#daggertext

i was editing a scene of a character focusing. i wanted to put in a small sensory detail, so i decided to have them chew on the inside of their cheek—specifically on one of the small lumps we have at the corners of our lips.

you know. the two symmetrical, small, painless lumps on the inside of your cheeks, just beside each corner of your mouth? you know... this standard piece of anatomy, which we all, of course, have in our mouths? the cheek lumps. you know of the cheek lumps well. i wonder what they are called? it will be much easier to reference them if i look up their proper name.

it was very simple. when told, i was to stand facing the corner, not moving, until i was told i could stop. in retrospect, the standard seemed to be to leave me until i had entirely stopped crying, then to start counting down some short, arbitrary block of time (maybe 5, 10 minutes) once i was silent and still. at the time, i didn't know this; the corner was a limbo state, it was a place i was suspended indefinitely til my parents considered me appropriate to deal with once again.

i wasn't to fidget, to sit down, make noises, sing or talk to myself. theoretically, i was supposed to "reflect on what i did wrong," although that never happened. i was, what, five? six?

frequently, i would get a cold, nauseating sensation that crept its way up my back. i would feel stiff and tense, the muscles in my neck and shoulders growing rigid, goosebumps prickling. i would feel as though i was being watched. i would sneak a peak over my shoulder at those times; when i saw i was alone, i would shift and stand on one foot for a bit, then the other, in order to take the weight off the other and ease some of my aches. sometimes i would start whispering to an imaginary friend, or lean against the wall. anything i knew i was not allowed to do, that i could immediately stop when i heard one of my parents approaching.

one specific time, i got that sensation. the creeping dread, the deep bonesickness of feeling watched. i snuck a peek over my shoulder.

my father had crept into my room, and was watching me silently.

"face the corner," he said.

i did.

almost as an afterthought, he told me i had earned myself more time.

the horror this evokes in me can't be described; it's a sheer, yawning precipice of paranoia, buttressed by the casual, uncaring authority of a parent-god, the architect of the childhood panopticon so utterly foreign, so removed from your world, that they not only do not, but cannot comprehend the pain and fear they're inflicting on you. my feet hurt. my legs hurt. my back ached. i was itchy and damp, utterly helpless, bound by rules i didn't understand and at the mercy of beings whose feelings and responses were utterly unpredictable and incomprehensible.

my father wanted to go play a video game.

i write a lot of horror that i don't think most people would automatically classify as "horror." most of it is an attempt to capture this feeling: the shaky, racing terror of survival without knowing the rules, the stakes, even the consequences. the understanding that anything could be a wrong move, that self-preservation can be punished. or it can be rewarded. or it can go entirely ignored. i want to capture that nauseating, paranoid dread and bottle it. every room is an escape room, the win conditions are up to the gamemaster, and he will change them. he always changes them.

trans*, with the asterisk representing identities that aren't transgender, but share certain experiences of violating the gender and sex binaries (i.e. intersex folks, crossdressers who go on hormones, drag performers, etc), and

genderqueer, not as a specific identity, but as an umbrella term for any person, whether trans or cis or both or neither, who queers gender.

the depreciation of this vocabulary was pretty bad-faith and wrapped up in the aforementioned online transmedicalist wars -- hell, dropping "genderqueer" as an umbrella term was specifically pushed by radfems (both trans-exclusive and -inclusive) on the premise that "queer is a slur."

any subsequent attempts to create or use new vocabulary to mean similar concepts has been met with ridicule and bad faith. many mainstream media outlets use "nonbinary" to replace "genderqueer," but are met with rejection because nonbinary is a specific identity, not an umbrella term, and calling someone who does not identify as trans, or who does identify with one or both binary genders, "nonbinary" is considered misgendering to many.

the way i interact with the world, often, is by bringing it into my home; if my home is unable to receive company, it's one and the same as myself being unable to go out. a sickness causing isolation. the alienation of injury. i have to care for her in order to care for myself; i have to care for myself in order to care for her.