"It hurts."
|
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|
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"Tell me about something else that hurts." She pulls her mask back up. Another jolt in my back. The cool touch of her fingertips. A damp towel blots away the excess blood to make the fresh wound more visible. Somewhere beyond me, a yelp that sounds somewhat like my own echoes sharp. "Tell me about your heart."
|
||||
|
||||
"It hurts."
|
||||
|
||||
"What about it hurts?"
|
||||
|
||||
"It just... hurts."
|
||||
|
||||
"Did something happen?" she coaxes. "I thought autumn was your favorite season."
|
||||
|
||||
I've grown wings. And they're popping out. And autumn is when my mother broke it to me that we were moving, that we were soon going to leave the Forever Home forever. That the friends I'd spent a decade trying to make would all crumble into the dust of memory. I would disappear from their lives, and they would vanish from mine, and we'd forget each other in due time.
|
||||
|
||||
"I... I wish it wasn't." I gasp for air. A fluid that isn't blood streaks down my face. A tear? Dull fire on the right side of my back. A loading bar on a monitor tilted on its side, scrolling block by block up. A slow tear of the flesh. "I've gotten too used to death and decay and people randomly removing themselves from my life. I like the chill in my bones. I feel numb. I feel finished. I want to lie down and hibernate like everything else. You'd hibernate with me, right? Hold me tight until spring?"
|
||||
|
||||
Were the lights in the bathroom always this dim? Maybe my grandmother forgot to change the lightbulbs. I never did figure out how that chain light draped over the mirror worked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Talk to me, Lethe!" Hanging onto a log in the middle of a lake. A pillar of ice forcing me upright. "Lethe?" Ragdolling. Something small clatters just outside the bathtub. A pinprick shattering a cover of ice. "Lethe, come on. Wake up. You haven't lost *that* much blood."
|
||||
|
||||
"It... hurts."
|
||||
|
||||
"I only need to cut a little farther and then your right wing will be free. Then I can stitch the wound up and get you washed off. We can get the left one free some other time." She's adjusting me, letting me rest on the side of the tub. "Stay with me just a little while longer, Lethe."
|
||||
|
||||
"It still hurts."
|
||||
|
||||
"Your heart?" I can't tell if she's misunderstanding, purposeful to change the subject or otherwise, but I don't correct her. She re-sanitizes the scalpel that had fallen on the floor as she adds, "Tell me what happened."
|
||||
|
||||
I've grown wings. And they're popping out. And this isn't a universe where angels wake up in strange towns in seeds instead of wombs. This isn't a world where the angels don't have wings until their back blooms into a huge bruise late on the day they're born child or teenager or adult and then two blood-sheathed feathery limbs break out of the skin in a huge cinematic scene. Mine are just skin and muscle and bone for now. Chick straight from the egg, pink and fleshy, feathers coming later. Humans aren't supposed to have wings. Humans aren't supposed to undergo Parthenogenesis to become angels. Humans live in a town and the angels live in separate towns and the girl angels live far from the boy ones.
|
||||
|
||||
"I've gotten too used to losing friends." The loading bar is almost at the end. Maybe I will split in two once the wing pops out from its prison of skin. "I don't know why I ever let any of them be men. They always protect their own in the end, always choose their own."
|
||||
|
||||
"Is this about..." Jett shakes her head. "Lethe, you put three years into a friendship and got betrayed in the end. It's okay. You're alive. All you have to do is turn off the computer monitor and he ceases to exist. Would you tell a pig who loves to roll in shit that it shouldn't? Let it suffer the consequences of its actions. And *let yourself move on.*"
|
||||
|
||||
A ripcord snaps. I'm falling. I'm freefalling and there's nothing for my limbs to grasp hold of. There's a crow tugging, trying to slow my fall, but I keep falling and falling and-
|
||||
|
||||
-and then hail comes. Thick and stinging all over. Constant pelt. Stoning to death. Blades are reaving my scalp, front to back and then all over again, a plow leaving no bit of dirt unturned. My lungs are already raw. Is this the sound storms make? Is the sound from it or from me?
|
||||
|
||||
"Lethe, it's a *shower*."
|
||||
|
||||
Dry-heaving. I shake my head to dispel the blades, but then something holds my head still to allow them easier access.
|
||||
|
||||
"Your hair is a blood-matted mess." The blades stop. An arm snakes around. A purple hairbrush, one designed for long wet hair, comes into view. I haven't had hair down to my waist in a decade. Maybe that's how it's still in such good condition. "It's just a brush. You make it sound like I'm clawing out your internal organs one-by-one." The brush retreats. The reaving begins anew, but subdued this time. "There. I'm yanking less. Trust me, you'll feel better once I'm done."
|
||||
|
||||
But it's still hail. Pea-sized crystals falling on my head in a steady stream.
|
||||
|
||||
"Lethe, tell me the rune that means 'hail'."
|
||||
|
||||
"H-Hagalaz?"
|
||||
|
||||
"And what does it signify?"
|
||||
|
||||
The hail keeps coming.
|
||||
|
||||
"Lethe?"
|
||||
|
||||
The hail keeps coming.
|
||||
|
||||
"Damn, you really *are* delirious."
|
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|
||||
The hail slows and then comes to a stop. I'm slumping. I'm falling into the crook of a perfectly-shaped segment of a fallen tree, leaves as wide as towels, just as dry, just as eager to invite. One wraps around. The sun comes back out from behind the clouds. It has a face. I can't quite place it, but it's warm and comforting all the same.
|
||||
|
||||
"Creative destruction," the sun whispers. "Rebirth through death."
|
||||
|
||||
*And you know I'll carry you to the very end.*
|
||||
|
||||
*I'll carry you to the very end, Lethe, whenever that may be.*
|
||||
|
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"You need rest. Let me carry you to bed."
