#( phobos. )

He was born in whats now known as danvers, massachusetts in the 1600s, to a well off family, the son of a man who smiled with too many teeth, sharp as razors, and he never understood how no one saw them. then he wondered: do my teeth look like that?

yes, yes, no.

By the time he was thirty he could control that side of him, by the time he was thirty his father was gone, disappeared in an attack on the coach he was on: wolves must have dragged him off.

In 1683, he was turning forty, and he had someone he loved—but the witch trials were going strong and someone point fingers at them, at the strange way things disappeared and changed around them. ( how could someone see that, and never what had befell his parents? )

he confessed when they came if only it meant that they wouldn’t hurt her. they weren’t wrong; he wasn’t natural, but he wasn’t a witch, either. they had nothing on him, except maybe heavy shackles he couldn’t break free of.

when they walked him up to the gallows and dropped him, his neck snapped—it still wasn’t enough to kill him. in a panic, they tied him to a post and lit the kindling.

his screams rent the earth beneath them, opening up a huge fissure between the crowd and the fire, and shattered the foundation beneath nearby buildings.