#bellsofblacksunday

Prompted: Salty Munday Asks.

🎁 : LOOK TO WINDWARD / SLEEP TOKEN @bells-of-black-sunday / tarhos — spotify wrapped — accepting!

He awoke in his own blood. A slick, coagulating mess, sticky on his flesh, matted to his hair, leeching from the open wounds freckling his body. A starless sky greeted him above. A breeze cold on his exposed face.

She had been merciless. A cruel mistress beating Her once loyal dog back into submission. He remembered agony. Recalled the way flesh had been pulled from the meat of him as if he were nothing but a hunk of lamb on the butcher table. Several blinks and the remnants of the memories were pushed aside. Shoved into far corners of his mind where they'd haunt him, shadows always at the edges of his vision.

It took hours for him to set himself upright, to put on a shroud, draped to obscure any evidence of Her cruelties. Longer to don a mask. He stared at that warped visage, bone-white and ghastly, long enough that he swore it was mocking him. Long enough that a well of revulsion pulsed in his sternum. With it, an intense desire to rip that face to shreds.

He didn't. Danny yanked it over his face, smearing streaks of his own blood on the vinyl.

Ghostface's instinct was to rise, to float to a space he felt a semblance of comfort normalcy: the Borgo and its memory of massacre. As he trudged, past wagons and hay bales and old fences, he tried in vain to remember what he could not. Parts of his past he swore he could recall yesterday, now gone, vanished. Stolen. It made his gut roil.

He found Tarhos in one of the old buildings. Ghostface stilled in the entrance, slumped against the door frame for support. At his sides, his sleeves were notably slack.

"Everything looks the same," he wheezed. There was no voice modulator pressed to his neck. No alteration of his voice. Raw, real Danny exposed in such a simple way.

"I. . .have forgotten. I—" he spluttered a wet cough. Blood streamed down the mask's chin, "—used to know myself."

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ HONESTY MUN MEME

In a way? Not because people have directly pressured me, but because I've forced myself to write something I didn't really want to write because I knew the other person wanted to engage in those themes. And to be completely real, it's never been a discomfort thing ( except one exception I can think of back in my early twenties, ) just generally a "I'm not interested in this." Which lbr was smut. I notoriously despise writing smut because it's boring as fuck to me. And I have forced myself to write it because I knew my writing partner liked writing smut. Surprise surprise, I had a bad time lmfao. Made me hate writing. I don't make myself anymore.

Basically not a problem anymore. I'm not perturbed by very much ( and the things I am perturbed by will never in a million years be anywhere near this or my other blog ) and tbh I do write some fucked up shit, but it's all personally consensual and not forced!

"You don't know hell until you're on a several month long journey from an island off the coast of Italy all the way down to Portugal with a man who sits and preaches non-violence to you every chance he gets. I swear to all that is holy, Ghost. I could've been bantering with some of the other hired hands and trading battle scars and his snotty voice would pipe up about how none of that was right."

Tarhos scoffs rolling his eyes as he drinks from a rotted old cup filled with a poor mans attempt at brewing something to take the edge off,

"All of that for I don't even remember how many months. Taking these shitty prizes cultural possessions and he's preaching moral purity. And the minute some locals stand up for themselves he asks me to "find another way". His fortune is built on the backs of slaves and rivers of blood and he's going to be the moral arbiter. I never believed in God, but damn if I didn't want him to be real then just to watch him get smited then and there." — Tarhos complaining about the past

He sits—perches, really—on a solid bale of hay. An owlish stance unaided by the curious, avian tilt of his head as he listens to @bells-of-black-sunday's tale. The Borgo reeks of carrion and blood, or perhaps that's a loitering stench embedded in the Grave Walker's robes from the day's trials. Impossible to say. It's a musk he's so accustomed to that he hardly bats an eye.

He's a silent, observant shadow—an incredible listener, which says something given his penchant for talking everyone's ears off. To hear retellings of Tarhos's past is a treat Ghostface will readily indulge in. Thus, lips zipped shut, and undivided attention.

"Insufferable," he laments. He imagines a traveling caravan flanked by Tarhos and his men, and a prattling Vittorio shadowing it all. It matches the Vittorio Ghostface is familiar with in the Realm, if a slightly more subdued version. Even hundreds of years later, some inherent character traits persist. "Was it the money that kept you around or the lack of better job prospects?"

❝ I am no hunter’s dog. ❞ The words leave him like a blade drawn too fast, meant to calm, but edged with venom all the same. His tone is an attempt at control, but the darkness within him refuses gentleness. It laces through his voice, sharp and wild, until even stillness feels like a threat.

He stands in the clearing like a wounded beast, red ichor slicking the curve of his shoulder where the bandage has slipped. His armor lies discarded a few feet away, coated in other's blood, the trappings of a life puppeteered by darkness. He should not be here; even the air seems to remind him of that, thick with the hum of wards and falsified holy whispers.

Yet he remains. Cornered. Every muscle tense, every breath a dare.

❝ I chose not to be a knight, ❞ he says, and the defiance in his tone burns brighter than the pain. ❝ I chose not to kneel to any man or GOD. ❞

The words hang heavy between them, not boast, not confession, but something rawer. The truth of a man who lost his faith and innocence, now ruled by the shadows that filled its absence.

The widow leaned on the railing of her porch, "Was wonderin' when I got a free scarecrow til' you moved. Frankly I'm surprised you ain't keeled over in all this heat."

She took a drag on her cigarette with a polite smile as webs retreated off the grass and back under the house, "You can come inside, I don't bite much. Far too borin' round' here to turn down polite company. Just take your boots off before you do, don't need you draggin' mud all through my house." / Luanne

A respectful little Reaper, he dutifully removed his boots and left them by the door. But how eerie it felt to have his feet unprotected, covered only by black, cotton socks. As if he'd been un-cowled. De-masked. Exposed. He was silent as a mouse as he approached @bells-of-black-sunday, enticed by the pungent odor of cigarette smoke. It struck his memory bank like a light switch. Images of an office space, cigarette smoke like hanging fog; an ashtray balanced on his knee; a Marlboro between two fingers as he stood puffing on it in the back lot of his current reporting gig.

They vanished, emptiness in their wake. At the edges of him, an ache tugged.

"It's linen." Ghostface pinched the fabric of his shroud. Heat was nothing. Heat was normal. It reminded him he was human. "Moisture-wicking."

A comfortable silence settled, pocked by the distant cries of a crow. He nodded to the cigarette.

"Could I. . .have a puff of that?"

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ CONT. @bells-of-black-sunday

"There's all sorts of shit out there," he answers, which elucidates nothing and is stated so casually that it's evidently not the precise source of his agitation, "Monstrosities and impossible things. Most are just forms of Her, others are. . ." now he hesitates, averting his gaze to fix it elsewhere.

"Makes me think of Dredge. Kind of. Human body parts glued together to make something beyond comprehension. I can't say for certain what they are, but they may have been human. . .once." Like if a child taped doll parts to a torso. Two legs jutting from a side, kicking useless into the air. An arm protruding from a gaping mouth, hand clawing. Early experiments? The Entity's eternal punishment for those tossed into the Void? The result of killers who defied her one too many times? Ghostface shudders to think.

"I don't know. I would like something that's not my pathetic knife, 's'all. Just in case." He pats the part of his shroud where his knife lies concealed beneath, as if comforting the inanimate object from the insult. A hunting knife is useful for prey and dead things, not inhuman monstrosities. "I appreciate your help. They don't need to be that elaborate, just preferably those measurements."