Category Archives: spoken – tanim

#2599 – Winter Solstice

Posted on by
Reply

It will be tonight. I know it from the way Daren holds me closer than usual, one arm like iron around my waist, pressing our hips together. I know it from the way he touches me with such intention, like he is taking one last opportunity to memorize the shape of me. His fingers that so often grip me to bruising or drag welts down my skin instead glide like silk down the side of my face and along my jaw. They come to rest against the curve of my neck, my heartbeat throbbing beneath his palm. 

That hand trembles just a bit as it rests against my skin. When we kiss, so much gentler than usual, I taste blood in his mouth. I think I can even hear the rattle of his straining lungs when he breathes, though perhaps that is only my paranoia. Regardless, I can sense his exhaustion and how hard he struggles to remain present, focused, to not lose himself in the pain. If I could see more than his pale outline in the darkness, I know that strain would be obvious in his glassy gaze and the shadows beneath his eyes. 

I saw the knife on the nightstand earlier but I said nothing. Maybe that makes me a coward. Maybe it makes me a fool. Or maybe it just means I am as tired of this as he is, even if I cannot bring myself to admit it outloud. That would be too close to admitting defeat; too close to admitting these last months of misery and slow wasting have finally bled me of hope. So I said nothing then, and I say nothing now as I lay my head against the curve of his shoulder. I close my eyes and let myself sink down into slumber. 

Daren always goes for the throat in his fights, one quick, clean cut and a fast death. I doubt I will even wake up. When it comes, may his death be as kind to him as the one he gifts to me. 

—

“I’m going to kill you before the end; you know that, right?”

“… yes. I know.”

“It’s for the best. It’s easier that way.”

“For you.”

“For you.”

#2370 – Summer Solstice

Posted on by
1

You are a more valuable lover to me dead and gone than alive and in my arms. I would rather mourn the person you might have had the possibility of becoming than have daily to face who you really are. You are awful, do you know that? You are cruel and selfish and fickle. It was attractive once, that danger, that heartbreak, but now it is simply tiring. I am tired of begging you to stay. I am tired of the inevitable disappointment when you don’t. I am tired of being left behind.

So I am not asking this time. If you keep making the wrong choice I have no option but to take choice itself away. You brought this on yourself, darling. Why couldn’t you just stay for once?

You are a terrible person but you will make a lovely corpse.

#2338

Posted on by
1

So often I am mistaken for the good one, the gentle one, the kind one. Compared to my lover’s ruthless nature I suppose I am, but that hardly makes me a safer bet. After all, though he fell for pride I fell for desire. In choosing to follow him that first time I chose to follow him forever, to serve him and raise no other love above him. Do not underestimate the power of desire to change and strengthen us. My holy fire no longer merely cleanses; it burns all I touch to ash. My radiance no longer merely illuminates; it blinds and sears. You think me benevolent but that is only because you have given me no reason to show you my wrath. Cross he who rules my heart and you will learn what devastation my kind soul can wreak.

#2309

Posted on by
Reply

You’re like an angel, you know. You’re beautiful on the outside but underneath I know you’re all blinding light and holy wrath and too many blazing eyes amid a dozen flaming wings. Yours is a terrifying, incomprehensible otherworldliness that makes me weep in awe. If you were to peel back your skin the sight of your true form might drive me mad or burn me to ash – and I would beg for either, if only I might glimpse your glorious truth in my final moments.

#2304

Posted on by
Reply

How is it that I am always the one pursuing you and yet still I feel your hot breath on my neck, still my heart pounds with the instinct to flee before the hound’s long white teeth. You are ever beyond me, distant as the moon, yet I swear I hear your laughter drifting on the wind as it chases me down dark streets. I can never catch you and yet I wake in a cold sweat with bruises around my throat in the shape of your long, lovely fingers. How can this be? How are you everywhere and everything?

