just a bear in the woods

Troy Franklin was born in a bathtub in the twilight of summer.  As a child they learned to dye silks with marigolds, and pretended to move to New York City. Now they live by a window that distracts them from their screens.

The masks in the attic were old, expensive, and fragile. They smelled of mothballs and stale papier-mâché. Carmilla wouldn't have played with them if they hadn’t begged her to. 

“Try me on! Try me on!” The masks would cheer, welcoming Carmilla as she climbed to the attic with her father’s hound trailing behind her. She smiled and plucked the most neglected mask, and paired it with fur-lined gloves. Her father’s hound curled up on the carpet and watched her reflection in the mirror, huffing its disapproval.

All of the clothes in the attic had been her mother’s. As Carmilla donned fine silk heels and muslin dresses, the animals told Carmilla how she looked just like her. 

“Shall I choose you?” She asked, pointing to the broad, round face of a bear. 

“No, not him! Me!” yapped a satin rabbit, shaking on its nail.

“You look so ugly when you wear the bear! Try on me!” growled a tiger, stripes lined with sequins. The animals squawked over one another, filling the attic with the thunderous racket of their clacking heads.

“I should decide what to wear first,” Carmilla said, ignoring their squabbling as she bent and opened a squeaky oak chest. The animals continued to argue, paying her no mind as she dug through the fabrics and pulled up a dress of old white lace. Her father’s hound was the only one to watch her, his tail bristled and slapping anxiously against the carpet. 

“Now who shall I choose? Who should be my groom?” Carmilla asked, standing before the mirror in her mother’s wedding gown. The masks fell silent, slapping against the wall with a rattle and staring with their black, lidless eyes towards the girl in the white dress. “Well?” she asked, brushing out her train and awaiting their compliments. 

The masks said nothing. The only sound was a whine from her father’s hound. 

Carmilla wasn't allowed to touch the animals in her father’s attic. They were old, expensive, and fragile. Once they had belonged to her mother. Carmilla wouldn't have played with them if they hadn’t asked her to. 

“Try me on! Try me on!” The masks cheered every evening, welcoming Carmilla as she climbed to the attic with her father’s hound trailing behind her. She smiled and plucked the most neglected mask, and paired it with fur-lined gloves. Her father’s hound curled up on the carpet and watched her reflection in the mirror, huffing its disapproval.

All of the clothes in the attic had been her mother’s. As Carmilla donned fine silk heels and muslin dresses, the animals told Carmilla how she looked just like her. 

“Shall I choose you?” She asked, pointing to the broad, round face of a bear. 

“No, not him! Me!” yelled a satin rabbit, clattering against the wall as it shook on its nail.

“You look so ugly when you wear the bear! Try on me!” growled a tiger, stripes lined with sequins. The animals squawked and yelled over one another. Their clacking heads filled the attic with a thunderous racket.

“I should decide what to wear first,” Carmilla said, ignoring their squabbling as she bent and opened a squeaky oak chest. The animals continued to screech at each other, paying her no mind as she dug through the fabrics and pulled up a dress of old white lace. Her father’s hound was the only one to watch her, his tail bristled and slapping anxiously against the carpet. 

“Now who shall I choose? Who should be my groom?” Carmilla asked, standing before the mirror in her mother’s wedding gown. The masks fell silent, slapping against the wall with a rattle and staring with their black, lidless eyes towards the girl in the white dress. “Well?” she asked, brushing out her train and waiting eagerly for their compliments. 

The masks said nothing. The only sound was a whine from her father’s hound. 

Or “unapologetic bad answers from an overstressed bum“

What is your greatest extravagance?

Don’t know what the fuck that means. I’ve completed the entire Pokedex though. 

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Any inclination toward selfish gain, or compliance. 

Which living person do you most admire?

Kermit the Frog

What is your current state of mind?

Unrelenting and prankster. A kind of blue and pink color. 

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Selflessness, in the way where you are not taking care of yourself.

