#ethal cain

dog

days

🪾 young!Albert Shaw x fem!MC 🌾

no names used, can be perceived as a male!MC

song by Ethel Cain, lyrics interspersed throughout

too personal. i'm bleeding. meet the writer & aspiring poet. not supposed to be a self-insert, unless you're too dealing with anticipatory grief & were raised religious (orthodox christian, with sprinkled greek folkway).

that's me in the image.

no warnings or summary. heavy themes. i was working on the reqs, priorities straight, but this needed out. i'm okay. spent 48 hours straight crying, but i feel lighter now (& will probably never read this again).

part of the Inbetween Stanzas series

I think of you while you're at work

Out in the fields, tearing up the earth

She watches him from the edge of the yard, fingers clutching the chipped white frame of the screen door. The metal exposed under the cheap paint is cold to the touch, rudely so.

The light catches the dust in the air, turns it into gold.

Gold that feels divine until you remember it's just dirt and soot. She needs to clean around the house. For her mother.

He's moving through the yard with the awkward grace of someone raised on pure and absolute violence. Each swing of the spade looks like a benediction. His t-shirt clings to the curve of his shoulders, soaked through with sweat and soil, the air thick with oil, rust, and that terrible July heat.

She can't stop watching him. A mix of awe and fear making her shiver. He knows. The kind of knowing that doesn't need eyes. Every time he lifts the spade, the sun turns his edges dangerous. Sacred.

"I wish your father had cancer," she blurts out, voice breaking through the ruthless buzz of the cicadas.

The sound of metal biting into dirt cuts off abruptly. The silence after is heavy enough to crush her lungs like overdue birthday balloons.

"So do I."

Icy blue against impenetrable brown.

The words splinter between them. She hadn't meant it as a joke, not even a terrible one. It was an experiment. But there's no recoil in him, only the quiet of a man who's already imagined worse.

"Aren't you upset I said that?" she asks.

"I'd be happy if he did."

Her throat tightens. "I'm not happy about mine."

"I don't understand why you're unhappy. Fathers are terrible."

"Not mine. Nobody's perfect but—"

"You sound like a child."

"Fuck you."

Dust is swirling between them, the summer breeze managing to stir it up from the dry and cracked ground. Her voice shakes, and it hurts him to hear the swear come out of her pouty mouth.

"When you do" he says quietly, "it never makes it feel better."

"I still wish your father had cancer."

"And I wish yours didn't. Happy?"

"No."

"You won't be happy ever again?"

Her response? Whispered through her teeth.

"I will... And I'll hate myself for it. It hurts to carry this much misery, but it'd feel like betrayal to be happy when he's not there."

"...maybe that's what he'd want for you."

"Shut the fuck up" she snaps. "He's still alive. You don't say that unless someone's—"

"Say it."

"I can't."

"Do it. Say dead."

"But he's not."

"Then why are you grieving like he is?"

She looks down at her hands, the bitten skin around her nails. "Because I'm a horrible person."

He steps closer. "Why?"

"I'm preparing myself. Like he's—like it's already over."

"You can't even admit it."

She swallows hard, feeling cornered by his quiet intensity. "I can't voice it. I'd rather we just—"

"What?"

"Fucked... I don't wanna talk about our fathers."

"You started it" he murmurs, but his voice softens.

The wind carries dust across her bare arms, and for a moment she's back on the beach, sand grains hitting her calves.

But I like you best when you're at home

Giving it to me so nice and fucking slow

She guides him to the kitchen for a glass of water. The tension feels thick enough to chew. She doesn't feel desirable. Why? Because humidity is the worst. Sweat sticks her bangs to her forehead. She feels small, naive, and somehow, too much.

A burden dressed as a girl.

He's restless, devouring her with feral eyes. Shouldn't he be worn out from working?

She grips the counter until her knuckles turn white. "You smell like a man" she says quietly.

"And you smell like a woman."

She laughs, a broken sound, almost hysterical in its cadence. "I feel like one with you. But among women, I feel like less than one."

"Give me your hands."

"What for?"

"Just—give them to me."

"What. For. You need me to rub one out?"

"Jesus Christ—Is this the only thing on your mind around me?"

"It's not personal."

"I wish it were."

She hesitates, then extends them. He studies her nails, the tiny wounds where she's chewed too deep.

"You keep them long because they make you feel pretty."

"I do" she admits. "But right now, I want to bite them to the bone. My family's falling apart and I still get them done. I'm a hypocrite."

He runs a thumb across her tender knuckles, milky white, still unburdened by labor. A priest would similarly be tracing a cross.

"You're trying to stop feeling like yourself."

She doesn't answer.

This isn't peace. This isn't lust. It's not forgiveness. But the ache of being seen.

No one's ever gonna love me, no, not like you do

When he reaches for her, freshly tanned and still with that thin layer of sweat coating him, he's a predator testing the weight of her flesh against his big palms. The sweat draws a line straight down between his pecs under his shirt.

She doesn't wait for further confirmation. She responds with everything.

Teeth grazing, a hand tugging his hair, nails pressing against the sensitive skin at the back of his neck. He melts into it like fire into wood.

