give thanks to broken bones

big world with a bunch of rivers where water travel is normal. landscape dotted with the corpses of huge dead eldritch gods and the big long deactivated stone constructs that were built to kill them.

big world with a bunch of rivers where water travel is normal. landscape dotted with the corpses of huge dead eldritch gods and the big long deactivated stone constructs that were built to kill them.

I N T R O D U C I N G: 996 CATHERINE CLOSE. this is a story about a house, which is to say my story, which is to say a story with walls, and doors, and people passing through them. they go and they do not stay. this seems unfair, at least to me. does it seem unfair to you?

GENRE: a ghost story minus ghosts. POV: mostly first person and some third person sections. THEMES: homes as monsters, memory, preservation and loss, good and bad families, letting go, holding on, abandonment, every house is haunted. CONTENT WARNING: abuse, mental illness, some horror elements.

All I could do was watch. 

My voice was too low. I could barely even sing to myself, the walls creaking and shuddering the tiniest bit when I tried to create voice. Jonathan had built me too well. I fit together like one of those puzzle sets, all the edges aligned perfectly, no room for air to whistle through holes and for me to rattle the walls like percussion. I could whisper. I would soften the sounds of my floorboards when Marie was bedridden with one of her headaches, her body turned away from the light streaming through the windows. I couldn’t dim that light. But I could make everything around a little quieter and a little less. She was always dearer to me than Jonathan, so I did more for her.

There were many things I couldn’t do. I couldn’t scrub my floors for her. I couldn’t remove the tiny shards of glass stuck in lines of grout that she painstakingly scoured the kitchen floor for, on her hands and knees, wincing when her palm dragged across one that she hadn’t seen. I couldn’t stitch my walls back together where Jonathan’s fist had opened holes. I couldn’t save Marie.

I’m sorry. This isn’t a tragedy like that.

I have a flair for the dramatic now, from the stories that I’ve heard throughout the years. I have always been an eavesdropper, ever since I was born. But I used to tell things better. So allow me my confusion, and I will correct it. They didn’t die here. They simply left. Only one person has died here, and if they remained as a ghost, then it is not as one that I have ever personally known. When I say that I am haunted, I mean that I am haunting myself. I asked for them to stay, and they did not, but the images do. 

I can hold onto those forever.

find out more.

Like, you see the characters and how they look, you know the setting, you know the motivations (but not the context), and every minute detail and nuance of expression or shadows or well, everything. 

You even know what sounds the characters can hear, what sensations they are feeling. You know what music would be playing if this was really a movie. 

“Why should we give up everything to save them? For every one of us there are a thousand filthborn scum barely twenty years past, trying to claw their way into a little infamy.  Let us grow old and fat and weak from their burden. Let them give up themselves to the drain, as they grew strong and bold on our backs. After all, our backs are already broken, each and every one of us. What do we have left to give? We have and are nothing. Ancient relics of a dead age, rotting and telling old stories and forgetting, as all things do. Let them talk to dead puppets of dead gods, vying for favor and fortune. Let them lose eyes and limbs and names and souls. I am not giving up what scraps of life I have left.”

“Why should we give up everything to save them? For every one of us there are a thousand filthborn scum barely twenty years past, trying to claw their way into a little infamy.  Let us grow old and fat and weak from their burden. Let them give up themselves to the drain, as they grew strong and bold on our backs. After all, our backs are already broken, each and every one of us. What do we have left to give? We have and are nothing. Ancient relics of a dead age, rotting and telling old stories and forgetting, as all things do. Let them talk to dead puppets of dead gods, vying for favor and fortune. Let them lose eyes and limbs and names and souls. I am not giving up what scraps of life I have left.”

bad dark fantasy world broke. somewhere between three and six (depending on how i do this) people basically sacrificed parts of themselves in order to stop it breaking entirely. now it’s a classic fucked up doom metal world, lots of fucked up creatures encroaching on it, eldritch gods fighting over faith, etc., etc.

world’s gonna break even worse this time around. one member of this ex-world saving group decides to gather everyone up and march off to the hole at the bottom of the world and put down whatever keeps trying to crawl out of it, whatever it takes, no matter how much they have to sacrifice. they can’t just let the next (barely surviving) generation of people in this world