On what occasion do you lie?

Never on an occasion that would cause someone harm. Only in good fun.

What is the quality you most like in a person?

Empathy. 

When and where were you happiest?

I'm pretty happy. But, I was most content as a kid eating a bowl of cereal and watching Saturday morning cartoons.

 Which talent would you most like to have?

If we are talking skillz, it would be very rad to be a polyglot-- or finally get past round 25 in Tetris. 

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

This has happened many times. I have been Thomas Jefferson, but in my most recent past life, I was also a very awesome abuela who made some god damn delicious oatmeal and raisin cookies. I would say in the next life probably an oyster in which I would be in a constant orgasmic state. 

Where would you most like to live?

Earth preferably. But anywhere that would provide a level of comfortable living. 

What is your most marked characteristic?

Glue

Who are your favorite writers?

The ones who write well. 

Who is your hero of fiction?

The little guy in my head.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?

I was once Thomas Jefferson in a past life. He was kind of lame and did some shitty things. I’ve concluded most definitely not Thomas Jefferson. 

What are your favorite names?

Milford. I would name my first born this. It’s a horrid name and the child would  be made fun of. But, I would call them either Millie or Ford for short. 

How would you like to die?

I'm immortal. 

What is your motto?

Currently, my motto is: Enjoy life, be passionate, have fun! Or I will crawl from the depths of Tartarus and indulge on the entrails of your burning soul. 

What’s something you believe in that other people might find silly? 

The delicate instrument trembled beneath my gaze, shy but not impervious to its own sapphire splendor. The twisted wire clutched tighter its clusters of stars and pulsing organs, fearing I would snatch the precious jewels and crush them between my ivory teeth like plump pomegranate seeds. Of course I desired to feast on its morsels, but as I grasped for the tender branches of that quaking oak it dodged my hungry fingers like pregnant fish whose egg filled bellies drive them upstream. In my starved eagerness I caught my skin on the threads of the silver, juice ebbed from my finger, and I sang. The sugar crystals clapped happily as I recoiled, filling our enclosure with the scent of lightning. 

-

I turned the fragile ornament over in my bloody hand. The merchant was taking inventory of her stock, but I could feel her eyes on me as I dirtied the jewel encrusted tree. Limbs of tightly wound wire and leaves made of cheap crystal or glass were stained red. I still resisted the urge to devour it. 

The small boutique had looked over its dirty London side street for forty years. The kitschy antiques, knick knacks, trinkets, and bobbles always had a light layer of dust. Pedestrians flowed over the sidewalk. Some would slow by the display windows and squint into the dark interior. I stared back at them, then looked at the salesperson who pretended to be busy. I gripped the tree ornament tightly and it shook in my grasp. If I bought it now, the worker in the shop would see my sticky red desire coating her bauble. She would see me.

-

There were two parts of myself that would hide, on behest of my own satisfaction, in the dusty galleries of which my consciousness was most often blissfully unaware. The id and superego, (or, more poetically, my cunning devil and brave little angel,) would fight and fornicate to their hearts’ content until dragged to the present by my own mortal misdoings. 

As a drop of blood soaked the old rug underfoot I felt them, lustful Beezlebub and wary cherub, judging from over my shoulder the carnage I had cast upon this delicate ornament of which I was not yet the master. With a mere brush of my skin to its silver trunk I had surrendered; if I had resisted, a simple feeding of coin to hand could have ensured my dominion of the bejeweled instrument, and my discreet consumption of it. As it was, my want was smeared over its celestial craftsmanship, and my pride was too great to leave a witness to my appetite. 

ars photographica

Which is flat, the sky or the earth?

Invisible binds tether foot to dirt

We lie to ourselves, 

Say the bond protects

Our fragile skin from melting in the sun.

-

Dissatisfied with hard, flat sand,

Our hands made homes

To be painted pink

We pray a roof cross  

Will dissuade the suns allure

-

Still, heat sings in an echoing sky

Suck us in

Wax and feather, 

Lens and shutter

Good doctor, 

This is the first of seven letters. 