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<title>Part 11 - Dead End Shrine Online</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Lethe Beltane">
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<p>A doctor told me once that my PCOS was a survival mechanism. That, in times of antiquity and of crisis, civilizations fallen and next meal uncertain, "ovary machine broke" was a good thing. My body saw a potential threat in every unexpected noise and gave me testosterone to defend myself. My body saw a famine in every turn of the seasons and gave me fat to pass through the roughest harvests. My body saw perpetual slavery in the bends of the phallocracy and turned off my reproductive organs so that every year was not a chance to die in childbirth anew.</p>
|
||||
<p class="blink1"><em>I'm not a "birthgiver" or a "menstruator"!</em></p>
|
||||
<p class="blink2"><em>I'm not a... a "birthgiver". Or a "menstruator".</em></p>
|
||||
<p class="blink3"><em>I'm not...</em></p>
|
||||
<p>Ghosts pass me by on the street, stopping for a moment to spew bile at my feet before fading into nothing, never waiting around for a response. I'm a bigot, they proclaim. A bioessentialist. A dehumanizer.</p>
|
||||
<p>"You think women are nothing but their vaginas."</p>
|
||||
<p>"You-" The ghost vanishes like an elementary school kid, always wanting to have the last word, but I continue nonetheless. "You have me confused with someone else."</p>
|
||||
<p><em>A woman is an adult human female. That's it. Her reproductive organs may be malfunctioning, or she may never use them, but that does not negate that they are supposed to be there. They prescribe no part of her personality or her dreams or her life goals.</em></p>
|
||||
<p><em>I'm not the one who wants to chain women into reproductve slavery forever. I'm not the one taking away sex-based rights. I'm not the one muddling scientific definitions and demanding those who fall outside of their predefined roles in society become lifelong medical patients.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>Above me, one foot on my back to force me to my knees, stands a biblical angel, the body of a man but with two heads, horrifying to my eyes too used to only gazing on my wife. In one of his hands is a flaming sword.</p>
|
||||
<p>With one head, he intones, "If you get pregnant, well, tough luck, miss. That clump of cells has just as much of a right to life as you do. If in the process you die, this is your punishment divine."</p>
|
||||
<p>With the other head, he scoffs, "No government can force me to donate my blood or extra organs! I don't care if it would do me little harm and keep someone else alive! They belong to me, my body inviolable, and they will only ever be mine!"</p>
|
||||
<p><em>You value more a potentiality that makes of you every demand than a person already living who just needs a helping hand.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>A teacher told me once that I was one of the best students she ever had. That, in all the times my body woke me up at three in the morning for no particular reason and I chose to work on homework before the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230102164731/https://tedium.co/2020/10/30/segmented-sleep-history/">Dickensian Second Sleep</a>, I was doing some of the best writing I'd ever done. My words were flowery and fruitful but clear and easy to understand. My arguments were strong and well-sourced, gracefully stepping over every weird edge-case of the academic citation system where other students flailed and stumbled. My anecdotes were vivid and easy to identify with, regardless of how insane the life of mine I was describing was. Every assignment, no matter how challenging, was another opportunity for vindication of the talent I knew I had.</p>
|
||||
<p>For what else are you supposed to do when you've been mocked at every turn? When every single one of your elementary school teachers singled you out for ridicule, every classmate in peals of malicious laughter? When random men on the Internet suss out every unnamed method of communication to tell you, through all the blocks and address changes and running, that you don't deserve to live for the words you've penned?</p>
|
||||
<p>"You don't get to leave this room until you've deleted what we've told you to."</p>
|
||||
<p>"You-" Father slams the door shut and locks it from the other side, refusing to hear any counter-argument, any justification for what I've done. Mother's face is the last I see before the slab of wood comes between me and her. She was never sympathetic. She was never an ally. "You have me confused with someone else."</p>
|
||||
<p><em>A person's ex-lover is the most normalized subject to write about in the world. Poets have screamed about their sorrows, their lost loved ones, for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Most of those words have been lost to the ages. Every teenage girl does this, or at least considers it.</em></p>
|
||||
<p><em>I didn't say I wanted to violently murder her or cause her any other tangible harm I could ever actually act upon. I didn't give out any of her personally-identifiable information. I didn't even say her name.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>Above me, one foot on my back to force me to my knees, stands a biblical angel, the body of a man but with two heads, horrifying to my eyes: both faces are molded after that of the man who contributed one sperm to me and little else. In one of his hands is a bundle of old phones, screens rainbow and shattered, kaleidoscope, from having been dropped in toilets one after the other and immediately replaced only to also tumble into a toilet bowl.</p>
|
||||
<p>With one head, he intones, "Everything you write must first go through our censors to decide if it bears worth. You cannot speak of anything that would hurt my feelings or make me look bad, even if you never actually write my name, even if you renounce your own to grasp at pseudonymity. It would be better for everyone involved if you ceased to exist at all."</p>
|
||||
<p>With the other head, he screeches, "How dare Facebook delete my completely innocuous post! I was only calling for misfortune and ruin to fall upon my political enemies! Whatever happened to freedom of speech?"</p>
|
||||
<p><em>You value more my brothers who do naught but at your whim than the daughter who has a whole world bursting with life within.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>My wife told me once, in the timeline where we still failed to kill Eris the first time but I did not die, the timeline where we were defeated by Momenlaw and taken into custody, that she was afraid that I'd spend my whole life asleep in some form or another.</p>
|
||||
