#helltownevent2

It was day 3 of unsettling dreams turned torturous nightmares and Leandro wasn’t sure how to proceed with any of it. Saying the words out loud made him sound as crazy as he'd felt, and for fear of losing the bit of faith he had left he prayed and prayed. Hoping that when night fell, and his children both fell asleep, that they wouldn’t be met with the menacing replica of the woman he loved. The mother of his children. 

Leandro forced himself to focus on the reality around him once morning broke. The previous night with Valentina had shed more light on this phenomenon and while knowledge of another having similar dreams to him shouldn’t have been relieving, breathing felt just a little easier. That morning, instead of pondering over his bible in the safety of the temple, Leandro had dropped Diego off with a neighbor to play and Lupita at the ranch. 

He made his way around town offering his usual words of comfort and standing in for prayers with those who requested it. In that time he was able to learn that the pattern didn’t stop with him and Valentina. Almost all those he’d spoken to had shared similar experiences of nightly horrors. On his way back to pick up Lupita, he stopped in to share his findings with Shaw with the hopes of figuring this out.

“At first I thought it was just me. That the dreams and-” Lea couldn’t bring himself to name her, “- then this morning Diego woke up screaming.” He raised his hands towards his ears as if that would allow the screams to subside, “I tried to calm him down. To- shake him awake, but nothing worked. Then, he just started whispering, and for a moment I thought he was praying, but I when leaned closer… I reach but I cannot grab. I bark but I cannot bite. You use my body at the cost of my life. Over, and over, and over again. It was like he was stuck.”

He knew that when the storm had broken, he had heard of a couple of people going a little... crazy, there really was no other word for it, was there? Some insane version of cabin fever, or town fever. Was he next? He'd been doing pretty well at trying to stay relatively normal (by Chase standards) while here. This was finally it, he knew the day would come.

Chase wanted to forget about all of it. He had spent a few nights at the settlement before, visiting once in awhile to see if he could get his hands on the strong stuff, and he didn't quite remember how he got there, but suddenly he was inside that main building, the one with that weird earthy smell that wasn't earth, something he couldn't really place. Tired and bored, his curiosity was taking over when he couldn't find anyone who had anything extra for him to take, for him to forget how to be alive for a few hours and he found himself wandering in and out of rooms. He found plants in one, and he stepped closer, playing with the leaves with blunt, bandaged fingers, grimacing as one of the leaves snapped off - he never had much of a green thumb. *// @saccharineflesh

One of the many questions Joel had upon waking up in the clinic was who or rather how he had even gotten there in the first place. It was a simple enough question to get answers for, unlike so many others he had, and so he made sure to show up outside of Rain’s residence the following day to offer his thanks and his undivided loyalty for whatever mess she wanted to embark on someday. 

Days later, the artist couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone. Enjoying every bit of time he could steal away from her day. Truly, Joel just needed something else to do besides follow his womb companion everywhere but he did like Rain and her fuck free nature. It reminded him a great deal of his best friend back home.

“Okay, so say I want some chocolate or like… I don’t know, anything sweet.” Joel said as he gathered pebbles by her foot at the edge of the docks, “Do I get them from the dinner? Would they even have something like that?” It wasn’t as if the town hadn’t been held up for decades by this point, according to people around the town. Surely someone would have found some type of sweet replacement, no? 

Joel wasn’t one to gravitate towards sweet things, naturally - not unless you counted the sweet kisses from his latest conquests - but after munching on mostly bland food his body was craving it. He knew, though, that it was only an excuse to ignore the very vivid dreams he'd had the day prior. Scary wouldn't begin to describe how he'd felt earlier that morning, but taking into account the place they were stuck in it seems only fitting that his nightmares felt real too.

┊ ┊ N I G H T M A R E : S L I P P I N G ....

you should save your eyes. a thousand voices howling in my head. speak in tongues. i don't even recognize your face. mirror on the wall...tell me to stay away.

