sky (they/he)

My mother was a good woman.

Though now vague, I can still recall her smile as she read me textbooks about human biology and diseases. She was amazed by those, seemingly entranced as she sat in her study for hours and hours on end. Theresa had to drag her out of the room for supper. Her fascination rubbed on me at a young age, probably. At age six, I could list all the human bones. My poor little sister never really understood our mother and I, not that I could blame her at all. I myself didn’t quite grasp this passion at the time. Theresa was more of an artist.

But maybe scientists and artists aren’t that different, she said once after a piano lesson. They look for answers where Mother Nature left a blank space, she said woefully. That stuck with me for many years. I was only fourteen at the time, she was twelve, yet she changed my perspective on this passion of mine.

Maybe, yes, I am an artist.

My mother died the following year.

It was very sudden. Too sudden. One day, she fell ill, as if suffering from a flu, and the next, she was gone. She who loved to study human affliction, and knew all the known diseases, died of something unknown. I’m sure Theresa was going mad after that; our doctor suggested I have her put in an asylum by the seaside. Only God knew what a mad woman was like and I wished not to see my dear sister in such a state.

It was probably ridiculous to have thought such a thing. Foolish, even, yet I was only fifteen and did not know a thing about grief. It was too soon. Way, way too soon.

I could only watch as the house slowly deteriorated over the years, dust filling in the gaps of loneliness.

Theresa was one wise child, I recall. I do not know where she got it from; our mother was very straightforward, like me. I often reflected on her words as I sat in Mother’s chair. For three years, I just sat there, sometimes glaring at the two cabinets of curiosities and the many books on the shelves, sometimes looking at them longingly.

But I never touched them.

Not until I received a letter from Theresa’s asylum.

Gone. She was gone. Not dead — they had not found her body. She left.

I was afflicted with regret — why had I sent her there? where had she gone to? It was my fault. I failed her, I realised, but it was too late. That at least I came to understand right away.

That’s folly, Lawrence, I told myself many times as I searched through Mother’s books. There is nothing to find, Lawrence, you’ve gone mad like your sister, a voice in the back of my head kept on shouting.

Maybe it was folly.

But I had to know.

I had to find the answer — or maybe find the confirmation that fate was simply cruel.

Anything, really. It was necessary.

i may or may not actually post about it now

do yall wanna know about it

here's a summary of it from my notes

is it intriguing. hooking in any way. please tell me I really need to know

content warning: gore, body horror

I think I fell backwards at that moment. I didn’t care anymore that I was sitting on corpses. It’s venom, it’s venom, I kept repeating again and again. I don’t know how many times I’ve felt like my sanity was slipping away, but this was definitely one of those times.

I don’t know how long I sat there for. The cold rain on my nape snapped me out of it. I didn’t care. The rain slowly started pouring and I leaned back again above that dead girl’s body. I had pulled the jaw open again, careful not to touch the teeth. I don’t know what I did, but the skin on the abdomen ripped and the putrid odour was so strong even the mask couldn’t do anything about it. I remember gagging, but having just enough self-control to not vomit.

I think I started panicking, at that moment. I’m still unsure why. Like I felt Death leaning upon me, like It was going to take me away at any given moment, forcing me to join the lifeless, disgusting, decaying pile below me.

I wasn’t careful. I didn’t care about being careful anymore. I simply wanted to leave — leave this grave, leave this town, I just wanted to go. To Hell whatever this disease was, it was gone anyway. It couldn’t harm anyone anymore, all the infected were dead. So why — just why couldn’t I leave? I remember feeling stuck in that crouched down position.

A sharp, stinging pain in my hand. That’s what dragged me back. Whatever that was, I didn’t try to understand and walked, almost running, back to Balmore.

That was a stupid decision.

[TO BE CONTINUED...]

Author's note

Hi everyone! Thanks for keeping up with the story up to this point. It took me a while to get all this down on paper, so I hope you appreciated it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It is my first truly polished work that I've published for the world to see, and I've been writing for nearly ten years now. I appreciate your comments and your likes more than you can imagine.

The story is not over. But you can consider this first season to be done. I am battling mental and physical health at the moment, so I cannot guarantee when The Tragedy of Balmore will be back, but I promise it won't take too long. I still have much of it to write, but I assure you it will be worth the wait.

I also have an art blog, @dakitkat-draws where I post sketches of OCs from time to time. If you'd like to see a visual version of The Tragedy of Balmore, let me know in my requests. I'd be delighted to share sketches and artworks related to it (or not!) with you.