<p>She and her brother and I recovering from the botched assassination attempt, Momenlaw having pumped what amounted to a massive overdose of goneril- a mineral usually given medicinally to polymorphs like myself in minuscule doses to regulate going feral like a birth control pill would regulate a menstrual period- into my body in an attempt to "cure" me of my second form. I was stuck in a coma Velouria and all the doctors in the Town weren't sure I'd ever come out of. You visited me at my bedside every day, Jett. Prayed to nobody in particular- "you sure are <em>one</em> confused angel"- that my liver wouldn't rot in my body from trying to filter out all the goneril in my blood at once. That I'd at least wake up, even if the war would be long over and Eris dead and disintegrated before I had the strength to leave my bed. Your body was chilly, Jett, even though you'd long since weaned yourself off the sleeping herbs, but your hand was warm.</p>
|
||||
<p>The days stretching to weeks to months after we first met, each knowing each other's names but never having met eyes. You found me face-down and half-dead in a river one sleepless night. You mistook me for your brother at first. My body was taller than his, but I somehow looked even smaller in the bed. I was in a coma Velouria and all the doctors in the Town weren't sure I'd ever naturally come out of. Several broken limbs, a collapsed lung, several snapped ribs, a shattered wing. They say angels heal fast, and I was certainly able to leave the hospital much earlier than a human would have, but even then it didn't happen at a comfortable pace. Yet you still insisted on visiting me at my bedside every day during my coma. Resorted to sneaking in when the nurses and your other friend teased you for being so attached to someone you'd never even met before. You just hoped you wouldn't have to live with the guilt of being the one to find me dead. Your body was chilly even back then, Jett, stuck in the throes of sleeping herb addiction and the loss of body heat that came with it, but your hand was warm.</p>
|
||||
<p>And before we met, before you killed me in my monstrous form to set me free, was a big blank. Mindless weapon programmed to cause as much pain and destruction as possible. If any part of my personality survived from whatever process Eris used to lock me in that form, it was asleep deep inside. You hadn't succumbed to depression yet, and your body was flushed and slick with sweat, and your shots were searing hot.</p>
|
||||
<p>You set me free. You only ever wanted me to be free.</p>
|
||||
<p>And when I was healthy again, this time with Momenlaw's and Velouria's blessing, we fought all the way back to Eris. Above us, so tall the light almost obscured her face, stood my mother, so grotesque as to be ineffable.</p>
|
||||
<p>"Geez, and I thought our <em>aunt</em> was hideous."</p>
|
||||
<p>"Really? I thought she was kind of hot."</p>
|
||||
<p>"You never knew her when she was just an eyeball in a wall."</p>
|
||||
<p>Her fury spilled out of her mouth like snakes, like she really <em>was</em> my aunt-in-law after all. Stupid girl, she said. I've always belonged to her. My body has always been hers to transform or dispose of as she saw fit. My independence was only ever allowed for the sake of spontaneity. If she wanted me to shut up or to be her mouthpiece, that was to be my fate. If she wanted to use me as breeding stock for a whole new race of monsters, that was to be my fate. No questions allowed, no insubordination permitted.</p>
|
||||
<p>You said so many times that you hated men, Eris, and I do too, but your ideal world was to be no different from theirs. So much bloodshed for the sake of being entertained. Humans as cattle, abstractions, numbers, insted of people in their own right. I only ever wanted to be left alone. But you would never leave me alone if you lived, and you wouldn't leave others alone even if I somehow disappeared. You'd just make another monster, and another, and another, until eventually the whole world collapsed in on itself and left only oblivion.</p>
|
||||
<p>In that timeline and this one, even when I think about all the people who've gone out of their way to hurt me, even when I think about every person I've crossed paths with whose death would make the world a better place, even when I weigh against a feather every person whose existence ceasing would be reparations enough for my wounded psyche, there was only ever one person whose life I enjoyed ending.</p>
|
||||
<p>"To think that I... would be felled by my own daughter." You stumbled back, Eris, stars gushing forth from your chest in a simulacrum of blood. "Chaos to Chaos, Ouroboros, next link to be slaughtered..." Your hand clutched at your chest, bare if not for the single sheet now plastered to your skin. Your limbs staggered like a malfunctioning robot with gummy joints. "Lethe, don't think for a moment you've freed yourself from the curse all us gods share. One day you'll give birth to a monster, and it'll devour you, and there'll be nobody to rein it in-"</p>
|
||||
<p>A guttural scream from your throat. The stars shot out thicker. The white light, already borderline blinding, worsened. Hot dry air blew upwards along the walls. Jett's brother grabbed our arms, begging us to run for it before she exploded, but both you and Jett and I knew there was no time.</p>
|
||||
<p><em>Sorry, Jett. It looks like I'm making Sablade a little earlier than planned.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>I yanked him and her close and wrapped them in my wings.</p>
|
||||
<p>I ripped a hole to the metaclysma, and we fell in backwards.</p>
|
||||
<p class="blink1"><em>Wake up, Lethe!</em></p>
|
||||
<p class="blink2"><em>Lethe, why won't you wake up?</em></p>
|
||||
<p>The cost of birthing a world, of writing into existence a world where Jett would never be imprisoned or forcibly isolated from her loved ones or silenced by any deity, was risking never waking up again.</p>
|
||||
<p>Luck took my side come the sunrise.</p>
|
||||
<p>"Lethe, you're awake... You're here, you're here with me, you're here <em>alive</em>, you're here alive with me, you're here, you're here with me, forever..."</p>
|
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A doctor told me once that my PCOS was a survival mechanism. That, in times of antiquity and of crisis, civilizations fallen and next meal uncertain, "ovary machine broke" was a good thing. My body saw a potential threat in every unexpected noise and gave me testosterone to defend myself. My body saw a famine in every turn of the seasons and gave me fat to pass through the roughest harvests. My body saw perpetual slavery in the bends of the phallocracy and turned off my reproductive organs so that every year was not a chance to die in childbirth anew.