┊ ┊ BLACK OUT DAYS... I DON'T EVEN RECOGNIZE YOU ANYMORE.

stay away. i'm hearing voices all the time in my mind. they're haunting my m i n d

Arriving at THE CHURCH ⟳ ˚ ╱ written for @endlesswoes !

𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘  𝗜𝗦  𝗔  𝗣𝗢𝗘𝗧𝗥𝗬  𝗢𝗙  𝗔  𝗦𝗢𝗥𝗧  𝗧𝗢  𝗔𝗟𝗟  𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦,   the  dichotomy  of life  and  death belonging  in  the  same  body,   the  concept  that  all  things  must  END  and  then  become  new.  But  for  most,  the  lyrical  nature  of  it  stops  at  the  concept.  For  most,  the  cyclical  nature  is  apparent  only  to  those  who  can  encounter  the  aftermath  of  it  (  whether  that  be  the  reaper  itself  or  those  proposing  a  eulogy,  memorializing  the  departed  with  an  insight  only  afforded  when  looking  backward  ). Meryl thinks she's died a million little deaths, yet the torment this town has brought upon her seems worse than the former life lived.

The  second  night  swarms  into  her  veins  like  ink  in  water,  curling,  diffusing,  staining,  just  as  the  first  night.  The  dreams  had  begun  the  night  prior,  creeping  into  her  mind  like  a  parasite,  whispering  riddles  and  promises  of  torment.  The  first  time,  she  had  shaken  it  off,  convincing  herself  it  was  nothing  more  than  the  echoes  of  exhaustion,  the  strain  of  Arcadia  masticating  at  her  nerves.  But  now,  the  weight  of  the  dream  still  claws  at  her  ribs,  curling,  diffusing,   staining all the same.  It  did  not  slip  from  her  upon  waking;  it  clung,  webbed  and  whispering,  a  living  thing  burrowed  into  her  marrow.  The  bruise  where  Cheryl  had  struck  her  pulsed  like  an  open  eye,  dark  as  an  eclipse,  as  if  it  too  is  watching,  waiting.  The  words  from  the  dream  scuttles  through  her  skull  like  spiders  weaving  WEBS  in  the  hollows  of  her  bones:  the  ice  will  claw...  The  morning  staggers  before  her,  a  fever  haze  of  twisted  air,  the  town  outside  her  window  silent  in  a  way  that  felt  unnatural,  predatory.  No  beasts.  No  howls.  Only  a  brittle,  waiting  hush,  thick  as  stagnant  breath  against  glass.

A  flicker.  A  smear  of  movement  in  the  periphery,  a  presence  slides  just  behind  her  sightline.  Meryl  has  seen  ghosts  before — has  lived  in  their  company  long  before  Arcadia  swallowed  her  whole.  The  specters  of  her  father  and  brother  had  LINGERED  at  the  edges  of  her  sight  since  the  day  she  had  killed  them,  shadows  caught  in  the  turning  of  her  head,  echoes  warping  the  quiet ( they  would  stand  just  beyond  reach,  in  doorways  where  no  one  stood,  at  the  foot  of  your  bed,  watching  with  eyes  that  saw  past  flesh  and  into  marrow; they  had  never  spoken,  never  reached  for  you,  never  clawed  their  way  into  the  space  you  occupied;  they  were  there  but  distant,  half-formed  figments  of  grief,  specters  born  of  the  past,  shackled  to  your  mind's  quiet  agony — until Arcadia ).  But  Cheryl — Cheryl  has  never  been  here.  Never  once.  Until  now.  The  mirror.  No.  Not  the  mirror.  She  refuses  to  look,  refuses  to  acknowledge  the  weight  pressing  against  her  spine,  the  too-cold  fingers  of  recognition  creeping  up  her  ribs.  But  the  gravity  of  the  thing  in  the  glass  is  a  force  that  demands  surrender.  Her  eyes  dragged  against  her  will,  and —

Cheryl.

