Else, afterwards

Here’s HSTHETE, the 24 hour comic I drew this year!  Thanks to everybody who followed along on twitter this weekend as I posted these pages <3

"See, it's fine! Maybe not perfect condition, but still very good! Look, I'll bump my price down to 80%."

The woman behind the counter folds her arms. "It's dead, Lira."

"Noooo," says Lira. "No, I wouldn't-" a scratching noise comes from the box, and the bones of what used to be a paw try to make it through one of the air holes. "-it's. Just a bit."

The woman behind the counter raises her eyebrow. "Just a bit... dead?"

"Yeah," says Lira, trying not to sweat. "Just a little bit. You'd hardly notice." The smell intensifies again. "Just need some incense, that's all."

"Only if I also had a prayer scroll. Lira, what the shit am I supposed to do with this?"

"50%!" cries Lira, desperately. "30%!" when the woman looks over her glasses at her. "Come on, I really need this."

The woman pokes at the box, and an unearthly hiss sounds from inside. "15%. And the next thing you bring me had better be good quality. Don't make me regret this."

Lira takes the proffered bag of coins and backs out, apologizing profusely and promising the moon. The woman sighs as the door to her shop closes, and pops the lid open. The thing inside hisses again, then cautiously sniffs the offered hand. After a moment, it rubs what used to be its cheek across her knuckles, and a clattering rumble sounds from its exposed bones.

The woman looks at the thing, looks at her now-bloody fingers, and sighs. "I'm just too soft for this business," she complains to the thing.

They are beautiful.

The act is profane the act is profane they are slick with sweat and the one on top is scarred and the other tattooed, and there’s a cockroach crawls out of a discarded beer can and the room smells like stale brew and sweat and sex, sex so hot it’s turned rancid and so debased it’s become holy, and they’re trembling, and they’re breathing, and they’re bleeding. Kurt Cobain is playing behind a cracked screen and a 41% battery life remaining, and it smells like teen spirit but it’s 2025 and neither of them have been teens since Kurt Cobain was sucking air.

They are us.

She is a bundle of trauma held together by obligation and self loathing, she’s a web of neuroses full of sugar and cigarettes. They aren’t making love because she doesn’t believe in it and she wouldn’t know it if it tore her face off they are fucking, but when all you’ve known is hate a slap is a hug and a fuck is a proposal and if you’ve never known love you’d never realize you’ve fallen in it, so you’re not making love you’re fucking and this isn’t real but it’s the most alive you’ve ever felt and if it isn’t real then fuck reality, fuck the hate, sink your teeth into her and feel her nails rip into your back.

Hope is a poison but it is so sweet when you’re licking it off her cock.

So lick and kick and suck and fuck and yearn and fight and breathe and live and never, ever stop. If your existence is profanity then swear until your throat bleeds because if To Be is a sin then there’s no reason to hold back because a sin made flesh is love made hungry and if I am a sin, then I will sin until the Devil asks for pointers, and I’ll feed him estrogen and sweet hope until she realizes that life is a sin and freedom is a sin and existence is a sin so fuck your blessings and give me damnation until I’m bleeding and she’s so close and she’s so close and for a moment

For one moment

It is tender and it is sweet and it is safe and you would die to protect her future and she would die to see you smile and the only way for you both to do that is to live.

Then they finish, and reality tries to reassert itself, but she has her in her arms and she is petting her hair and they are kissing and they’ve never known love but if this isn’t it then the real thing must be shit.

They kiss, and they sleep.

They are beautiful.

They are.

dangers of the luring flame

I knew this was going to happen when I published that anon who wanted to know about love potion doses. I did it anyway, because they were an anon and what would you rather, that anon not know how to safely give their crush enough cinnamon formulation to work but not so much that he sleeps for a week? I got a lot of crap about it, including from people who I know for a fact spout harm-reduction platitudes about everything from heroin to black-arts witchcraft but can’t bear that I admit to knowing anything about titrating cinnamon formulation. It’s not even technically fucking illegal to brew, possess, share, or consume! (But be extra careful with potions if you’re black or Latinx, obviously, like I told anon, because for some reason some cops like to arrest people for things that aren’t illegal.)

So, since that’s already exploded, let’s go the whole nine yards: I’m in a love-potion sustained relationship and I want the stigma to stop.