|
||||
|
||||
*I'm not a "birthgiver" or a "menstruator"!*
|
||||
|
||||
*I'm not a... a "birthgiver". Or a "menstruator".*
|
||||
|
||||
*I'm not...*
|
||||
|
||||
Ghosts pass me by on the street, stopping for a moment to spew bile at my feet before fading into nothing, never waiting around for a response. I'm a bigot, they proclaim. A bioessentialist. A dehumanizer.
|
||||
|
||||
"You think women are nothing but their vaginas."
|
||||
|
||||
"You-" The ghost vanishes like an elementary school kid, always wanting to have the last word, but I continue nonetheless. "You have me confused with someone else."
|
||||
|
||||
*A woman is an adult human female. That's it. Her reproductive organs may be malfunctioning, or she may never use them, but that does not negate that they are supposed to be there. They prescribe no part of her personality or her dreams or her life goals.*
|
||||
|
||||
*I'm not the one who wants to chain women into reproductve slavery forever. I'm not the one taking away sex-based rights. I'm not the one muddling scientific definitions and demanding those who fall outside of their predefined roles in society become lifelong medical patients.*
|
||||
|
||||
Above me, one foot on my back to force me to my knees, stands a biblical angel, the body of a man but with two heads, horrifying to my eyes too used to only gazing on my wife. In one of his hands is a flaming sword.
|
||||
|
||||
With one head, he intones, "If you get pregnant, well, tough luck, miss. That clump of cells has just as much of a right to life as you do. If in the process you die, this is your punishment divine."
|
||||
|
||||
With the other head, he scoffs, "No government can force me to donate my blood or extra organs! I don't care if it would do me little harm and keep someone else alive! They belong to me, my body inviolable, and they will only ever be mine!"
|
||||
|
||||
*You value more a potentiality that makes of you every demand than a person already living who just needs a helping hand.*
|
||||
|
||||
A teacher told me once that I was one of the best students she ever had. That, in all the times my body woke me up at three in the morning for no particular reason and I chose to work on homework before the [Dickensian Second Sleep](https://web.archive.org/web/20230102164731/https://tedium.co/2020/10/30/segmented-sleep-history/), I was doing some of the best writing I'd ever done. My words were flowery and fruitful but clear and easy to understand. My arguments were strong and well-sourced, gracefully stepping over every weird edge-case of the academic citation system where other students flailed and stumbled. My anecdotes were vivid and easy to identify with, regardless of how insane the life of mine I was describing was. Every assignment, no matter how challenging, was another opportunity for vindication of the talent I knew I had.
|
||||
|
||||
For what else are you supposed to do when you've been mocked at every turn? When every single one of your elementary school teachers singled you out for ridicule, every classmate in peals of malicious laughter? When random men on the Internet suss out every unnamed method of communication to tell you, through all the blocks and address changes and running, that you don't deserve to live for the words you've penned?
|
||||
|
||||
"You don't get to leave this room until you've deleted what we've told you to."
|
||||
|
||||
"You-" Father slams the door shut and locks it from the other side, refusing to hear any counter-argument, any justification for what I've done. Mother's face is the last I see before the slab of wood comes between me and her. She was never sympathetic. She was never an ally. "You have me confused with someone else."
|
||||
|
||||
*A person's ex-lover is the most normalized subject to write about in the world. Poets have screamed about their sorrows, their lost loved ones, for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Most of those words have been lost to the ages. Every teenage girl does this, or at least considers it.*
|
||||
|
||||
*I didn't say I wanted to violently murder her or cause her any other tangible harm I could ever actually act upon. I didn't give out any of her personally-identifiable information. I didn't even say her name.*
|
||||
|
||||
Above me, one foot on my back to force me to my knees, stands a biblical angel, the body of a man but with two heads, horrifying to my eyes: both faces are molded after that of the man who contributed one sperm to me and little else. In one of his hands is a bundle of old phones, screens rainbow and shattered, kaleidoscope, from having been dropped in toilets one after the other and immediately replaced only to also tumble into a toilet bowl.
