#moonshop

Finished this thing from a while ago to keep my skills up. @daekie‘s character Sailor Warhol! 

I’ve felt I’ve been getting a bit too reliant on lining things after the fact and wanted to go back to more of a flat/true lineless style but maybe I should just accept that this is my life now.

I decided I’d do something quicker this time. This one’s a first person POV of my character reflecting on Ivynian’s character Schörl. They have a very twisted, explicit relationship, which I’ve largely kept out of the following. I’m not that happy with the blasé tone in the piece, but maybe I can revisit this later and make it stop blowing dogs for quarters.

Poison

I'm going to die in five minutes.

It sounds so finite, so trite. But it's not the death you're thinking of - it's not a bullet to the brain or an axe to the heart. It's not a lethal injection or a decapitation. No, she would find those too simple. Too straightforward. Deprive a man of his head and he can't think of the pain anymore. Shoot him and he stops twitching minutes afterward. He can't tell what he feels. The bright bubbles of arterial blood don't tell you how much it hurts. His eyes rolling around could be death throes, after all. Where's the fun in that?

She'd find a way to enjoy it. She surrounds herself in filth and opulence alike. She'll pick company from the upper echelons of society as much as she cavorts with beggars and vagrants. But her story isn't that fascinating. Even if it was, I don't know much about it.

Never cared to learn. Callous of me, I know.

I told you I'd die in five minutes. You're wondering all about it, aren't you? Right now, you're trying to piece it all together in your mind. You're thinking, there he is, standing at the edge of the world. Looking down over all the ant lines of hurried cars rushing through the city. Staring into those veins and arteries that crisscross around buildings. Maybe I'm looking down at all those shiny, insectile specks for one color in particular. Maybe I have a vendetta against its owner. Or maybe I'm just looking for a lurid green to contrast the blood and bone matter I'll leave behind. It's possible, right? I could be that petulant. I could be so petty with wasting my own life that I'd spite someone by expending myself. It sounds teenager enough.

And I'd agree with you. But I'm not orchestrating my own death, here. Someone else is holding that honor. That someone else stands tall, straight-backed and proud, with a grin more garish than you could know. She delights in these affairs, these matters of the heart. But you're not sticking around to hear me talk about her.

That's fair. I don't care for her much, either.

Death is a strange phenomenon. Death changes everything. And my death isn't the literal kind where bone marrow busts out the back of my head. She plans to kill the parts of me that still feel. The parts that know the taste of creme brulee and the feel of mediterranean sea-washed stones. The part that can cite this month's fashion trends for the upper class. These memories will rot away as a consequence. A side-effect, if you will. They're not the main course.

To kill me properly, she has to murder my dignity. I've held out for a while yet, but she's been gaining ground with saran wrap and wire cufflinks. She maps my skin in every way she wants because I can't choose against giving it to her. Choice, autonomy, individuality - these are tactics she bleeds away with her obfuscating poison. She corrodes your will to stand alone, your want to resist. And when she's done whittling that away, I'll be that much more defenseless.

You must be thinking that I'm taking it well. That I want it, perhaps. It looks like I do, doesn't it? Here I am, blathering on about impending doom like it's afternoon tea. She's had me on this pillar so long that I'm starting to think it's true. It's hard to think past chains biting into my hips, or the stiffness in my joints. My skin's sweating beneath the saran wrap. It's getting hard to breathe. My back is screaming. Could you blame me if I looked forward to the finale? At least I'd get a reprieve.

It's what she wants, after all. That twisted glimmer of hope. That dire survival instinct that eggs you on. The one that tells you, maybe this isn't so bad. You can get through this. You can live through this. You know what comes next - maybe it's not the punishment you think it is. And if it is, maybe you can chew through plastic enough to wrench yourself free.

But that's nonsense. That survival instinct? It's her greatest weapon against you. It's the knife biting into your throat, waiting for you to clench your teeth. Here I am, hoping for that possible reprieve. Counting down the minutes.

Three left, now.

She leaves a clock in the room so you know when it happens. It's one of the noisy ones that clicks with every passing second. When she chooses to execute me, she'll have her own paltry themesong. Westminster Quarters as a backdrop for assassination. Who'd have thought?

By now, you're telling me to get to the point. That you're not here to listen to me drone on about all these existential thoughts. Fine. I'll tell you what you want to know. Our chests hold something deeply fragile; it isn't our heart or our lungs. It's no organ at all. It's a soul, small and crystalline and tantalizing in taste. And if she reaches for it, if she delves into my deepest self when armed with all her chaos, I won't be a man anymore. I'll be made an insipid, mindless monster. I'll be left to do her bidding unequivocally -  my choice gone, my autonomy confiscated, my individuality eradicated. I'll be teeth and claws to bare at her discretion.

But after this, she won't push all her fingers into me anymore. And if she did, I wouldn't care. It's hard to feel violated when you've had all your humanity hollowed out.

It's sickening to want that end, I know. But she's worked her poison into me for months. She's earned this, in her own twisted way.