#selfthread

tw // murder, blood, gore, torture mention, medical malpractice

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Scorched earth.

His ribs are a burning church and the devil's set it on fire.

But the same hands pouring the kerosene are the ones that chase away the fumes. Tug his heart free and out just in time. Crisped by the lick of the flame, but alive.

Very much alive.

Too alive.

He feels everything too much.

It's a burden, now.

He yearns and aches and the pangs are now bullets. He staggers from each shot, but he stands. Leaning and frail, dripping black ichor onto a ceaseless floor.

Still stands.

There is blackness behind his eyes now. The shine of light, the reflection of sweetness, has faded like a candle burnt for too long.

The wick's been doused out in its own hot wax.

Consumed and encased.

Consumed is a good word for it - the way he’s trapped in mania. The enticing fingers of long shadows, the snapshot of puddles of blood. It's scorched into retinas.

Red likes to filter over his vision like he’s sitting in that darkroom. The photos hung in the darkness are unintelligible- just as black as everything else. Maybe bodies, maybe parts, but disembodied.

Every face is blotted into smudges like charcoal.

An illustrator sees art in the slaughtered and mangled. In the gnarled scab across his chest, the twisted fingers beneath ink and bandage. 

And absolutely in the demon who kisses and cleans him.

A lover who brings him to fever, then wipes his sweat-stained brow. Drains the bad blood from his body in his sickbed.

Medicinal, the comfort it brings.

Depraved, the thoughts it tugs through.

It's chiaroscuro; the shadows deep within the planes of his lover's face - dark, bold blots, no light until suddenly there's plenty. Whereas in his own, the cross-hatching of fine ink across Asa's nose, mouth, cheeks. Thin lines in meticulous detail. The building up of shade.

Forms of black and white, so different but a similar medium. fit for a gallery, perhaps a museum. 

Meant to be studied, really.

It’s in this creativity that his mania sits and holds out its hands. As the scratchy lines come in a fervor from charcoals and pastels, as blood drips from a lip bitten too hard and for too long in concentration. 

The mania smiles, and collects his pieces into an embrace.

It’s not too hard to connect the twisted body of his father scrawled on drafting paper to the ink blot that grows around him. 

Abysm, after abysm, after abysm. 

But with its arms it becomes...

Still. So still.

There’s no buzzing and pounding in his head. The oil spill has coated everything and muted it all in molasses. 

It's floating. No pain.

No pleasure, either. It just... is.

A finger finally traces the blood that’s streaked into graphite and chalky dust, realizing it’s there for the first time.

Thick, sap-like on his fingers as he traces another drop and watches it peter out into nothing. A streak of alizarin crimson - an artist's palette. Acrylics. Oils.

Such material is easy enough to find, if he wants it. If he searches for it. The texture is far better than most paints.

It's so still.

Has the clock stopped ticking on the wall, or is he deep in a state again? Is it the batteries, or is he... batty?

....he didn't used to be, did he?

It's his father's fault. In his hopes of avoiding his son's insanity, he ensured it and came face to face with it.

Conor Holland died for his crimes against his son. As he should have.

Dr. Hartley. Torture. Medical malpractice. Defunct equipment. Killed. As he should have been.

Romeo Valtori. Apartment manager... rude. Misogynistic. Disgusting. Killed as well. Goodbye.

Maybe it's not so difficult to find people who deserve it. Just squint and there they are.

Laid out in funny little rows.

More red for a palette. More bodies for the ink blot on the kaleidoscope. More peace, more stillness.

A win win.

The church's charred remains fall. Debris everywhere. An explosion of fire and brimstone.

Yet his heart beats, thrums in the hands of a killer. A lover. He holds it so carefully for someone so cruel.

A ribcage can be rebuilt - the church can be reconstructed.

And the burning just smells like winter, and hydroquinone, and a night wrapped in silk sheets.

It's the endless drone of old fluorescent lights and the maniacal beeping of the fire alarm, low-battery. Everything ends, but it doesn't mean you know when.

And the annoyance will continue, and continue, and melt your mind away, until you put a stop to it.

It's with this thinking that Malachi Howahkan murders his wife with an axe in the back of their small Prairie-style Craftsman in mid-January.

His life has not been his own.

It has been Alice's, turned to dinner parties and board game nights. Stockings hung with care, two tiny tots, soccer practice, and the backyard grill. The ole ball and chain. "Can't live with him, can't live without him!" The baby showers, the anniversaries. A mini-van and a house with a foyer.

He works as an insurance agent. 9-5, casual Fridays, water cooler chatter and group synergy. "Workin' hard or hardly workin'?"

One day it's easy to just take the axe and swing it.

Easier than the time it takes to type in his client's yearly salary and figure out the percentage still owed.

Easier than picking up Bobby from violin.

Prison is not easy. It's threats and shouting and shoving. Too much time alone to think about every aspect of his wife's dead body, the blood coming from the chunks he cut out of her. Officers with too much power, men with too much anger. And boredom.

When he gets a letter, he assumes it's one of his kids. But it reads of a man infatuated. Questions about his life and how it fell apart, and more importantly, how he can piece it back together for Malachi.

This meager connection is a life raft in a tsunami. Mal holds to it like a man possessed. Until his fingers go raw and bloodied, he'll cling to every letter sent.