|
||||
|
||||
With one head, he intones, "Everything you write must first go through our censors to decide if it bears worth. You cannot speak of anything that would hurt my feelings or make me look bad, even if you never actually write my name, even if you renounce your own to grasp at pseudonymity. It would be better for everyone involved if you ceased to exist at all."
|
||||
|
||||
With the other head, he screeches, "How dare Facebook delete my completely innocuous post! I was only calling for misfortune and ruin to fall upon my political enemies! Whatever happened to freedom of speech?"
|
||||
|
||||
*You value more my brothers who do naught but at your whim than the daughter who has a whole world bursting with life within.*
|
||||
|
||||
My wife told me once, in the timeline where we still failed to kill Eris the first time but I did not die, the timeline where we were defeated by Momenlaw and taken into custody, that she was afraid that I'd spend my whole life asleep in some form or another.
|
||||
|
||||
She and her brother and I recovering from the botched assassination attempt, Momenlaw having pumped what amounted to a massive overdose of goneril- a mineral usually given medicinally to polymorphs like myself in minuscule doses to regulate going feral like a birth control pill would regulate a menstrual period- into my body in an attempt to "cure" me of my second form. I was stuck in a coma Velouria and all the doctors in the Town weren't sure I'd ever come out of. You visited me at my bedside every day, Jett. Prayed to nobody in particular- "you sure are *one* confused angel"- that my liver wouldn't rot in my body from trying to filter out all the goneril in my blood at once. That I'd at least wake up, even if the war would be long over and Eris dead and disintegrated before I had the strength to leave my bed. Your body was chilly, Jett, even though you'd long since weaned yourself off the sleeping herbs, but your hand was warm.
|
||||
|
||||
The days stretching to weeks to months after we first met, each knowing each other's names but never having met eyes. You found me face-down and half-dead in a river one sleepless night. You mistook me for your brother at first. My body was taller than his, but I somehow looked even smaller in the bed. I was in a coma Velouria and all the doctors in the Town weren't sure I'd ever naturally come out of. Several broken limbs, a collapsed lung, several snapped ribs, a shattered wing. They say angels heal fast, and I was certainly able to leave the hospital much earlier than a human would have, but even then it didn't happen at a comfortable pace. Yet you still insisted on visiting me at my bedside every day during my coma. Resorted to sneaking in when the nurses and your other friend teased you for being so attached to someone you'd never even met before. You just hoped you wouldn't have to live with the guilt of being the one to find me dead. Your body was chilly even back then, Jett, stuck in the throes of sleeping herb addiction and the loss of body heat that came with it, but your hand was warm.
|
||||
|
||||
And before we met, before you killed me in my monstrous form to set me free, was a big blank. Mindless weapon programmed to cause as much pain and destruction as possible. If any part of my personality survived from whatever process Eris used to lock me in that form, it was asleep deep inside. You hadn't succumbed to depression yet, and your body was flushed and slick with sweat, and your shots were searing hot.
|
||||
|
||||
You set me free. You only ever wanted me to be free.
|
||||
|
||||
And when I was healthy again, this time with Momenlaw's and Velouria's blessing, we fought all the way back to Eris. Above us, so tall the light almost obscured her face, stood my mother, so grotesque as to be ineffable.
|
||||
|
||||
"Geez, and I thought our *aunt* was hideous."
|
||||
|
||||
"Really? I thought she was kind of hot."
|
||||
|
||||
"You never knew her when she was just an eyeball in a wall."
|
||||
|
||||
Her fury spilled out of her mouth like snakes, like she really *was* my aunt-in-law after all. Stupid girl, she said. I've always belonged to her. My body has always been hers to transform or dispose of as she saw fit. My independence was only ever allowed for the sake of spontaneity. If she wanted me to shut up or to be her mouthpiece, that was to be my fate. If she wanted to use me as breeding stock for a whole new race of monsters, that was to be my fate. No questions allowed, no insubordination permitted.
|
||||
|
||||
You said so many times that you hated men, Eris, and I do too, but your ideal world was to be no different from theirs. So much bloodshed for the sake of being entertained. Humans as cattle, abstractions, numbers, insted of people in their own right. I only ever wanted to be left alone. But you would never leave me alone if you lived, and you wouldn't leave others alone even if I somehow disappeared. You'd just make another monster, and another, and another, until eventually the whole world collapsed in on itself and left only oblivion.
|
||||
|
||||
In that timeline and this one, even when I think about all the people who've gone out of their way to hurt me, even when I think about every person I've crossed paths with whose death would make the world a better place, even when I weigh against a feather every person whose existence ceasing would be reparations enough for my wounded psyche, there was only ever one person whose life I enjoyed ending.
|
||||
|
||||
"To think that I... would be felled by my own daughter." You stumbled back, Eris, stars gushing forth from your chest in a simulacrum of blood. "Chaos to Chaos, Ouroboros, next link to be slaughtered..." Your hand clutched at your chest, bare if not for the single sheet now plastered to your skin. Your limbs staggered like a malfunctioning robot with gummy joints. "Lethe, don't think for a moment you've freed yourself from the curse all us gods share. One day you'll give birth to a monster, and it'll devour you, and there'll be nobody to rein it in-"
|
||||
|
||||
A guttural scream from your throat. The stars shot out thicker. The white light, already borderline blinding, worsened. Hot dry air blew upwards along the walls. Jett's brother grabbed our arms, begging us to run for it before she exploded, but both you and Jett and I knew there was no time.
