buggirl101
New Member
Hunting down the ART in MoriARTy
Posts: 4
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Post by buggirl101 on Apr 13, 2013 17:07:05 GMT -5
A monthly writing challenge. A monthly writing challenge! Oh yes, I can get used to being in something like this. I'll post mine here in a few days once I get my thoughts together.
While the prompt DOES scream Slenderman or some other monster in the dark at me...I think I'll go a different route. Well...maybe not. Ugh, who knows what my brain will come up with for this.
...wonderful prompt too, adds a little challenge with the objects to include somewhere as well. I like that.
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Post by Just what it says on the tin. on May 18, 2013 0:24:36 GMT -5
Who Am I? April Monthly challenge
Tick-tick-tick/ I-wear-your-skin/
Tick. A finger on my back, tracing its way up and down my spine. Unzips my flesh and peels it from the bones. Lifts my arms and wriggles them into new skin like a mother helping a child into its coat. I feel it clinging to my face. Skin of the eyelids splits, stings I open my eyes for the first time.
Nothing.
There are words in my heartbeat. They hum in the base of my neck, the back of my skull.
Tick-tick-tick/ I-wear-your-skin/
My heartbeat. I am in possession. Potentially possessed, but in possession of enough of a self to know that something is mine. My heartbeat. My song. My song? Maybe someone else's.
I am an I. I have eyes, but they are useless now. I don't remember if I could ever see or not, but I suppose I must have. Otherwise, how else would I know what blindness was? Robbed of one sense, the others leap into life. I have a body. It's curled up and the flesh is crawling along the bones. That's all I know.
Gingerly, I run a hand across my face. The skin reacts to itself. I hesitate to call it mine.
Tick-tick-tick….
It has my skin. Whatever that means, whatever it represent. My stomach turns. Wrestling against the creeping sensations in my arms and legs, I push myself up. I'm standing on carpet, which had been scratching against my bare skin.
It smells like a room, a closed space. If there are windows, they have not been opened in a long time and no light strong enough to give heat is coming in. The smell of fresh paint is overwhelming.
Something different pricks my nose. This is how I imagine a candle looks when lit in a dark room. A sudden source where there had been nothing before. Arms outstretched, I stumble toward it. My fingers brush a flat surface, interrupted by an array of stuff on a cloth.
Apples. The tart kind. I know by the feel and the smell before they even reach my mouth, which takes no time at all. I'm two apples in before the first bite hits my stomach. All of the sudden, I'm on hands and knees, retching and heaving. My mouth and nose well up with the scent and taste of blood and vomit. Between convulsions, I wrap my arms around my knees and cry.
All I could do was wonder what had I done that someone would do this to me.
I'm still crying when the first one comes. My world is one of candle flames continually bursting into life and dying away before I can realize they're coming or find out where they're going to. All of the sudden, someone was beside me. All of the sudden, it was more than one.
When they spoke, their voices hit my ears through drums of water, garbled and low. I am surfacing, the voices clarifying in my skull. It's a weird, demonic dialogue between voices that are all at once sped up, shrieking, slow, and oozing.
"…shuuurrr… ahksh…customed… week…"
"Crrn…shreee… remember… Remember?"
Remember?
Remember.
"No… yet. Try… triggering… trace mem… Her name."
Tick… tick… tick
"Eden. Eden. Eden."
Hands wrap around mine. The voice is female, the word is clear. Each repetition more desperate. It is a Meaningless Word. I want to tell her so, but I can't find words.
She's screaming now.
"Eden! Eden! Eden!"
TICKTICKTICK...
The buzzing in my skull accelerates into a roar, an explosion. It hurts. I'm screaming. I can't hear it, but I can feel the air rushing out of mouth, burning my throat. It's a wordless screech. My limbs spasm and convulse, and the hands-on-mine drop away in a panic.
The candle-light people flicker out and I'm alone in the room again. I'm still deaf to the screams which haven't stopped.
I don't know how long it takes for me to squeeze out a breath tinged with actual language. It comes out with the blood that the poisoned apples drew in my throat and mouth.
"S-s-sorry! Oh God, I-I-I'm s-so so-sorry!" I'm bawling, gasping, spitting, crying. Blind, guilty, begging, pleading. Sick of myself. Sick of my stomach. My first words have a cathartic quality, whittling at the pain until it's just a throb, just a vague discomfort. All is quiet for the briefest, most wonderful second. Then, it resumes.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
*****
I numbered my breaths to a thousand and back down again before I got up from the floor. Little by little, I was able to take in my surroundings. The room is small, carpeted. I assigned the color white to the smell of the paint. Aside from a small bed and a wooden rocking chair, there are tables in each corner, each arrayed with seemingly random objects. Each one has a bowl of apples, but otherwise the layouts are different and I still haven't figured out what everything is yet.
Unwilling as I am to trust anything from the table, I still found a few treasures. The decorative cloth underneath each array seemed benign enough. I wrapped one around my shoulders, crossing it over my chest and tying it at the back. The other I tied around my hips like a skirt.