It has been my most fortunate calling in life to work as a physician. As the world crumbles to plague around us, and the swollen corpses of the dead leak their fluids onto the streets, I smell only cloying chamomiles, sweet and stale, stuffed in the muzzle of this mask. This horse's snout is no more a blessing than it is a curse. They recognize it, the sick, and flock to the familiarity of my equine figure with no respect for my time. I have heard many of their prayers in my travels, and my only comfort was knowing that I would someday answer them. 

But I first had to sell my cure. 

It took me many weeks to reach the city. From my own town to the next, I searched for a man rich enough to purchase the tonic I had labored over for so many months. In that time, countless died, but I knew when I saw the red steeples of the city that the plague would be stopped. It was a fine city carved from marble and white granite, and filled with the sick. Too many sick. 

It did not take long for me to find the largest estate in the city. Its doors were thick, heavy wood and had to be opened for my arrival by two men. These were not the rich man’s servants, but his sons. He had no money left for the servants. He had sold them and all his fine furniture to fund research for the cure I now held. Though he promised me his home, his land, his eldest daughter’s hand, I refused. I could picture myself in that home, but this was a poor man with sick children in a sick city. He had no gold left for my cure. I cursed him and left. It was a fight to reach the city gates. Street merchants tried to sell me their wares, but I could see the lavender in their skin and knew better than to buy their plague.

A valley stood between me and my next destination. I entered it, traveling tirelessly on foot, knowing that if I stopped my body could be robbed of its priceless possessions. The shadows of the city stretched over me, lapping at my heels as the sun sank lower and lower behind it. I made camp for the night, thinking of nothing but a greater city ahead of me, one that would have taller citadels and richer men. In the morning I could still see the one I had left, its red roofs peaked and proud jutting over the lip of the valley. I journeyed some miles onwards, entertained only with my thoughts, and wound my way up and over a mountain. I enjoyed a leg of rabbit for dinner.

The meat was not rotten, but I tell you when I glanced back to the top of that cliff that dipped into the valley, I could still see the great spires of that city. The sheer impossibility of this drove me to my feet and back up the path, and as the sun turned the earth red and the sky indigo, I saw that cursed city, every damn building on it, floating over the valley like an island without water. It had risen and drifted from its home in the plains to cast a deep violet shadow over the bowl of the valley. As I watched, crouched low in the bushes and trembling in my thick, pale cloak, the sun sank lower until my eyes strained to make out the mammoth form looming in the air before me. Candlelight filled the distant windows until the city was dappled with yellow stars.

I did not rest that night. I lost sight of the place as I traveled onwards, taking no break for sleep or thought. My path took me into a dense wood and in a lilac mist of the morning and I collapsed into the softest patch of earth and slept. 

It wasn’t the noontime sun that woke me, but a nightmare of a grave. I was lying in it, my bedmates plum colored corpses, and fistfuls of dirt were being tossed over me. I awoke gasping, suffocated in my muzzle of herbs, but as I clawed to free myself of the mask I felt the ticklish stream of silt on my neck. I tilted back my head to see the massive underbelly of dirt raining debris over the forest canopy. In my hours of slumber the city had crept up on me, following my trail like a starving dog, and suspended over me its hundreds of homes and hundreds people, and as I laid there shuddering in wordless horror at the roots and fossils clinging to raw bedrock, it lowered ever closer, engulfing the woods in a cold, hushed shadow. 