I will keep posting and reblogging here, so I won't be entirely gone. For now, I'm still looking for inspiration for The Sensuality of Flowers, so if there's any theme you'd like to see explored, let me know.

I won't take much more of your time. This is it! I will see you readers in future posts. Again, thanks for all the interactions, they mean a lot to me.

With love,

dakitkat.

content warning: gore, body horror

That child couldn’t have been older than seven. Yet here she lied, dead. The wind had blown off the linen that covered her body. I wish I could forget this sight.

I’m glad I had gloves on at that moment. There were maggots and flies everywhere, from the agape mouth to the empty orbits. The bloating stage had just started, making the corpse look even more deformed, with the round, gas-filled abdomen to the hollow cheeks and the bone-thin fingers. Irregular patches of red and green were scattered everywhere on the skin and barely nudging the body was enough for the limbs to crack and tear apart. Liquids I didn’t even want to try to identify kept leaking out from anywhere they could and the empty eye sockets appeared to be glaring at me. I looked down. It’s when I noticed the gaping hole in her chest, straight through the right lung. That had been left by a spear. I wasn’t really sane, at that moment.

What struck me the most, on top of it all, was the dentition. Grasping what little bravery I had left, I held the head with one hand and the lower jaw with the other, leaning down.

Sharp, pointed canines. Shaped like a dog’s, but with a hole at the tip like a snake’s.

They were identical to the sample Alfred had sent to Mother.

And when I slightly pressed on the neck, where the amygdala would be, the same strange silver liquid dripped out of the tips of the teeth slowly.

Venom.

A human tooth.

The realisation had dawned on me slowly, and for a moment, I think I was somewhere else completely. I was lost in thought. I think that’s when I lost track of time.

A human tooth.

This couldn’t be it, there was no way.

For days and nights, I stayed up, walking around Balmore, trying to find an answer in those black and silver dry puddles, in the broken down infrastructures, in the rusty spears and knives lying on the ground, in the terrible smell of decaying bodies.

After maybe another week and a half, I decided to go back to the northeast side of the town. This time, I had borrowed a gas mask from the cobbler. I did not want to vomit again. It was disgusting enough.

Despite the mask, I could feel the putrid heat against my uncovered ears. A wolf in the distance saw me and ran away. It was probably feeding on a corpse at the top of the pile. Or more likely just chewing on a bone. I wasn’t sure how long decomposition took, at the time.

Alfred told me the piles furthest from the town and closest to the forest were the most recent ones. From the hill, he had pointed at a specific pile before I got down. His granddaughter, apparently, was the last who died of the disease in the town, a few weeks, maybe a month or two ago. He said she was young.

But I underestimated just how young.

What a fool I was. I thought I could do something, anything useful, but I realise now that I only caused the downfall of this already broken up community.

Selfish, perhaps. A selfish fool; I don’t think I actually cared for their wellbeing. They were fine, on their own. They knew they didn’t have much longer left anyway yet they stayed. And then I came along — for what? self-satisfaction? Probably. They say men were egoistic, back then. I probably thought that I was different, then, that I was kinder, gentler; men my age probably all thought that, that they could stand out.

But we all wanted nothing but satisfying our own desires, our own wants — that I know now.

How ridiculous.

Darren Alfred was a kind man, in his fifties, I recall — what struck me was his skin. He was a dark-skinned man, like me, and maybe that was the reason he let me in Balmore.

He really was the only one who was willing to.

I spent a long time roaming the streets of the town, looking for answers. The closer I got to the centre, the more blood and silver liquid I would find splattered on the walls and the ground. When I headed northeast, the smell of rotten flesh was even greater. When I reached the very edge of the town on the northeast side, there was a hill, and below that, a pauper’s grave. It was immense.

I had gagged, and what little supper I had left in my stomach was then on the floor.

I questioned Alfred. I vaguely recall the conversation.

- What exactly happened?

Alfred: The disease spread like a wildfire. We couldn’t bury everyone properly.

- How did they die?

Alfred: I’m not sure. At first we thought it was the flu. You know, it’s still quite common in May. Alfred: But it wasn’t the flu. The flu doesn’t put you in a coma.

- So what was it?

Alfred: I don’t know. The doctor we had called told us about your mother’s work. He said she had been studying that disease for years.

- I don’t really recall any of that. Maybe I was too young, but I do not remember her working on anything specific. - However, I did find some correlations in the papers and books I found in her study in the past two years. I’m still unable to explain it.

Alfred: Adults hide a lot of things, you know. I never met Missus Alaister but I do know that a father will do anything to protect his children. The same goes for mothers.

This had me thinking. Alfred was right, most likely. I didn’t know my Mother like I thought I did. But that didn’t matter anymore. She was gone.