|
||||
|
||||
*Sorry, Jett. It looks like I'm making Sablade a little earlier than planned.*
|
||||
|
||||
I yanked him and her close and wrapped them in my wings.
|
||||
|
||||
I ripped a hole to the metaclysma, and we fell in backwards.
|
||||
|
||||
*Wake up, Lethe!*
|
||||
|
||||
*Lethe, why won't you wake up?*
|
||||
|
||||
The cost of birthing a world, of writing into existence a world where Jett would never be imprisoned or forcibly isolated from her loved ones or silenced by any deity, was risking never waking up again.
|
||||
|
||||
Luck took my side come the sunrise.
|
||||
|
||||
"Lethe, you're awake... You're here, you're here with me, you're here *alive*, you're here alive with me, you're here, you're here with me, forever..."
|
||||
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<title>Part 9 - Dead End Shrine Online</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Lethe Beltane">
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<p>Of the neighbors who live in the house behind me, one of them works at a moving company. Occasionally he gets called by the company to recover a trailer: stolen, forgotten, abandoned on the side of the road. Usually vandalized, painted all black, as if the cover of night or any number of spray paint cans could cover up the blatant theft. Whatever remains inside the vehicle when repossessed, after the drugs and guns have been taken away by the police, becomes the property of the employee doing the possession to discard or keep as they wish.</p><!-- September 25 -->
|
||||
<p class="blink1"><em>Just someone else's problem to deal with.</em></p>
|
||||
<p class="blink2"><em>Just someone else's problem.</em></p>
|
||||
<p class="blink3"><em>Just someone else's...</em></p>
|
||||
<p>I lie on my bed in a warm fluffy haze, like that after a filling hot meal, curled up in a blanket. The drug user abandoning his trailer was a good deal for me. Seven new video game controllers, some jewelry, assorted knickknacks. Mother would not let me keep the book on playing card divination, claiming it was demonic, but neither did I make any claim for it. And not all of the boxes have been opened yet. More blessings are likely on the way. A good day to be me, I think. A rare day where my mother isn't screaming at me, where there are no other obligations. Maybe I will invite my cousin to play online later now that I have at least one controller that hasn't succumbed to drift. Yet.</p>
|
||||
<p>I lie on my bed in a cold sweat, bare body exposed to the chilling autumn air. A vision. The love of my life fleeing from... <em>something</em>, someone, building taken the shape of my old high school in lieu of a detail the Veil would not let through. Escaping through a metal shaft leading to a roof. A cut across the underside of her jaw. Fade to black. My phone pings. A sketch of her in jail, blindfolded, arms and wings chained tightly behind.</p>
|
||||
<p>I sit at the kitchen table, spacing out. Another box from the trailer brought over by the neighbors, opened to be sorted through. Mother hands me fake jewels, angel wing pendants, glass beads. None hold my attention for long. Most slip through my fingers into a haphazard pile.</p>
|
||||
<p><em>My baby's in jail. My baby's in jail. My baby...</em></p>
|
||||
<p>Mother tosses a metal bracelet on the table. Two awkward metal curves on either side of a glass dome the size of a quarter. A font that can only be described as "live laugh love", large and looping.</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created.</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>Two angel numbers face me. A four and a fourteen.</p>
|
||||
<p><em>Are you strong enough to do what you must?</em></p>
|
||||
<p>The small glass dome burns in my palm as I rush down to my room, pull out the nearest candle, start slashing runes into the soft wax. Jera, Ehwaz, two Tiewazes. Inverted Ansuz: bind but without harm. Kenaz: my light in the darkness. Nauthiz: a desperate need. Algiz: protection. Othala: a stable home.</p>
|
||||
<p>Raido: time to decide on something of great importance.</p>
|
||||
<p><em>Candle, I can't take this anymore. I can't take Jett getting captured or caught up in a war or near-mortally wounded every few weeks. She's the love of my life. I can't live without her. I can keep demanding the universe heal her, put her back together in perfect condition, but how many times until there's more scar tissue than flesh? How many crises until there's one where I can't save her?</em></p>
|
||||
<p><em>I don't want to leave our future to chance anymore. Please, candle, take her to Sablade. Seal her inside so she can't leave. She'll be safe there, on that mountainside where one day our house will be. And one day I'll join her. I don't know what I'll do about her college studies or her career. But I know none of that matters if she's dead.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>My eyes ache. My head resting on my arms on my knees, I watch the candle as the wax melts, as the runes dissolve into the lilac liquid. Late in the evening, the bracelet still burning in my palm, angel numbers bouncing around in my head.</p>
|
||||
<p>I start to drift to sleep.</p>
|
||||
<p><em>Is Sablade really still paradise if I'm trapped there?</em></p>
|
||||
<p>"Jett!" I startle awake. "Are you okay?"</p>
|
||||
<p><em>You promised me you'd let me be free, Lethe. That you wouldn't stop my comings and goings. That you'd trust me to always come back to you at the end of the day. Was that a lie? Did you end up changing your mind?</em></p>
|
||||
<p>"I..."</p>
|
||||