I ripped myself from my bed and flew without notice or care for the path I had taken. The snap of twigs turned to an aching groan as trunks bent beneath the weight of the sinking city. Living wood broke before my path, their tender green flesh splitting open as they collapsed to the weight of mortar, brick, and stone. I tore the horse mask from my head and sucked in the damp, earthy musk of my doom above me. I ducked as gravel met my scalp, charging towards where just paces ahead of me shadow split the earth with light. Rock forced me to bend, then fall to my knees and crawl- it hit my shoulders, and this weight had not been felt by Atlas, bearing the world on his shoulders, nor Krishna balancing a mountain on his pinky, it was bone breaking, airless, wet--

I rolled free, and the earth trembled as the city settled down into it. The thick walls were cracked, the packed dirt crumbling onto mossy forest floor, but the entire city stood, its buildings flat faced and calm, bronze towers distantly tolling the hour of noon. Shaking, I pushed myself onto my feet and placed a tender foot to the cobblestone. Guards on either side of the gate closed off its entrance to me. With my pale robes soiled, and the horse mask crushed beneath their own city, they did not recognize me as a doctor promising the cure. The cure! I reached inside my cloak and drew it out, showed them its secretive contents, and asked them to take me to the nearest physician. The sick trailed after us, shy as moths in the daytime as though they didn’t dare believe the purpose of my arrival. I smiled at them as we waited for the physician's answer and breathed in the stench of their illness. It was as thick and sweet as overripe summer berries, fermenting in the heat of the sun. 

This is the first of seven letters I have been instructed by the physician to draft. I’ve enclosed within the precise instructions for the concoction and administration of the cure. May it find your city well. 

Respectfully, 

what to do when you’re bored!

1. Write a letter to your future self.

Your fingers snap and ache as, with twitchy, jarring strokes, you scratch your oath into bark. You squint through the plumes of mist rising from between your cracked lips to reread the smeared red ink.

2. Start a scrapbook for your memories.

It takes a second to notice the child standing at the foot of your campfire. Dressed the same color as the morning, her figure wavers behind the thin trails of smoke snaking up from the shrunken charred logs sleeping in the pit.

3. Record the dreams you remember.

A thin mouth opens and, expecting a greeting, you instinctively reach to draw the wads of cotton and fat from your ears. The child’s eyes widen with near imperceptible eagerness and, realizing your folly, you drive the plugs further in and scare her off with a fistful of ash.

4. Write “What’s the best thing that happened today?”

The wind is sharp, incessant.

It shoves you towards the North.

His cloak, a warm hug at your shoulders, writhes at your feet. The brambles riding its soft velvet dig at your heels like spurs. The thick fabric fumbles your steps and you trip forward, black eyes skirting the path ahead where dark soil lies pungent from the ichor of the ancient ones.

5. List all you’re grateful for.

Dried leaves and blood crunch underfoot. Their gnarled figures loom overhead, torsos twisted into a resentful canopy of naked, broken branches. You don’t dare look at them, to appreciate the frozen dance they formed as they clustered together to die. Their skeletal bodies will protect you for now.

6. Write down prayers to recite daily.

*＊✿❀ my manifesto ❀✿＊*

I like deadlines

D e a d l i n e

Dead line

Dead

Line

Everything else is 

Inconsistent premonitions

Start a studyblr, write a penpal

(hoard and treasure their letters, dragon)

Sell your art, make an onlyfans

(maybe if you change your username you’ll be more popular)

Creation is chaos; hear the call of the void

Hollow as a wounded god

Ignore it.

Lucid dream

Astral project

Shift to your desired reality

I'm having so much fun

When my hands are busy, I can’t eat my skin

And so I learned to make flowers from thread

Write the pretty words

Strum the strings

Skate the board

Draw the art

I’m a wild card!

A feral dog!

But I love leashes, 

Especially when they’re made from 

Cave Game

16 colors of stained glass

Including three fictional ones

Desert emeralds,

Which damaged you if you stood on it,

Bone blocks

And all their polished counterparts

Sunflower fields

can be tamed if it is fed seeds

-

You wake up

waiting for the sun to rise

or, if you’re lucky, stone

it offers some protection

-

their mission for the day

Panic.

a sequence that is rushed

That lack the connective tissue necessary

to lose sight of them for good

https://www.thescienceacademystemmagnet.org/2019/12/20/the-history-of-minecraft/