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Between You and Me

The Uptake, With Symbiotic Self-Indulgence. Book III, Chapter 11. Go to previous. TWs: Shaving, alcohol, drugging, hangovers of both kinds, bondage, epidemic, isolation, bombing survivorship mention, descriptions of lethal body horror. Bite the hand that feeds, tap the vein that bleeds...

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Come third shift that night, the faint hum within the complex’s walls had faded, and only one wall of each apartment’s main room and bathroom illuminated its inhabitants’ way with the pale Wolfram phosphorescence accumulated during the second shift. If not for the potent, unfamiliar scent of vaguely sandalwood aftershave and the dark gold towels, Cecil could nearly have forgotten he stood shirtless in someone else’s bathroom. That, and he’d sooner be caught dead than own bathroom rugs.

#biopunk #dystopian #cyberpunk #body horror #dystopia #the uptake #with symbiotic self indulgence #jacob thorn #george cecil #between you and me

V, wip

what did [tumblr] *do* to my paragraphs.

I've been wanting do rework Sarpashana Solution with narration predominantly from Ivory and his sphere. Minor spoiler that Ivory ends up with custody of Wort. CW for painless nonlethal vivisection/lucid surgery.

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It shrinks in place, ever so slightly. When he calls for it, he usually wants to damage it. Being in one piece makes thinking easier. Being in pieces is less lonely. It doesn't really have a preference. Other people usually decide that for it. Other people… Is it a people?

It goes to him. He can be in one piece, too, and is. When he's in this shape, he is tall, with pale white-lime skin. He has his long chartreuse hair rolled up close to his head. It rolls its ear-tendrils like that sometimes. For some reason, he often squeezes his body into surfaces which mold him, tight in the middle, and loose at the top but fastened. When he walks through his house, his hard pointed feet sound like the boar witch's hooves. Other organisms wear surfaces, too, but his are woven out of him. He wears himself.

Sometimes, when he pulls it into pieces, he treats it like fabric. Putting growths inside it. Putting him inside it.

It glides up to him. He stands from his favorite chair when he sees it, and smiles. It guesses that's a smile, anyway. He pats the bench in invitation. He pulls his hand away from the bench lamp's Vees. It doesn't understand why he dislikes Vees. He benefits from the cool bluish light just like it does. The boar witch explained that its body materials thrived on Vees. Mostly the fungal part. The fungal part is the part that remembers. It doesn't like remembering, but it does like stimulation, and easy nutrients. So, it crawls up the side of the bench to pull itself up, and flattens itself out to bask. It folds its arms out under itself, then curls its ear-tendrils inside them to rest its chin in them, and lazes with a resonant, placated murmur.

Maybe he doesn't like remembering, either.

As expected, he wants to cut it. But, he doesn't remove pieces this time. It raises up on its still-folded elbows, alert in the Vees. It turns its head back to look behind it. On the bench, he has set down the large knife he used to slice its foot-tail in half. There are strings and smears of mucus everywhere. In two firm hands, he holds open the cut.

Again, he smiles, his dark eyes squinting to feign compassion. His upper lip is green today, too. It usually is, not always. Near the lamp, his green hairs glow a pale yellow. It used to think that the different things that happened to his body were indications of some biological process, some kind of communication. The witches don't change like it does, like he does. If he can make arbitrary changes to his shape, maybe it can, too. Forming two tail-feet, when the cut would otherwise sew itself back into one foot-tail, is an interesting place to start.

This interests it. He calls things like this enrichment. She called it appropriate. The witch and the hair give many names to many things. They both call it different things. It doesn't call itself anything. Maybe it should. It likes to be called Wort. It has tasks when she calls it that. It likes to be called Moonkit. It gets to bask, and be near him. Just like its tail becoming two with little choice otherwise, it knows it will remain both these names even if it only picks one. It picks both. It's both… and neither, it thinks.

Did the witch and the hair have other names? It knows one as Baixue and the other as Elfenbenhorn. Maybe these names are their species. Or maybe they are the only ones of their species. The hair often talks about the world outside his house, as though there is only one of anything left. Unique. Being the only one of anything sounds very lonely, but he doesn't sound lonely when he says things like this. He must give himself company when he's not always in one piece.

As its tail regenerates, he produces a pair of familiar thin metal stakes. He calls them garden variety dissection pins. It doesn't think they're called that. The bench surface is firm, but can be stabbed like dirt. He stabs through the two halves of tail, to pin them to the bench top. It misses his hands, now that they're no longer holding it. He adjusts the bench lamp arm, so the Vees can penetrate the cut. It doesn't miss his hands as much, but it still wishes he would hold it again.

#the sarpashana solution #wip #wort #ivory teunissen

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