#llachlan

“I am sorry that I failed you.”

CW: References to mutilation and cannibalism

He's falling. These days, he's always falling, always sinking deeper. It's always cold, a strange frigidity he cannot escape that creeps into every crevice and pulls his nerves taut like a sitar strung too tightly. The water tastes of filth and corpses, the stink of the sewer grates where the bodies would catch underneath the city streets--wet, bloated, forgotten. Somehow he knows he is a part of it, the blood that chokes him and fills his lungs, the flesh between his fingers and caught in his teeth. Sometimes the hands that press past his lips writhe against his tongue and burst apart like grapes in a splatter of maggots down his gullet that block and build and swell his throat until the skin begins to shred under the pressure.

The throttled cry that slips from him as he opens his eyes tastes of sewer water and blood and the moisture on his cheeks and lips squirm against his skin. Above him is a figure, looming and loving in a mockery. Lamore. Not Lamore. It is Llachlan that leans over him, their grand antlers glistening and pretty lips parted, painted with slippery gore. Multiple arms, spindly and split, wrap around their form in mimicry of a cradling embrace as black eyes peer over their shoulder toward him. Fused. Beyond, through the branching of Llachlan's blood-slick antlers, he can see the familiar ceiling, the distant shelves of artifacts gleaming behind their glass casings, and the crawl of shadows. Terror freezes him but doesn't blot out the sweet whisper of familiar voices, layering and layering into a song.

Fingers find his chin, his jaw, his lips and they pry, pull, force. His skin indents as fingers trail down his sternum and press, dig, and peel back the layers of him. Flesh parts like water, stinking of death, and words whisper into his ear--

Share with us, Addie...

Questing fingers push the slickness of meat past his teeth with the accompaniment of lilting laughter. He has no choice but to eat.

When he sits up, the breath he draws is cold and hoarse, his throat raw and aching. Fire lances through his nerves, the blankets wrapped tight around his legs like a vice, and something scatters onto the floor to shatter as he fumbles for the neatly crossed pair of glasses at his bedside. The world is a blur until he slips them on, his gaze snapping toward the door. It's open, spilling a sliver of light from the hallway in. Lamia stands a backlit shadow in the doorway, her arms crossed and pale eyes settled on him, eerily still. He stares, skin sticky with sweat turned cold.

He shudders.

"Remember it this time?" The smoky quality of her voice is low, musical and distant. Warm enough to be familiar but tinged with a carefully placed barrier. She doesn't stir from her lean, gaze half-lidding as he leans over himself and traces his palms over the last lingering throb of phantom aches.

His answer is little more than a breathy, hollow laugh as his arms curl around himself.

No. He never remembers. But he can still feel the fingers in his flesh.

Used. Thrown away.

and my favored daughter, lock

Future Aesthetic because i realized my blog was severely lacking of my main LOL