She can't decide whether she's performing something truly beautiful, or some utterly gruesome on him.

Every night, I'm crying in my sleep 'cause I'm dreaming about you

He's crouched on the floor later, head in his hands. His shoulders shake with soundless grief that feels too old for his years. She sits beside him, touches his wrist, doesn't speak. Doesn't comment on the angry welts on his back.

Even in half-darkness, she can see his baby blues glinting wet, the sharpness of his jaw softened by tears.

She wants to do something, say anything, but nothing feels enough. She used to be better at taking care of her people.

And I've tried so hard to quit you like I promised my mama I would

But it's no good, it's no good

"You think you don't look sad under all that makeup? Dolled up everyday, swaying your hips while you walk? Like it's not fuckin' obvious you were holding back tears on the bus."

"What's your point?"

"You don't want me to see you. You just want me to witness the weight you're carrying. What sort of sick gratification do you draw from that?"

"This doesn't make sense."

"Yes it does. You want me to feel what you feel, but you don't care about me knowing anything about you. Anything beyond your grief."

She doesn't deny it.

He stands up, turns around, and storms out, the fragile screen door bouncing precariously behind him.

You walk a fine line between god and animal

Rain begins to fall outside, gently softening the stubborn earth. She loves summer storms, despite them being an obstacle most of the time.

She runs after him through the mud, dress plastered to her legs, branching up around her hips. She's barefoot and frantic. He can't leave her too, even when she's being a selfish little bitch. She's still giving him her body–isn't it enough? Fair trade?

People like her give until there's nothing left, then they might call it love. The world leeches them dry, yet she can't stop herself. Maybe she's the leech after all. She can't reconcile with the desire to stand up with the instinct to bow. So when she's being a little selfish, she hates herself passionately for burdening him.

When she reaches him, she doesn't say sorry. The apology she had rehearsed dies on her lips. He was waiting for her. His chest is heaving and his eyes are matching the stormy sky above.

She just throws herself at him, the storm swallowing the rest.

His hands are everywhere... restraining, grounding... and she melts into it, drenched in heat and grief and the primal need of a mammal at its peak.

It's almost brutal. That's what she needs and maybe he knew it.

You're just a feral dog I worship in bedroom ceremonials

Not long after, they find themselves under a single bulb, which casts a sickly orange hue on their face. Air smelling of rain and that musty sweetness that's distinctly human.

Sweat, breath, skin, precum.

Arousal.

He touches her face like her softness disgusts him.

Is this worship or self-destruction?

She feels the sting of her cuticles, a bead of blood—he licks it without breaking eye contact. He has his own scars, testaments of the last name.

It's a ritual as old as time. Not sin, not holiness. These are modern terms meant to judge and diminish Nature.

She bends to him, her empathy pressing into the space between them, her body attuned to the beat of his own pain. Her body becoming a mirror of his own agony. He moans low and feral, less like pleasure and more like suffering.

Pain and pleasure interlace and neither of them can distinguish where one ends and the other begins.

She whispers against his inner thigh, face soaked in rain, sweat, and him. "Please love me."

His reply is a growl. Because he doesn't know what to do with what is given.

Cut me up and take me like the bread and blood at church

"Babas used to take me to the mountain" she says later, voice small, almost purring. "A butterfly landed on my shoe one time. I was six, I think. He laughed. I don't think he remembers. But I do."

Albert looks at her like she's handed him something fragile. He doesn't know what to do with this either, but he wishes he did.

"I don't want to try to remind him. If I do, I'll cry. Even if I don't, he'll still know. He always knows. And my face gets red like it always does when I'm holding back hiccups."

"Why tell me, then?"

She shrugs, eyes wet. "Because I can't tell him. Because you'll understand without forgiving me."

Her breath catches. The sobs come raw, wracking a body too small to hold their intensity. Her body locks in a familiar by now pain under her breasts, behind her knees.

He lets her cry.

She remembers the light world before, then the stillness, and how bad it hurt to hold love close in the face of sickness, of life rushing forward without her permission.

They're impaling each other on the other's broken shards.

Love's never been more than pain, so baby, show me how bad you hurt

"God loves me."

His smile is bitter. "Looks to me like He hates us the same, just in different fonts."

"You can't say that."

"If He hates you, it doesn't matter whether you admit it. And if He loves you, it's not enough to save your father."

"I want it to be enough."

No one's ever gonna love me, no, not like you do

Outside, the rain quiets. The icons on the kitchen glint in the light. Virgin Mary next to a replica of the Phaistos Disc.

Every night, I'm crying in my sleep 'cause I'm still dreaming about you

And I've tried so hard to quit you like I promised my mama I would

But it's no good, it's no good

A family that should have protected them both left them marked instead–dysfunction passed in his sperm and her eggs. Jagged scars in both their tender hearts. Pain as inheritance. Devotion as survival.

In the aftertaste of salt and pleasure, hunching together, all they think about are their fathers.

It's no good, it's no good, it's no good

You're no good

You're no good, I'm no good, we're no good

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