Polaroids on sun-bleached film, chopped brown hair tied with an old rubber band. Tales from the outside.

It's back and forth for years.

One day, the folded letter Malachi sends has a piece of twine tied into a little loop perfect for a finger enclosed inside. He asks him to marry him, and promises a better ring when he's out.

It's years later that Malachi Howahkan walks out of the New York State Penitentiary in the dirty clothes he walked in with over 20 years ago. Released early on good behavior. Cash that Mik had sent for snacks from the commissary buys a bus ticket straight to his husband's apartment.

TW // Medical Malpractice, Descriptions of Complex Partial seizures, Threats, Paralyzation, Choking //

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Quiet never works well in his flat. Asa needs something ticking, talking, or tapping in the background, or he might go mad. Maybe it's why he has 5 cats - always a small hissy fit to break up, or someone meowing or purring like a motor on his lap.

When it's too silent, he can hear the soft buzzing that reverberates around in his brain. Echoes from St. Irene's, the ghost of illegal electricity that's altered something. Something that makes his eyes occasionally feel like they're vibrating in place. Like his teeth are chattering in a warm, safe apartment.

The noise aches - feedback on a television that isn't on. The high-pitched droning of a dying fire alarm.

Today he's alone in his apartment and the noise is unbearable. The TV is turned on but the monotone flatline ( a heart monitor, someone dying ) just keeps on in a lull through his cranium. He can't look at the words of the journal sitting in his lap - he's read the same sentence over five times already.

Then.

There's inverted spots in his vision. Spilled ink on the pages he has open... but they move with his pupils as he looks up and around. As if he's staring at a warped old photograph - he blinks rapidly and they don't dissipate.

Sinking, terrifying fear. It's completely nonsensical, comes from absolutely nowhere. It's despondent terror, with no reason behind it. Someone's coming. Something's coming. I'm alone. I'm going to get hurt. Someone's going to get hurt. Why?

Just as suddenly, his body stills. Feels like he can't move. Fingers are stuck in place. He's that same warped old photograph, held in time... and there's noises. No longer just the buzzing tone, but... his head turns suddenly in the direction of voices, but then he can't turn it again.

No one's there. But the voice continues.

'I'll kill you. I'll fucking kill you. I'll fucking kill you.'

No one's there. It's okay. No one's there. But it's a voice in his ear, so real it's as if someone stands over him and says it in the growling timbre of a creature possessed.

'I'll fucking kill you. I'll fucking kill you.'

It's not his imagination... so what is it?

He's suddenly losing focus.

Suddenly his pen drops.

Hand isn't limp, but fingers tense and flex of their own accord. He can't help it.

He can't do anything.

But his mind is so full of things all of a sudden that he no longer thinks of his frozen limbs. There's a shadowlike creature, and the deep, deep woods. Flickering fire on a torch. There's something skulking about, backlit by the most vibrant, fiery miasma. He's running after it, seeing something akin to a tail that slinks into the abysm of dark forest. It's gone. He opens his mouth to call, but the sound is choked out.

He looks down - his own hands are strangling his neck. Gripping, squeezing flesh. Twisting it like it isn't skin at all. As his eyes roll back...

....things change to blank white.

Just white. Tranquil kindness and porcelain cups. Sterile walls but no, it's safe, it's clean, it's fine. It's all fine. This is where he belongs, where no one will need to worry over him... and there's white teeth. No fangs, just the soft grin of someone who laughs in excitement when they see him.

Who is that? Their eyes aren't visible. Smile lines and an imperfect smile. A genuine laugh. It dissipates into the warm glow of morning sun.

He sits for a time. Arms wrapped around legs, chin on his knees, until he seems to sink through a floor of checkerboard, all things melting like it's all been warmed to excess.

He feels itchy, he feels sweaty. Like he's sitting in a turning microwave. Is he on a turn-table? He's circling... then back on a path as if it never happened.

He walks and it's just colors. Then it's a beautiful jungle. Scars over eyes under the shadow of a giant leaf - his own hand reaches, but the second the frond is moved, the eyes blink and are gone.

He's confused, upside down, then right-side up, then back on track.

All the while, thoughts move in and out. It's a woven thatch-work of statements that never get finished.

'What was I going to h-' 'Maybe I should te-' 'He's probably-' 'I don't need-' 'That's not FAIR, I just wanted-' 'They all despi-' 'That's okay, that's okay, you have so-' 'It's HATE. That's what it is, when they-' 'He's not so-'

'I'll kill you. I'll fucking kill you. I'll fucking kill you. I'll kill you.'

Asa's soaked in sweat when he comes to. Barely able to move and blinking rapidly. Spots in his eyes.

His black cat Cosmo sits at his side and is butting his arm with his head, and Kathy, a tabby with big green eyes is on the ground watching him, with a tail moving back and forth in curiosity.

The pen is on the floor, but the journal sits unmoved in his lap. The TV is still on, but the show has ended.

He sits there for at least ten more minutes, almost completely still. Just breathing heavy.

Fifteen minutes later, and he doesn't remember a thing. Not the twitching of his hands, the overwhelming onset fear, nor the woven dreamscape he'd been stuck in. It's a haze - murkiness of what he'd done just a half hour before. Must've been too absorbed in the show. Must've been tired. Maybe he'd fallen asleep.

He goes back to his journal.