<p><em>What's the difference between this spell and what your parents are doing to you? A bedroom is smaller than a whole world, but it's still a Golden Cage. You're still preserving me for the sake of assuaging your own anxiety. What next, are you going to clip my wings so I can't go far from the house? I thought you were better than this, Lethe.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>A memory. She and I in a school. Her college? High school from a stress dream? I can't tell. But she and I are walking together, arms linked, palm-to-palm. She admonishes me for being so frank about my beliefs on gender. Not because she disagrees- she thinks I'm right- but because she fears for my safety in such a hostile world. Sensing I'm now feeling a bit down, she pulls out her Mirror. A sketch she'd done a few days prior. Scrawled underneath: "I'd rather be in Hell with you than anywhere else without."</p>
|
||||
<p><em>I thought you were better...</em></p>
|
||||
<p>A memory. I've collapsed on the dining room floor at my grandmother's house, right outside the doorway to the kitchen that has never known a door. Crouched under the table, tangled in the jungle of chair legs underneath, is the love of my life. She's reaching for me, trying to grab my hand to stop the oncoming ferality, but I'm trembling too hard for her fingers to grab hold at such an awkward angle. My blood is Niagra Falls, rushing through every vein, just as loud in my ears. And before I tip over the edge, I just barely hear her whisper, "Lethe, I don't want to ever lose you."</p>
|
||||
<p><em>I thought...</em></p>
|
||||
<p>Tears sting my eyes. I plunge a blade into the candle, deep where the flame has not yet melted the wax. One more rune. Mannaz: sacred union, balanced partnership.</p>
|
||||
<p><em>I will not craft another Inside or lay down one more blasted Veil. Sablade is meant to be a refuge, not a well-padded jail. I must stick to my principles and not become yet another tyrant deity obsessed with the carceral.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>"Runes that bind and runes that teach," I whisper, "send Jett where no gods can breach. Keep her safe in warding shell until she has all the way healed. Every last gash and scrape and bruise, you hear? And then set her once more free."</p>
|
||||
<p><em>This is the turning point. This is where I decide what Sablade will become.</em></p>
|
||||
<p><em>This is the moment for which I have been created.</em></p>
|
||||
<p>"Jett," I breathe, watching Mannaz dissolve, spell altered. "I'm setting you free. Because I know you'll always come back to me. You promised you'd never leave me behind. And that includes the boundary between death and life. Come back to me unharmed, okay? Do what you must, but stay alive. If not for your own sake, then for mine."</p>
|
||||
<p class="blink1"><em>You... changed your mind.</em></p>
|
||||
<p class="blink2"><em>You changed your mind!</em></p>
|
||||
<p>"I wish you had as much faith in me as I do in you, because I knew you'd change your mind."</p>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
|
||||
Of the neighbors who live in the house behind me, one of them works at a moving company. Occasionally he gets called by the company to recover a trailer: stolen, forgotten, abandoned on the side of the road. Usually vandalized, painted all black, as if the cover of night or any number of spray paint cans could cover up the blatant theft. Whatever remains inside the vehicle when repossessed, after the drugs and guns have been taken away by the police, becomes the property of the employee doing the possession to discard or keep as they wish.
|
||||
|
||||
*Just someone else's problem to deal with.*
|
||||
|
||||
*Just someone else's problem.*
|
||||
|
||||
*Just someone else's...*
|
||||
|
||||
I lie on my bed in a warm fluffy haze, like that after a filling hot meal, curled up in a blanket. The drug user abandoning his trailer was a good deal for me. Seven new video game controllers, some jewelry, assorted knickknacks. Mother would not let me keep the book on playing card divination, claiming it was demonic, but neither did I make any claim for it. And not all of the boxes have been opened yet. More blessings are likely on the way. A good day to be me, I think. A rare day where my mother isn't screaming at me, where there are no other obligations. Maybe I will invite my cousin to play online later now that I have at least one controller that hasn't succumbed to drift. Yet.
|
||||
|
||||
I lie on my bed in a cold sweat, bare body exposed to the chilling autumn air. A vision. The love of my life fleeing from... *something*, someone, building taken the shape of my old high school in lieu of a detail the Veil would not let through. Escaping through a metal shaft leading to a roof. A cut across the underside of her jaw. Fade to black. My phone pings. A sketch of her in jail, blindfolded, arms and wings chained tightly behind.
|
||||
|
||||
I sit at the kitchen table, spacing out. Another box from the trailer brought over by the neighbors, opened to be sorted through. Mother hands me fake jewels, angel wing pendants, glass beads. None hold my attention for long. Most slip through my fingers into a haphazard pile.
|
||||
|
||||
*My baby's in jail. My baby's in jail. My baby...*
|
||||
|
||||
Mother tosses a metal bracelet on the table. Two awkward metal curves on either side of a glass dome the size of a quarter. A font that can only be described as "live laugh love", large and looping.
|
||||
|
||||
> Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created.
|
||||
|
||||
Two angel numbers face me. A four and a fourteen.
|
||||
|
||||
*Are you strong enough to do what you must?*
|
||||
|
||||
The small glass dome burns in my palm as I rush down to my room, pull out the nearest candle, start slashing runes into the soft wax. Jera, Ehwaz, two Tiewazes. Inverted Ansuz: bind but without harm. Kenaz: my light in the darkness. Nauthiz: a desperate need. Algiz: protection. Othala: a stable home.