#2269 – Summer Solstice

Posted on by
2

True Black Tarot

Some say revenge is a dish best served cold. Others say the best revenge is a life well lived. These claims, however, are in actuality both quite inadequate. I have taken revenge countless times, in every manner possible and with every kind of weapon, and I therefore can state with confidence that the most satisfying revenge is intimate. A razor to the throat; a blade to the breast; a knife to the back. The sort of sharp, bloody end most fitting for traitors and cowards, those whose betrayal has cut you to your very core. You want to hold your victim in your arms so you feel the moment his strength finally fails. You want to hear the blood bubbling in his throat as he struggles to breathe. You want to hold his gaze as he dies so in his final moment he knows you did not forget and will not forgive. It is like a dance, two partners entwined, heartbeat to heartbeat, and then the knife. It always ends with the knife.

You ask why the Moon killed the Sun but never why the resurrected Sun in turn killed the Moon. Did he really do so to restore balance to the world, as the story says? To complete the cycle of sacrifice and usher in glorious summer? Perhaps. It gives a nice symmetry to the mythology, doesn’t it? Death for life and life for death. But maybe that’s just the fairy tale version where everything has a purpose and everyone a happy ending. Maybe that’s nothing more than a lovely lie.

Maybe the truth is that the Sun killed the Moon simply for the sweet satisfaction of revenge.

#2249

Posted on by
Reply

We are corpses rotting together; perhaps that’s why we work so well. A corpse isn’t interested in improvement, it cares little for change, it has no expectations. A corpse is content to slowly decompose into nothingness. Why not do so in the company of another if they too are content with dissolution? We corpses understand one another, you see. We are meant only to rot, and so only rot shall we.

#2241

Posted on by
5

Star-crossed lovers? What a bullshit concept. What is so romantic about the idea of two people the universe has chosen to especially fuck over? Why do we idolize the ill-fated as if the poignancy of their doom somehow outweighs in value the happiness of which they were robbed? I can assure you, there’s nothing romantic about losing your lover to violence or madness or a disease which rots them from the inside out. Nor is there anything particularly romantic about knowing you are helpless to change this fate no matter how many times you play it through. I would trade our thousand lifetimes of misery for one lifetime – no, one year, one month, one fucking day – of simple peace without the end looming near. I do not find our doom sexy or exotic or poetic. I find it merely wearying. But please, by all means, continue glorifying the tragedy of others.

#2143

Posted on by
Reply
I extracted exactly one promise from you before you left, just one, yet even that you could not keep. Do you remember that morning? I woke on cold tile to the taste of vomit and a headache that pulsed in time to the sound of your lighter snapping open and closed, open and closed. I’d overdosed before so I knew what it felt like, though not since we became… whatever we were. I was already babbling apologies and trying to force myself up on trembling arms when you shoved me back down to the bathroom tile. You had that fucking knife of yours against my throat and I truly thought it was the end, that I’d bleed out while laying in a pool of my own vomit. It would have served me right. You didn’t finish things, though. You just held my gaze as you pressed that cold little blade into my skin and said very, very softly, “This will not happen again, do you understand? Your life is not yours to end. It’s mine.” As you walked away I asked, impulsively, “Do you promise?” You paused in the doorway for a brief second before replying, “Yes.”

Yes. You promised. And yet here I am, as alone as I was before you came. You are gone and I wait like a fool for an end I swore to you I would not hasten. Please, darling, could you keep this one promise, could you do just this one thing for me? I asked so little of you while you were here and you know it. You owe me this. Please, don’t make me break my word to you by breaking yours to me. I can’t wait any longer. 

#2084

Posted on by
Reply

He was the Lightbringer, Morningstar, how could I not love him beyond all else? His radiance lit all of creation; he was my very first sight, the beauty around which I shaped my understanding of faith and fealty. I could no more deny him than I could unmake myself, for it would be contrary to every heartbeat, every breath, every cell and atom and immortal particle within me. Glory, I sang, and glory did I mean. I do not regret my choice, therefore, only wish it be understood that to me it was no choice at all. Even the blood he shed in that great battle was liquid gold and just as searing, and when he fell his meteoric impact shook the universe itself. How could I not follow him down? There is no paradise without him.

#2004

Posted on by
Reply

Look, I know I seem selfish but you have to understand: I did my time, I paid my way. For thirty years I played the good eldest son to carry on my family’s legacy. I graduated first in my class, then summa cum laude; I played the violin and the piano, and spoke multiple languages; I went to every business and political function my parents asked of me, six nights a week and church on Sundays. I wore the right things, did the right things, said the right things day after day, year after year. I gave them the most formative and precious years of my life, shouldn’t that count for something? It was all lies, sure, but you’d have been hard pressed to find anyone who saw through them. Hell, even I believed them for most of that time. So it’s not like it was all for nothing, okay? Thirty years is a long time to constrain yourself to the service of others. I didn’t have a childhood, you know. I had boarding school and recitals and tutors and competitions. Every moment was spent preparing me for another moment somewhere in the future when I would inevitably be the CEO, the candidate, the husband of the pretty blond wife and the well-behaved children. That I made it thirty years before I broke is the real wonder, honestly – that’s what people should be amazed by, not the pointless shit that lead up to it. Did I handle things well, there at the end? Maybe not. But do I regret it? No. All I regret is taking so long to realize the choice was mine to make.

#1972

Posted on by
1

There’s this idea that if you fall in love with a crazy person, your love can save them – that, given time and patience and devotion, you can fix their madness, you can make them “whole”. It’s a load of shit. Madness can’t be fixed; it can only be suppressed, and will always come creeping, seeping, bleeding back. So why try? Why not accept the madness for what it is and wait for the morning you wake with your lover’s knife in your throat? At least there’s honesty in that. Believe me, the crazy ones know they can’t be fixed. It’s cruel to force them to go along with the charade when you both know you’ll end up at the same tragic conclusion anyway. Blood and broken glass are enough to bear; spare yourselves the disappointment, at least.

#1958

Posted on by
2

Life is one long slippery slope. I started at the top, but from the first my stance was shaky. I slid so early so easily and never managed to climb back up more than an inch – and that just to fall again anyway. Drinking to smoking to injecting, kissing to fucking to binding, it’s all downhill. Melancholy to misery to madness. Love to obsession to hatred. I’m not sure I’ll even know when I’ve hit the bottom; will it feel any different than where I am now?

The first time I made him bleed, I thought I would kill myself rather than live with the guilt. But I didn’t, and the second time that guilt weighed a little less on my shoulders. I barely felt it at all the third time; he knew the possibility was there, he could have prevented it had he truly wanted to. My point is, none of those instances felt like rock bottom. Maybe nothing will, until the time I unwrap my hands from his neck and he lays still and silent. I thought love might be the thing with which I’d climb back up that slope, but I was wrong. If anything, it only accelerated my descent.

#1925

Posted on by
Reply

I pray you never know what your lover looks like curled up on the bathroom tile, trembling and covered in a cold sweat. I pray you never know what his voice sounds like scraped raw and coated in blood. I pray you never know what his cracked lips taste like or how erratically his heart beats beneath his pale skin. I pray you never know the urge to cut out your tongue and eyes, scrape off your skin and mutilate your ears, anything to stop seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling the end as it approaches.

#1924

Posted on by
Reply

Do you exist without each other? Do you exist in the time before you met, when you lead separate lives? You never let me see those years.

Who was Will before he found Hannibal?


…we don’t ever learn that, I guess. Not really.

And after?


We don’t know that either.

Then there you have it. Whether the teacup existed before it shattered or not doesn’t matter once it has broken.


But– …I hate when you speak in riddles.

No, you don’t.


Does that make me Abigail, then?

That’s a riddle you’ll have to solve for yourself.

#1922

Posted on by
2

I have swallowed you down so many times, it is a wonder your seed has not taken root within me. I can almost feel it buried within the meat of my left breast, though, nestled safely behind the wall of my ribcage where it may grow in peace. Perhaps that strange twisting sensation I sometimes feel is the first little tendril breaking forth from its shell, tasting and testing the red soil of its birth. Soon its vines will go creeping through my flesh and wind around my ribs like ivy on a trellis. I wonder what manner of night-blooming flowers will push their buds out my eyes, or strange fruits ripen alongside my warm organs? I hope, should that day come, you will cut me open and reap your beautiful harvest.

#1916

Posted on by
Reply

20170405_213709
I could build a castle with the corpses
from all the times I’ve killed you.
At a distance it would look like white marble
and be as cold to the touch.

Would your ghosts sing to me?

–

[ Image credit can be found at: https://www.pinterest.com/onlyfragments/ ]

#1885

Posted on by
Reply

Lie to me. Say you love me; say you’ll stay. You are a beautiful liar. Lying is an art you have elevated and perfected, and to watch you in action is to listen to the greatest symphony ever written. I have lived all my life among the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most talented and privileged – and yet I have never seen a single person who has mastered their art to such a degree as you. Every lie you offer me is a gift more precious than anything I could give in return. Tell me you forgive me, darling, for being so disappointingly inferior to you. That can be your greatest lie yet.

#1850

Posted on by
Reply

Demons don’t have hearts, technically, but we can still love. I love the taste of fresh blood. I love a long, challenging hunt. I love all the ways humans invent to hurt themselves without our help. But most of all, I love Noah. You might think it’d be forbidden for a demon to fall in love with a human, but it happens all the time; as long as you stick to the rules, no one down below really cares. Himself’s not exactly a stickler about these sorts of things. Free will and all of that.

Here is what I love about Noah. I love how much darkness and rage he contains inside his fragile human form. I love how he takes control when we fuck, which is often and everywhere. I love how when he learned what I am, he bared his teeth in a hungry, feral smile I’ve never seen before and asked me what it’s like to kill. I love his arrogance and his cruelty. I love his intensity and patience. I love his fearlessness in the face of certain death and eternal damnation.

I don’t mind playing the high school bad boy; I’d take just about any form to watch Noah enact his grand plan. The roles suit us, anyway, me the dangerous rake everyone secretly envies and he the silent, brooding loner they all detest. After, the survivors will say they always knew he was strange, creepy, a little off, but right now they suspect nothing. I watch him go about his preparations with ease, no teachers noticing his absence from class, no students or administration catching him in places he shouldn’t be. Humans are so stupid.

I find a good vantage point near the main doors. When the final bell rings at the end of the day, I can hear classroom doors opening all around the building and students streaming into the hallways. That’s when the bombs go off, three simultaneous explosions that rock the very air. Suddenly I’m surrounded by shrieking students running in all directions, their panic causing more chaos than Noah’s detonations. The bombs serve to herd everyone toward the main doors, and as they crush each other in their desperation, the gunshots begin. Taller as I am than any of the kids, I easily spot Noah as he wades effortlessly into the crowd, picking off students one by one like he does this every day. Soon he’s surrounded by a ring of limp bodies, and fuck if he isn’t the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, his face expressionless, his hand steady and swift as he chooses targets.

It must seem like forever to the humans before police arrive, their flashing, wailing vehicles forming a barrier around the entrance. By now everyone has either escaped or fallen to Noah’s bullets, and in the sudden calm he turns and favors me with the smallest of smiles. If I did have a heart, it’d probably burst; instead, I resist the urge to kneel down before him and show him just how proud I am. But there will be time for that later, an eternity of it, and for now I only nod in approval and come to stand at his side. Together we step over the bodies of his victims and walk through the shattered glass doors.

“Drop your weapon!” someone yells through a megaphone, a dozen officers crouched behind SWAT shields with their guns trained on Noah. He offers them a very different smile and lazily raises his gun. I don’t count the shots fired; six pierce my lover, shredding internal organs but nothing so vital that he dies immediately. I catch him as he falls, one hand flung out to freeze time. I will have this final moment with him, before we meet again in that other place.

“So?” Noah coughs, blood bubbling in his mouth, obscuring the subtle smile on his beautiful lips. Cradling him close, I run my fingers through his pale hair and grin, letting my fangs show. “You did wonderfully, my dear. Any demon would be proud to have accomplished such a thing. Himself will be very impressed, I know it. He’ll make you one of us.”

“Good,” Noah’s eyes shine, partly from the praise and partly from the pain. “So…” his breathing has become labored, his body heavier as his muscles give up, “I’ll see you… down there… soon?”

“Yes, love,” I kiss him one last time in this mortal form, savoring the sweetness of his blood, and lay him gently down to rest on the concrete. “I will find you.”

#1825

Posted on by
2

“Don’t call me that,” you say. “I’m no angel.” But you’re wrong. You think I call you Angel as a term of endearment, homage to your sculpted form or unearthly eyes. That isn’t true. I call you Angel because you are like Lucifer himself, so determined to remain free, abhorring any kind of fetter. You jealously guard your autonomy; you covet free will beyond all rationality. You love me, I know you do, and yet the moment you feel less than absolutely in control you fight back, sometimes with words, sometimes with absence, sometimes with a blade. At even the barest hint of a future theoretical threat you make sure I understand in no uncertain terms that you can, and will, disappear from my life without a trace. That is why I call you Angel. Not because of your beauty; because beside you even Lucifer would feel shame for letting himself be cowed.

#1818

Posted on by
4

I know what you think. You think I want to fix you, or at least change you, make you something or someone other than what you are. That’s what your paranoia tells you, at least, isn’t it? I can almost see it whispering in your ear sometimes, twisting my words before they reach you so what you hear is only a queer shadow of what I said. But try to understand my meaning when I say I don’t want to fix you. What I mean is, I want you as you are: sick and mad and broken. I mean I want to be at your side for all of this, even the nightmares and the blood. Even that crippling paranoia. I mean I want to watch you die, and I will do so unflinchingly. I can’t offer you much, but I can offer you that. Someone at your side until, and past, the inevitable end. Someone with you in the dark. Your paranoia wants you to believe I only love the parts of you I think I can fix, but that’s a lie – I love most fiercely the parts of you that cannot, will not, ever be fixed.

#1814

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes life is not the better choice. Sometimes nothing can be done to save someone because there is nothing left to save. I am a walking corpse, and I will find a way to cut myself free from this rotting body eventually. To argue or pretend otherwise, or to offer me well-intentioned falsities, is a waste of time. Daren is gone. Nothing will change that fact. He will still be gone if a therapist gives me antidepressants to stave off the crushing sorrow. He will still be gone if my family has me committed so I cannot harm myself. He will still be gone whether I live another thirty years or die tomorrow. Given that immutable fact, what does any of it matter? He is dead and I am alone.

#1813

Posted on by
Reply

We don’t talk about that night. Maybe I dreamed it. His fingers through my hair, my head in his lap… was that really him? Is he capable of such gentleness? Such selfless compassion? Withdrawal turns your senses inside out, so I could easily have hallucinated it all; it wouldn’t be the first time I lost the ability to determine dream from reality. The memory seems too clear, too complete, to be a fantasy, though. I remember the bad along with the good – my racing heart, the cold sweats, the vomiting and uncontrollable trembling. Surely if I had imagined his presence, I would also have imagined myself less of an embarrassing wreck, right? Wouldn’t I have at least omitted the parts where I wept like a child? But that’s what makes it feel impossible: I remember it all, and I remember him beside me the entire time. He took the bottle from me and could have left me to suffer through the storm alone, a fitting punishment for a pathetic addict like me, but he didn’t. He stayed. He held me as I shook so I didn’t bruise myself on the bathroom tiles. He murmured kindnesses I know will never leave his lips again. Could I have imagined it all?

#1773

Posted on by
Reply

If you haven’t noticed, this story is being told by an unreliable narrator. But then again, what does that even mean? If I’m the sole source, the primary source, then isn’t my interpretation the truth? If it’s not, you’ll never know otherwise. Maybe it broke my mother’s heart when I left, abandoning the empire I should have inherited from the man she loved and lost. Maybe my brother gritted his teeth as he prepared to shoulder it all as my shadow finally moved and left him alone in the spotlight. Maybe my father died disappointed in himself for carving me in his likeness, wondering only at the very end who I really was beneath his mirror mask. Who knows? Maybe they tried a hundred times to reach me but gave up when all they struck was my perfect smile. You’ll never know, though, and neither will I. My reality is the story’s reality, and my reality is full of drugs and sex and the hole inside me that nothing seems to fill.

#1748

Posted on by
Reply

“Aren’t you going to tell me not to do anything drastic when you’re gone?”, I asked him once. He had shrugged and said, “I won’t give a shit what you do then.” I wonder if that’s true, though. Do you give a shit now? Can you, wherever you are? And if so, are you disappointed in me? I know I am. I used to wonder what I’d do after you were gone, whether I’d pick something flashy like jumping from the roof or something classic like hanging. Turns out I just went back to what I did best before I met you: killing myself slowly with alcohol and painkillers. Not really flashy or classic, I guess, so much as just pathetic. There’s no urge to do anything else, though, you know? I don’t have the energy to climb up to the roof. I don’t have the desire to decide which tie would make the best noose. I don’t even feel moved enough to take the whole bottle of pills and wash them down with a tumbler of Crown. I just keep getting drunk, getting high, getting lost, waiting for the morning I finally don’t wake up. Does that disappoint you? Were you secretly hoping I’d make some grand final gesture, or at least that I’d find it impossible to slip back into my old life so easily? Or do you still, even now, not give a shit what I do or how I do it?

#1743

Posted on by
4

I know it’s a cliche: the rich kid who doesn’t want everything handed to him on a silver platter; the rich kid who doesn’t want to be a puppet in a suit; the rich kid who doesn’t know how to be human because he grew up on money and power and perfection. It’s hard to feel sympathy for that kind of protagonist. I get it. But if I was expecting sympathy, I’d be lying a lot more when I tell this story. I’d tell you my mother took Valium and Percocet to forget my father’s adultery, my father drank to forget his disappointing family, and my brother smoked pot to forget he was just the measly second son. But really, none of that is true. They were all perfect, even past the masks; I was the only one who was actually flawed inside, who had to hide secrets under secrets under secrets. And I was good at hiding those secrets because I grew up watching perfect people go about their perfect lives. I had the best role-models a fucked up monster like me could want. But again, I’m not looking for sympathy. I can’t help it if the protagonist of this story is selfish and spoiled and always wants what he can’t have. After all these years of secrets, I’m finally telling the truth. Even if it’s ugly, that’s got to count for something, right?

#1730

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s how it works when you’re rich; either you have to hide your deepest, darkest secrets from your family or your family uses its power and prestige to hide them for you. I wonder, sometimes, what it would have been like had I been born into the latter instead of the former. What if my family had known who I was, what I was, and used their wealth to simultaneously indulge and cover up my indiscretions? Those are the kinds of families that breed psychopaths and abusers, men who are used to getting their way in all realms of life. But is it any better to force someone to suppress those impulses completely? If getting someone help isn’t an option, because that would mean admitting there’s a problem, then what other choice is there? The outside world must be shown only the flat mask of perfection. How that mask is obtained, well, who cares as long as it works? Only the victims of these secrets might, but money makes all the wheels in the world turn to crush them. I just wonder… with an avenue of release, would I have become more of a monster or less?

#1692

Posted on by
2

You’re my kind of beauty: violence and hunger and hate. Pale skin over sharp bones like a starved and feral beast. Don’t let anyone tell you your rage isn’t glorious. Don’t let anyone tell you cruelty isn’t pretty. Yours is the beauty of the streets, blood on pavement, switchblades and cigarettes. Yours is the beauty of the predator, cold eyes and bared teeth, tense muscle ready to strike. There’s nothing delicate or sympathetic about you; you are a hard, bitter, cutting kind of pretty. Others might fear injury, but I welcome the blood I’ll shed for you.