In between ticks when there's only silence I am intensely aware of eyes on me. It bothered me at first, being looked at but never spoken to, not knowing if they were in the room or watching through a window or a camera or God knows what. I took comfort in the sound of my own voice. I kept it a dull mumble so that they couldn't hear it, slurred so that if they managed to hear it, they wouldn't understand it.
I talked to myself. I talked to the things on the table that seemed capable of listening. To my delight, I found bottles of perfume. Still unable to see, the scents were like novels, each with a story, an emotion, a flavor.
Time passed, but I never felt compelled to eat. When I sat on the bed, I only rested. Never slept. Never closed my eyes, as if that would make any difference.
This period of solitude would be the happiest I'd ever be. Then, therapy begins
***** My ears are sharp now. I can hear the footsteps. No one can be a candle-flicker any more. He's Tam. It's the noise his footsteps make in the halls outside. Like a drum beat. Tam, tam, tam.
Yes, he's Tam from the beginning. When he comes in, he says his name is Michael Salve as he clasps my hands and holds them tightly. He peppers his speech with the Meaningless Word over and over again.
"Hello, Eden."
By the sound of his voice, by the feel of his hands, I get a picture of him. Like looking at a something through fogged glass, I'm only certain of anything for a moment. Some parts of the image never change; he's always slender, always sharp-angled in the face with thin lips and hollow eyes the color of ice.
"Eden, do you remember what you did?"
I say nothing.
"Would you like me to tell you, Eden?"
I don't trust my voice.
"Maybe this will help you remember." One of the hands drops from mine. It returns to fold something into my palm, something tiny, round, metal.
"It's a bullet casing, Eden. I'd give you the bullet itself, but it went clean through. Shattered in the wall."
I squirm, trying to pull my hands free.
"How has your experience been so far, Eden? Since you've been back. Are you comfortable here? Have you been eating and sleeping well?"
"There's only the apples." When I do speak, my voice sounds like a rusted hinge. "There's… something wrong with them."
I'm under the impression that he's smiling. I wonder if my ears are trained enough to silence to hear the corners of his mouth twitch up, like I would be able to hear the rustle of clothing or the drumming of fingers on a counter.
"Eden, please bring me an apple." The command echoes like a shot, even spoken in his quiet, calm voice. Tam. It's the sound of a footfall. It's the sound of a sudden expulsion of breath. And I don't know how, but I'm on my feet, apple in hand. I have never been so surefooted as I am when I am fetching that apple for Salve. Although I can't see, I hear perfectly as he takes the apple and cuts it in two. One half is placed in my hand, dripping like a wounded thing. I can hear him eating the other half and listen with all my might for the sounds of poison taking root within him. A cough, a sudden, pained gasp for air. Nothing but a satisfied gulp at the end, obnoxiously loud.
"Go on, Eden. Try some."
Tam! It's another shot straight through my skull. And in the silence that follows, the familiar, ever-present refrain slows to a meditative heartbeat, a single, controlled round fired from a machine gun.
Tick… Tick… Tick.
Tam! Tam! Tam!
Within moments, I'm choking on that apple, as I knew I would when I first heard Salve's quiet command to take it, as I could not resist the order. And in a moment, I am alone and crying again, Salve's presence blotted out as ink spilled across my good senses with the blossoming of pain in my chest and throat. *****
The veil is lifted suddenly, and touch and hearing sweep over me at once. Gone are my makeshift wrappings. It's a dress. It's a dress with a sash at the middle, tied tight around my waist. I'm wearing clothes, which implies that someone had undressed and redressed me without my knowledge. Someone had touched me, and I hadn't felt it. Could my skin be shut off like my eyes had been ruined, like my ears could be plugged?
Is it my skin? Oh God. Oh God. What if it isn't?
Tick-tick-tick/ I-wear-your-skin/ Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!
"Eden?"
Oh God, who is that? The voice nearly stops my heart. It was the first female voice I'd heard, the one who had introduced the Meaningless Word. It was right behind me. And as my senses reawaken, I find that my hands are tied down and the stranger's are fishing around in my hair.
"Eden. Can you hear me?" Her voice was watered down with tears so that it was little more than an echo, a waver, a whisper. I say nothing in response. Instead, I tug my wrists against my restraints. If I can get them free, I'll put my hands around her neck and snap it. She sounds like a skinny thing, a weak thing. She will die with a whimper. Then they'll kill me.
"Dr. Salve says that you still have trace memories, Eden. That we're just trying to get them out of you. Your name was… is… Eden. Do you remember?"
Name. Eden. Meaningless Words. The frustration climbs within me, like bile rising in my throat. I pull even harder at the ties on my wrists. They're soft cloth. Meant to be comfortable, hardly meant to restrain. I start to rub against the knot, loosening it by degrees.
"I'm going to braid your hair now. I used to braid your hair for school every day, Eden." She sounds as if she already has a set of hands around her throat. "You stopped letting me just before. I… I didn't know, Eden. You have to understand, I didn't know."
I hate the way her fingers feel as they brush against my scalp. They pulse with fever. I hate the way my hair feels, wrapping around itself like a snake. I can feel a snarl building in my throat. I want her to know that I didn't know either.