|
||||
|
||||
Raido: time to decide on something of great importance.
|
||||
|
||||
*Candle, I can't take this anymore. I can't take Jett getting captured or caught up in a war or near-mortally wounded every few weeks. She's the love of my life. I can't live without her. I can keep demanding the universe heal her, put her back together in perfect condition, but how many times until there's more scar tissue than flesh? How many crises until there's one where I can't save her?*
|
||||
|
||||
*I don't want to leave our future to chance anymore. Please, candle, take her to Sablade. Seal her inside so she can't leave. She'll be safe there, on that mountainside where one day our house will be. And one day I'll join her. I don't know what I'll do about her college studies or her career. But I know none of that matters if she's dead.*
|
||||
|
||||
My eyes ache. My head resting on my arms on my knees, I watch the candle as the wax melts, as the runes dissolve into the lilac liquid. Late in the evening, the bracelet still burning in my palm, angel numbers bouncing around in my head.
|
||||
|
||||
I start to drift to sleep.
|
||||
|
||||
*Is Sablade really still paradise if I'm trapped there?*
|
||||
|
||||
"Jett!" I startle awake. "Are you okay?"
|
||||
|
||||
*You promised me you'd let me be free, Lethe. That you wouldn't stop my comings and goings. That you'd trust me to always come back to you at the end of the day. Was that a lie? Did you end up changing your mind?*
|
||||
|
||||
"I..."
|
||||
|
||||
*What's the difference between this spell and what your parents are doing to you? A bedroom is smaller than a whole world, but it's still a Golden Cage. You're still preserving me for the sake of assuaging your own anxiety. What next, are you going to clip my wings so I can't go far from the house? I thought you were better than this, Lethe.*
|
||||
|
||||
A memory. She and I in a school. Her college? High school from a stress dream? I can't tell. But she and I are walking together, arms linked, palm-to-palm. She admonishes me for being so frank about my beliefs on gender. Not because she disagrees- she thinks I'm right- but because she fears for my safety in such a hostile world. Sensing I'm now feeling a bit down, she pulls out her Mirror. A sketch she'd done a few days prior. Scrawled underneath: "I'd rather be in Hell with you than anywhere else without."
|
||||
|
||||
*I thought you were better...*
|
||||
|
||||
A memory. I've collapsed on the dining room floor at my grandmother's house, right outside the doorway to the kitchen that has never known a door. Crouched under the table, tangled in the jungle of chair legs underneath, is the love of my life. She's reaching for me, trying to grab my hand to stop the oncoming ferality, but I'm trembling too hard for her fingers to grab hold at such an awkward angle. My blood is Niagra Falls, rushing through every vein, just as loud in my ears. And before I tip over the edge, I just barely hear her whisper, "Lethe, I don't want to ever lose you."
|
||||
|
||||
*I thought...*
|
||||
|
||||
Tears sting my eyes. I plunge a blade into the candle, deep where the flame has not yet melted the wax. One more rune. Mannaz: sacred union, balanced partnership.
|
||||
|
||||
*I will not craft another Inside or lay down one more blasted Veil. Sablade is meant to be a refuge, not a well-padded jail. I must stick to my principles and not become yet another tyrant deity obsessed with the carceral.*
|
||||
|
||||
"Runes that bind and runes that teach," I whisper, "send Jett where no gods can breach. Keep her safe in warding shell until she has all the way healed. Every last gash and scrape and bruise, you hear? And then set her once more free."
|
||||
|
||||
*This is the turning point. This is where I decide what Sablade will become.*
|
||||
|
||||
*This is the moment for which I have been created.*
|
||||
|
||||
"Jett," I breathe, watching Mannaz dissolve, spell altered. "I'm setting you free. Because I know you'll always come back to me. You promised you'd never leave me behind. And that includes the boundary between death and life. Come back to me unharmed, okay? Do what you must, but stay alive. If not for your own sake, then for mine."
|
||||
|
||||
*You... changed your mind.*
|
||||
|
||||
*You changed your mind!*
|
||||
|
||||
"I wish you had as much faith in me as I do in you, because I knew you'd change your mind."
|
||||
@ -1,2 +1,67 @@
|
||||
User-agent: *
|
||||
# Google
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
|
||||
User-agent: AdsBot-Google
|
||||
User-agent: Googlebot
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
# Bing
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: Bingbot
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
# Marginalia.nu
|
||||
|
||||
User-Agent: search.marginalia.nu
|
||||
Disallow:
|
||||
|
||||
# Qwant
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: Qwantify
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
# WayBack Machine
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: ia_archiver
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
# Misc
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: webproxy-mozz
|
||||
Disallow:
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: serpstatbot
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: ltx71
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: oBot
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: DuckDuckBot
|
||||
Disallow:
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: ltx71 - (http://ltx71.com/)
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: BLEXBot
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: Twingly Recon
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: PageThing
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: adsbot
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: SurdotlyBot
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: DataForSeoBot
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
User-agent: SpiderLing
|
||||
Disallow: /
|
||||
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
|
||||
Not sure what you want me to put in this file, but:
|
||||
|
||||
I (vanevander@mayvaneday.org) own the domain
|
||||
|
||||
- deadendshrine.online
|
||||
|
||||
and I want it off the Wayback Machine.
|
||||
|
||||
Thank you :)
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue