A deep breath. Dahlia feels the call, feels her throat open wide as Jon’s words beckon her horror to claw its way free of her mouth.
Like diving into cold water. Jump now, adjust later. No choice now anyway--- both of them saw to that together.
-----------
DAHLIA (STATEMENT)
I always knew I was different. I know that’s a cliche way to start a story, [ Hollow laughter. ] but it’s true. I was the youngest of thirteen, and I watched with a careful eye how my father--- the man I thought was my father--- treated each of my siblings. Oscar, his pride and joy, the vessel that accepted all his ambition, a beacon of the kind of refinement that cannot be taught. Emily, his delicate flower, shut up in her room to crochet all day with nary a complaint from him because there, she was safe. Henry, the prodigal son, a fierce conflict that concealed even fiercer respect. Harriet, his bright pupil, the face of the future. I loved them all, each of them. And none of them ever treated me in a way that was untoward, even if we didn’t see eye to eye.
But Papa. Father. Japhet. He was the reason I knew.
I always thought it was because I’d killed my mother. I didn’t really, but that’s what it felt like. She died giving birth to me, and part of me always felt like I murdered her and he knew it. Now I know the truth. It was about what her death meant for him, and what I represent.
The deal my father offered to my “father” was this. An island unto itself, with all the necessities to be self-sufficient. Japhet would discover it, build it up according to his design, lead it to glory, and all those who lived there would follow him. He would be wealthy, influential, powerful, loved, and all of his payment to Aster would be deferred until after my mother gave birth to her final child. At that time, what would be owed would be the standard fare for Aster’s ilk. Worship. Blood sacrifice. The occasional act of cannibalism. He wasn’t specific. But all Japhet Leeds knew is that he didn’t have to start paying until his dynasty was well and truly established. And so, establish he did. He and my mother had twelve children together. According to some of my older siblings, she was pregnant nearly perpetually throughout their lives. It’s not like they knew how Aster was going to determine the “last born,” so to be absolutely safe, they just kept having them to prove that they hadn’t finished reproducing. That my mother’s body could continue. They wanted to delay the end of their empire as long as possible.
Then, the inevitable occurred. My mother could no longer become pregnant. And Aster pointed out oh-so-tactfully that the deal specifically stated it had to be her last born child. Not necessarily Japhet’s. He could ensure at least one more birth, and all she had to do was give him that which he was not his to have by rights. She accepted. And she died for it. Aster got everything he wanted. He got his piece of the puzzle with Nyarlathotep, and a tool to exert his will on besides. He got his due from Japhet with plenty of interest. All of it wrapped up in me, and Japhet hated me for it all my life.
I didn’t find this out until I turned thirteen. Most of the time there was some sort of party any time one of us had a birthday, though not always. Sometimes it wasn’t in the cards, given the sheer number of us. So when I was told that my thirteenth birthday was going to be a bit more subdued, I didn’t think anything of it. Honestly, I was a bit relieved. The fancy parties and stuffy dinners were always a headache to me, back in those days. I was simply told that I’d be meeting and receiving a gift from some extended family from off the island, as a sort of coming of age tradition. Sure. That was fine. It shouldn’t take too long, I thought, and left Jonah and I plenty of time to go and look for frogs, which is what I actually wanted to be doing on my birthday as a thirteen year old girl.
That was the day that I first went to the basement through my father’s study. It can be accessed through the wine cellar, if necessary, but the simplest way is through the false bookshelf behind his desk. My desk, now. Another cliche, but I feel like one often. Part of just one big stupid sick fairy tale that’s been told a thousand times, and that day was no different. We descended into the depths of our home, deep into the guts of that mansion, down to that strange dining room, somehow both ornate and utilitarian at the same time. It served only one purpose. To consume. They didn’t even bother to close the door to the little torture kitchen connected at the far side, a tangled line of chains from the ceiling above a blood-drenched table with an unconscious man spread out upon it. But that isn’t what I was looking at. All I could see were the four creatures sitting at that table.
A jester with a rictus smile and empty jaundiced eyes set into exposed grey-brown flesh. Like meat left out for days. Dressed in a rotten patchwork costume that reeked of copper and mold. Mendel.
A corpse, multi-armed and bundled in moth-eaten funeral shrouds. His long, gnarled fingers gripped an enormous cello with two necks. His mouth was so big. His voice, so deep and booming and eloquent. Efrain.
A coiled mass of shadow, long-fingered and threaded through with cherry red veins that burned brightly in my eyes. His frame so dark as to have no depth, just a flat black hole in the world whose features could only be discerned by those veins, alongside a matching pair of eyes and an exposed, beating heart seated inside a jagged cage. Eligos.
And then there was him. The most human of the bunch, ironically. If it weren’t for everything above the neck, he’d just look like a well-dressed man in a tailored black suit. Leather gloves wrapped around the pewter top of his cane, shaped like the head of a wolf. A blue tie with a gold pin in the center. And seated atop this elegantly banal body, the head of a deer. Black fur and pallid eyes, a massive, towering crown of black horns, and when he opened his mouth, the teeth of a predator. Aster.
I had never in my life felt that kind of fear run through me. Like ice in my arms that crawled up my limbs to arrest my heart and consume my face. I stood there dumbstruck as these things, these monsters, these disgusting creatures that soured the air around them with sickness and corruption and evil and power, told me that they were my family. That I was born of them. That my entire goddamn life was a lie, that all my siblings were half-siblings, and that my mother had given one of her nights to the deer-headed beast that sat at that horrible table to make me.
They told me that I was a monster like them. Half of one, anyway. And when my father, my real father, put his hands on me for the first time, I could feel myself change. Black antlers of my own sprouted from my head. My hair and nails darkened. My skin turned a strange, inhuman, sapphire blue.
I had seen them before. I knew what they were. But the idea that I could be one was… I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But Papa--- Japhet held out a hand mirror and there I was. The word rose to mind unbidden before any of them ever uttered it.
Tiefling.
Oh, but that wasn’t all. I was a part of the family now. I had a gift. An obligation. I was to be my father’s most valuable acolyte
Aster took me by the shoulders and guided me to that hidden kitchen. It was only then that I registered the fact that there was a stranger there. No, not a stranger, not completely. He was… a neighbor. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seen his face. And when I entered the room, steered by the gloved hands of my father, he started to wake up. And he started to scream.
The man--- gods, I hate that I can’t remember his name, I don’t… know if I ever even knew it. He thrashed, throwing his chains around. He was already battered from doing this earlier, his face raw from sobbing, his bare stomach exposed. And without being told, I knew what I was meant to do to him. There was a hunger in me, vicious and ancient, rumbling and grinding under the surface of me like the shifting of tectonic plates. An ugly need. I felt it claw its way out of its resting place in the pit of my stomach and into my throat, opening it wide to receive the sustenance my little body had known it secretly needed for those thirteen years. Those endless, yet impossibly short thirteen years.
The first time I changed, the first time I became my real self--because that’s what it is, if I’m honest--- I didn’t feel it happen. Now I do. I’ve felt that transformation in all its uncomfortable detail since. The shifting of muscle and bone from a compact disguise to a vile truth. But the first time, I didn’t even notice. I was just that voracious. I didn’t even feel the chains striking me, tangling in my thorny antlers. All I felt was the disgusting, succulent, horrifying satisfaction of teeth sinking into the soft flesh of a stomach, and tongue finding the treasures it craved so desperately. The feeling of offal between my fangs.
It took so long for the man to stop screaming that I’m not sure I noticed when it happened. But none of it mattered. Because as soon as I swallowed that last putrid morsel, I felt that ancient pit in me finally, finally be filled, and I knew a wretched satisfaction that cannot be replicated by anything else I have ever felt, and a hatred of myself that ran just as deep to go with it.
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thethirteenthchild
no subject
Date: 2024-12-07 08:24 pm (UTC)Like diving into cold water. Jump now, adjust later. No choice now anyway--- both of them saw to that together.
-----------
I always knew I was different. I know that’s a cliche way to start a story, [ Hollow laughter. ] but it’s true. I was the youngest of thirteen, and I watched with a careful eye how my father--- the man I thought was my father--- treated each of my siblings. Oscar, his pride and joy, the vessel that accepted all his ambition, a beacon of the kind of refinement that cannot be taught. Emily, his delicate flower, shut up in her room to crochet all day with nary a complaint from him because there, she was safe. Henry, the prodigal son, a fierce conflict that concealed even fiercer respect. Harriet, his bright pupil, the face of the future. I loved them all, each of them. And none of them ever treated me in a way that was untoward, even if we didn’t see eye to eye.
But Papa. Father. Japhet. He was the reason I knew.
I always thought it was because I’d killed my mother. I didn’t really, but that’s what it felt like. She died giving birth to me, and part of me always felt like I murdered her and he knew it. Now I know the truth. It was about what her death meant for him, and what I represent.
The deal my father offered to my “father” was this. An island unto itself, with all the necessities to be self-sufficient. Japhet would discover it, build it up according to his design, lead it to glory, and all those who lived there would follow him. He would be wealthy, influential, powerful, loved, and all of his payment to Aster would be deferred until after my mother gave birth to her final child. At that time, what would be owed would be the standard fare for Aster’s ilk. Worship. Blood sacrifice. The occasional act of cannibalism. He wasn’t specific. But all Japhet Leeds knew is that he didn’t have to start paying until his dynasty was well and truly established. And so, establish he did. He and my mother had twelve children together. According to some of my older siblings, she was pregnant nearly perpetually throughout their lives. It’s not like they knew how Aster was going to determine the “last born,” so to be absolutely safe, they just kept having them to prove that they hadn’t finished reproducing. That my mother’s body could continue. They wanted to delay the end of their empire as long as possible.
Then, the inevitable occurred. My mother could no longer become pregnant. And Aster pointed out oh-so-tactfully that the deal specifically stated it had to be her last born child. Not necessarily Japhet’s. He could ensure at least one more birth, and all she had to do was give him that which he was not his to have by rights. She accepted. And she died for it. Aster got everything he wanted. He got his piece of the puzzle with Nyarlathotep, and a tool to exert his will on besides. He got his due from Japhet with plenty of interest. All of it wrapped up in me, and Japhet hated me for it all my life.
I didn’t find this out until I turned thirteen. Most of the time there was some sort of party any time one of us had a birthday, though not always. Sometimes it wasn’t in the cards, given the sheer number of us. So when I was told that my thirteenth birthday was going to be a bit more subdued, I didn’t think anything of it. Honestly, I was a bit relieved. The fancy parties and stuffy dinners were always a headache to me, back in those days. I was simply told that I’d be meeting and receiving a gift from some extended family from off the island, as a sort of coming of age tradition. Sure. That was fine. It shouldn’t take too long, I thought, and left Jonah and I plenty of time to go and look for frogs, which is what I actually wanted to be doing on my birthday as a thirteen year old girl.
That was the day that I first went to the basement through my father’s study. It can be accessed through the wine cellar, if necessary, but the simplest way is through the false bookshelf behind his desk. My desk, now. Another cliche, but I feel like one often. Part of just one big stupid sick fairy tale that’s been told a thousand times, and that day was no different. We descended into the depths of our home, deep into the guts of that mansion, down to that strange dining room, somehow both ornate and utilitarian at the same time. It served only one purpose. To consume. They didn’t even bother to close the door to the little torture kitchen connected at the far side, a tangled line of chains from the ceiling above a blood-drenched table with an unconscious man spread out upon it. But that isn’t what I was looking at. All I could see were the four creatures sitting at that table.
A jester with a rictus smile and empty jaundiced eyes set into exposed grey-brown flesh. Like meat left out for days. Dressed in a rotten patchwork costume that reeked of copper and mold. Mendel.
A corpse, multi-armed and bundled in moth-eaten funeral shrouds. His long, gnarled fingers gripped an enormous cello with two necks. His mouth was so big. His voice, so deep and booming and eloquent. Efrain.
A coiled mass of shadow, long-fingered and threaded through with cherry red veins that burned brightly in my eyes. His frame so dark as to have no depth, just a flat black hole in the world whose features could only be discerned by those veins, alongside a matching pair of eyes and an exposed, beating heart seated inside a jagged cage. Eligos.
And then there was him. The most human of the bunch, ironically. If it weren’t for everything above the neck, he’d just look like a well-dressed man in a tailored black suit. Leather gloves wrapped around the pewter top of his cane, shaped like the head of a wolf. A blue tie with a gold pin in the center. And seated atop this elegantly banal body, the head of a deer. Black fur and pallid eyes, a massive, towering crown of black horns, and when he opened his mouth, the teeth of a predator. Aster.
I had never in my life felt that kind of fear run through me. Like ice in my arms that crawled up my limbs to arrest my heart and consume my face. I stood there dumbstruck as these things, these monsters, these disgusting creatures that soured the air around them with sickness and corruption and evil and power, told me that they were my family. That I was born of them. That my entire goddamn life was a lie, that all my siblings were half-siblings, and that my mother had given one of her nights to the deer-headed beast that sat at that horrible table to make me.
They told me that I was a monster like them. Half of one, anyway. And when my father, my real father, put his hands on me for the first time, I could feel myself change. Black antlers of my own sprouted from my head. My hair and nails darkened. My skin turned a strange, inhuman, sapphire blue.
I had seen them before. I knew what they were. But the idea that I could be one was… I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But Papa--- Japhet held out a hand mirror and there I was. The word rose to mind unbidden before any of them ever uttered it.
Tiefling.
Oh, but that wasn’t all. I was a part of the family now. I had a gift. An obligation. I was to be my father’s most valuable acolyte
Aster took me by the shoulders and guided me to that hidden kitchen. It was only then that I registered the fact that there was a stranger there. No, not a stranger, not completely. He was… a neighbor. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seen his face. And when I entered the room, steered by the gloved hands of my father, he started to wake up. And he started to scream.
The man--- gods, I hate that I can’t remember his name, I don’t… know if I ever even knew it. He thrashed, throwing his chains around. He was already battered from doing this earlier, his face raw from sobbing, his bare stomach exposed. And without being told, I knew what I was meant to do to him. There was a hunger in me, vicious and ancient, rumbling and grinding under the surface of me like the shifting of tectonic plates. An ugly need. I felt it claw its way out of its resting place in the pit of my stomach and into my throat, opening it wide to receive the sustenance my little body had known it secretly needed for those thirteen years. Those endless, yet impossibly short thirteen years.
The first time I changed, the first time I became my real self--because that’s what it is, if I’m honest--- I didn’t feel it happen. Now I do. I’ve felt that transformation in all its uncomfortable detail since. The shifting of muscle and bone from a compact disguise to a vile truth. But the first time, I didn’t even notice. I was just that voracious. I didn’t even feel the chains striking me, tangling in my thorny antlers. All I felt was the disgusting, succulent, horrifying satisfaction of teeth sinking into the soft flesh of a stomach, and tongue finding the treasures it craved so desperately. The feeling of offal between my fangs.
It took so long for the man to stop screaming that I’m not sure I noticed when it happened. But none of it mattered. Because as soon as I swallowed that last putrid morsel, I felt that ancient pit in me finally, finally be filled, and I knew a wretched satisfaction that cannot be replicated by anything else I have ever felt, and a hatred of myself that ran just as deep to go with it.
Statement ends.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-07 08:43 pm (UTC)Breath hisses between Daisy's teeth and she reflexively settles a protective hand on Dahlia's shoulder. She doesn't say a word.