I questioned him about the tooth he had sent my Mother. I showed him the vial. He might’ve gone pale had it not been for his complexion. He started mumbling something — I’m sure it was a prayer of sorts — as he walked back and forth.

I asked him what was wrong, and he turned to me. He looked horrified.

The way to Balmore was indeed long. Several days long, in fact, and the more time I spent sitting in this car, the less certain I was. Mother had never gone to Balmore, she died half a week after receiving the letter from the mayor. It had been five years since Mother was gone, five years since that letter. I highly doubted anyone had subsided from that unknown illness in Balmore. The coachman’s reaction only confirmed my suspicions. He had told me, “Son, ‘tis madness t’ go in ‘ere. Th’ smell o’ Death roams in ‘ere.”

That didn’t matter at the time. I had to go.

And did Death roam around Balmore. The coachman had dropped me off a good hour away by foot from the border of the town. “I ain’t settin’ foot in ‘ere, sir,” he said before turning and hurrying the horses away faster than we came. Balmore was small, but the fog surrounding it made it appear disproportionately immense. I was still unsure as I approached it.

It smelled like shit in there.

I don’t know how long I had been in Balmore for. I lost track of time after two weeks. It wasn’t completely deserted — a shabby tavern here, a cobbler there, but always the same dozen people everywhere. The tavernist turned out to be Darren Alfred, the mayor himself. “A captain must go down wit’ his ship,” so he told me. Maybe. I have never seen the sea.

Balmore was incredibly quiet. The few people left — an old woman and her two almost as old daughters, the mayor and other men who weren’t much older than me — hardly talked between each other. They didn’t care when I arrived.

Bethora, the elder, told me to “scram outta ‘ere” in a strong Balmore accent when I introduced myself. I wasn’t welcome, I understood, but I stayed anyway.

Maybe I shouldn’t have, now that I reflect back on this day.

Mayhaps it wasn’t necessary — mayhaps I had truly gone mad and was looking for something that wasn’t there. God wouldn’t tell me. He wouldn’t tell me anything at all anymore. I do not recall when was the last time I had prayed, or confessed, or even just thought of Him.

I didn’t care anymore. If He had decided to keep his mouth shut, then so be it. I was going to find what I was looking for, and damned I’d be if He didn’t agree.

So I searched. I learnt, and learnt, and learnt. I read books I had skimmed through hundreds of times already. When I ran out of paper, I started writing on the walls. When I ran out of ink, I thought I might start engraving the planks of wood in the yard.

But I found a letter. It fell from a copy of the Ars Goetia, and was brief.

Dear Missus Alaister,

I hope this letter finds thou well.

Your work hath been brought to me after a strange illness hath afflicted Balmore and its provinces. Nay doctor hath been able to find a cure for the infected pass aroint within a day. We hast inurn'd many. Children and elders, we lost so many loved ones 'i the past three weeks. 'tis a long journey from Newlin to Balmore, that I am aknown of. The town shall gild thy travel expenses and any other loss thou may suffer from while absent. I hast sent thou with this letter a sample thou might find behoveful to study as thou prepare thee travel to Balmore.

Yours with esteem,

Sir Darren Alfred, Mayor of Balmore.

I did remember Mother telling me she’d leave for work. She had a doctorate, but was not a doctor who healed people. The letter had a date written at the bottom of the page, on the back. Third of May. The ink was blurred out from how many times Mother had handled this letter and I could not make out the year. But I didn’t need to.

So I looked through the study to find that sample. Surely it held some answer.

A tooth.

An upper left canine, more precisely. The vial that contained it had a residue of a strange, shimmery silver liquid. It looked like liquid mercury, though more matte. The tooth was covered in that strange dried out liquid. The vial was one of Mother’s — she had each and every of them engraved with her initials at the bottom — so that was not the original container. I had searched the study again in hopes to find it, but quickly gave up. I figured it would take me nowhere.

That tooth was strange too. It was very sharp, but I could not pinpoint what animal it belonged to, nor what the silver residue was. Mother hadn’t written anything on it. I thought of a cat at first, but it was too big. A dog, maybe a wolf? Neither, it was too broad and short. I thought of a gorilla, but in truth, I had never seen a gorilla, and the tooth may have been way too big or small to belong to that primate for all I knew. Then, as I lightly shook the vial around, the tooth shifted, and what I saw was… surprising, to say the least.

The more time I spent in this study, the lighter my head felt, like I was in a field of satin, slipping and tripping with each step. The tooth was hollow.

Hollow.

Like that of a snake.