Because it’s not the way you’re thinking, because you’re all hardline anti-potioners who hear “love” and think “lobotomy”. I’m the one drinking them, not my girlfriend. (It’s not cinnamon, if you’re curious. We use a slight variation on the infamous Grenadine Kisses, with a few ingredients swapped for my allergies. My girlfriend was so scared for me when I got hives after the first dose, but it’s easy to substitute the witch wort.)

Do I sound like I don’t know what’s going on, to you? Like I’m not lucid? Because seriously, screaming follower contingent, if this is rape pour me another glass of rape, that’s the stuff. I know she dosed me. (Longer ago than the statute of limitations for magically tampering with people’s food or drink without their knowledge, nyah.) I know I wouldn’t stay, at least not happily, if I was off the potion. I do most of the brewing myself now! The last time my girlfriend had to lift a finger to keep me in love with her was when I asked her to pick up eggs, bread, strawberries, my favorite tea, and speckled false-daisy! I’m with her because I want to be.

Here’s what happens if I miss a dose - I’ve never done this on purpose, and you’ll see why in a minute, but I’ve spilled tea into a batch a couple times without noticing and it wrecks it. The overlap period goes by and I get anxious and depressed and lonely because I’m one of those people who isn’t happy when I’m not in love. I start thinking about going to crash with my parents to think things over without worrying about accidentally upsetting my girlfriend by acting “off”. Then I remember that my dad hits me if I hang around him for more than a couple hours, so I can’t do that.

I think about just straight-up leaving, maybe going to one of those patronizing potion victim shelters. Let me tell you, that doesn’t sound any more appealing sober. Think about how much fun you would have as a guest at one of those fucking institutions and that’s how I feel - off my potion. It’s less appealing when everything’s normal.

And then, just when I’m starting to think “maybe I can afford a place on my own”, it occurs to me that my girlfriend loves me - like, this is why she dosed me! She loves me! She’s not a fucking psychopath, she isn’t keeping me to perform sinister medical experiments, she’s in love! - and I could just stay, this is not a stupid goddamn Disney movie where as soon as I’m no longer ensorcelled I need to go fall into the arms of some schlub whose principal virtue is not wanting me quite that much. I could stay with her even if speckled false-daisy went extinct (I saw a protest sign outside an apothecary the other day, “down with fake daisy up with real daisy”, like it has no other uses, I hope he loses his hair and needs fucking false-daisy).

I might like her plenty even without ever drinking so much as a tablespoon (I don’t actually know, she was too shy to talk to me before she slipped me my first batch). Problem is, off my potion I’m not attracted to girls. (Hence first batch. She’s told me a dozen times she would have worked up the nerve to say something if she didn’t know for sure I’d only have to let her down.)

So if I stay and I don’t have my Grenadine Kisses I’m not going to have any fun with the regular kisses. The potion’s there so I can have a great, sexy relationship with somebody who loves me to bits and treats me well. So that I can do this without being tempted to use her for material security without bringing anything to the relationship. So that I don’t have to fling myself out into the world, caught between a rat race I’ve never been equipped for and a joke of a social support system that thinks the last three years of my phenomenal relationship have been “Rape: A Rape Story”, by Rapey McRape.

So I drink my potion, once a week, clockwork. It’s yummy. It makes my girlfriend the most fantastic, delectable, adorable, sweet, endearing, and hot-as-fuck human being to ever walk the Earth. You’d fucking kill to shack up with somebody who seemed like that to you if you’d ever met one. The potion makes my life awesome. If your ethics are against people having awesome lives then your ethics can go die alone in a hole. Stop fucking harassing people for wanting love in their lives and needing to get it out of a bottle, we can’t all be flawless social butterfly paragons like you (screaming at somebody who you identify as a victim by your own lights: total flawless social butterfly paragon behavior, you will never go home to a cold bed with that attitude.)

There are, unfortunately, two downsides to this approach. One, the halo must be disconnected prior to maintenance, or else the mainspring will never lose tension and the doll will fight the maintenance. There have been cases of dolls literally tearing themselves apart while attempting to assist in their own cleaning and repairs, not to mention the dangers of detaching a halo under extreme torque.

cupid blues

I don't remember making this.

... I don't remember a lot of '22.

And yet, there it is. Waiting.