Meryl’s  breath  snaps,  caught  between  throat  and  ribs,  trapped  in  the  tight  hollow  of  her  chest.  Her  twin  stands  behind  the  silvered  surface,  abnormal,  her  face  blurred  at  the  edges,  features  slipping  like  oil  on  water.  Not  still,  but  seething,  moving  at  the  periphery,  shifting  through  reflections  fractured  by  something  unseen.  The  mirror  bled,  the  edges  no  longer  defining  the  boundary  between  real  and  not.  Cheryl  reaches  out.  Frostbite.  Her  fingers  graze  Meryl’s  skin  through  the  glass,  and  the  cold  is  a  living  thing,  a  hunger  burrowing  deep  into  the  bone.  The  riddle.  Again.  Again.  AGAIN.

Meryl fled.

She  does  not  remember  to put  on  her  coat.  Does  not  remember  stepping  into  the  streets,  the  fog  swallowing  her  whole,  pressing  into  her  pores  like  damp  rot.  The  town  bends  around  her,  streets  twisting  inward,  narrowing,  guiding  her  somewhere  unseen.  Cheryl  follows — no,  not  in  form,  but  in  PRESENCE,  always  just  beyond  reach,  a  whisper  of  breath  at  her  nape,  a  tension  in  the  marrow.  Arcadia  pulses  with  something  unseen,  something  coiled  beneath  its  surface,  waiting  to  slip  its  fingers  through  the  cracks  of  reality.  Was  she  running,  or  was  she  merely  circling  a  place  she  had  never  left?  The  church  rose  before  her,  its  door  ajar,  dark  and  waiting.  A  mouth  parted  in  expectation.  No  thought,  only  instinct,  only  the  urgent,  desperate  need  to  be  elsewhere.  She  stumbles  inside,  breath  clotted  with  the  thick  scent  of  wax  and  aged  wood,  the  hush  within  pressing  against  her  skin  like  a  second  presence.

The  stained-glass  windows  fractured  the  light,  and  in  their  broken  spectrum — Cheryl.  Always  Cheryl.  Her  face  contorts  in  the  colored  panes,  fragmented  into  something  almost  DIVINE,  something  otherworldly varnished.  Seven  nights.  Meryl’s  vision  wavers,  body  swaying  under  the  weight  of  unreality.  Was  she  still  alive?  Had  she  ever  been?  Or  was  she  merely  spiraling  some  fevered  dream,  a  body  half-decayed  in  a  bed  elsewhere,  trapped  in  an  eternity  of  unraveling?

Meryl feels the convulsions  come,  cruel  and  sudden,  as  if  strings  have been  snapped  and  her  body  no  longer  belongs  to  her.  A  violent  arc,  her  spine  bending,  limbs  seizing  with  an  unseen  force,  her  muscles  wrenching  against  her  own  control.  Her  fingers  curled  into  claws  against  air,  scraping  at  the  unseen,  her  breath  a  choking  rattle  in  the  cavern  of  her  throat.  Something  slithers  beneath  her  skin,  illicit,  tightening  like  wire   COILED through  flesh,  a  alien  thing  burrowed  into  her  essence.  Her  head  snaps  back,  mouth  open  in  a  silent  cry,  her  eyes  rolling,  whites  stark  and  gleaming  against  the  dim  candlelight.  It  is  inside  her,  creeping  through  her  veins,  whispering  in  a  voice  that  was  her  own  but  not.  The  world  blurred,  edges  distorting,  collapsing  into  themselves.

┊ ┊ N I G H T M A R E : S P L I N T E R S ....

did you hear that ? a knock at the door... could that be death ? knocking at my door step. do i smell fear ? the sights that you hold dear... could that be me ? fighting so beautifully....

┊ ┊ RUN, RUN, RUN....HE'S AT THE DOOR....

can't get away, get away from this p l a c e...