I want to know now. One hand comes free. In an instant, her hair is wrapped around my fingers, and I've bashed her head against the back of the chair. She goes limp and slips to the floor as I let go. I free my other hand and leap to my feet.
I don't make two steps before someone grabs me again. Not the wavering, slim-fingered hands of the woman, the ones that had writhed through my hair like flesh eating worms. This arm wraps around my waist and pulls me in. I whirl around to attack.
"Eden, calm yourself."
Tam. My muscles shut down, a cord cut at my neck so that it droops to my chest.
"Eden, my dear, my darling, my pet." Salve's voice is a grating, drawn-out lament. "Can you do nothing but inflict misery on the people who care for you?"
"I'll… kill… you." It's a savage growl that explodes in my diaphragm and splatters out my lips. I feel the words on my tongue, but they're not my words. Suddenly, the Meaningless Word takes shape. They're Eden's.
Tick-tick-tick. I wear your skin, Eden. Who is Eden? I wear her skin. Who am I? I don't know, but I'm not her. No. I am in her, outside her, wrapped around her, but I am not her.
"You'll do no such thing, sweetheart."
Tick. Tick. Tam. Command. Eden is disarmed. And tucked somewhere within or outside her, I am bound to her blindness, her weakness, her vulnerability.
"Eden Vasquez was a very young when she decided she would end it all." He said, adopting a bad storyteller's condescending manner, as if I were some child. "Only fifteen. A lonely girl with an aggressive interpersonal manner. Her mother emotionally absent since her husband's suicide. Daddy's little girl decided she'd follow suit. So you see how it goes."
Eden's body, Eden's will, every trace of Eden in our mutual make-up spasms. And although the body stays still, I feel the head jerk back with stunning force. Something enters our skull, explodes in our eyes.
Eden is a suicide case.
So what am I?
"I'm not Eden." I finally squeak. I wait for a violent reaction from Eden, but none comes. It's as if she's curled up somewhere, listening. As if she's the spirit, and I'm the body. Maybe she is. Maybe she always has been.
"You?" Amusement gushes from Salve's voice. "My dear. You aren't meant to exist. Eden's mother--the woman who's neck you nearly broke, by the way--wanted her precious, psychopathic daughter back. You aren't a you. You're a side effect."
I'm silent. Eden is silent. We hold our breath together like holding hands, a mutual agreement.
"You're a Skin. If we can even deign to call you a you." He continues. "You--and how can I put this?--sustain what would otherwise be the rotting remains of a suicide. You keep her organs functioning. You keep her heart beating. You're the wiring outside her as well as within her. But you're not supposed to be separate from her."
"I am… separate." It's almost a sob when it comes out. I feel as if I can almost force Eden's body--my body?--to move, to lift its hands in supplication. Was it not me who experienced everything? Was Eden nothing but the still small voice within me, the incessant, functionless ticking and chanting, constantly grating against my sanity. They had tried to resurrect Eden, but they had failed. She was only a whisper now. I am the only real being.
"Only because you were designed with a purpose. You were meant to be inhibition--judgement--to a girl with very little self-control. You're a conscience, not a consciousness."
"What am I called, then? What's my name?"
"Why…" I can hear the smile creeping on his face. "You are Eden."
"I am not!" I screech. Eden rattles around inside my skull, whether in dissent or agreement, I'm unsure.
"It's why you can't eat anything." He continues, still smiling. "You're artificial. You're meant to keep the consciousness--the idea--of the precious Eden Vasquez alive. Another entity distorts that purpose, and then what good is either of you?" There is a hand at my back, a quiet, firm command for Eden to walk with him. To my horror, she obeys.
"Eden, you will speak to me as yourself and only yourself from this point only."
"Dr. Salve?" Eden's savage voice has been tamed. It's as watery as her mother's. Enraged, I scream an obscenity at him. It catches as a cough in Eden's throat.
"Can you see, Eden?"
"Yes sir."
What? Desperately, I look for the sense called sight within my awareness. It's still absent. Salve is addressing Eden, but the derision in his voice is targeted at me.
"Describe what you see, Eden. Be as thorough as possible."
"This is my house." She states confidently, her knowledge catching me off guard. She sounds so young now. So sure that the wall she scrapes her fingertips against is peach-colored, that there are pictures hanging out of reach of the hand, and therefore out of the scope of my awareness. He takes her to a mirror, tells her to study herself closely, silently. Tells her never to forget her face. Never to forget who she is.
I don't even know what she looks like. His urging for her not to describe her appearance aloud is his final acknowledgment of my existence. He would keep me blind to everything about Eden. She would be out of my control and entirely within his.
I wear your skin. I repeat it to myself, trying to derive some kind of power from the words. Some authority. Some way to look through Eden's eyes and see the world, regain some semblance of control. But it's her life now. And he's telling her to never forget who she is.
I will remind her that she is not who he says she is.
She is Eden. I am her Skin.
OT: Obligatory excuses. It's sort of an experiment, although with exactly what, I'm not entirely sure. Apologies if it's [really, really] messy. Apologies that it's late.
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