Eva
Revisit Death Prompt 8: Horror/Erotica
This took a little over a month, the process of moving and finding a place during a snowstorm was a time. We got lucky, we found a sweet spot, on the second viewing. The place and the landlord is equally superior. We land on 3/10, two days after my birthday. Best present ever. A lot of the stories will take longer as a result, because moving is a process.
Vinny Reads is a good dude, I look forward to his newsletters and what he’s reading. His Weekly Digest is refreshing during this crazy fucked up timeline. They’re relatable for most Americans attempting to decipher the madhouse or fall apart between dissociation and rage. If you want to connect to someone during these crazy times give those digests a read.
This prompt was challenging for me, because it was a random manic thought that I wrote in poetic metaphoric SOC prose and it got real. Gotta a lot of favorite lines in here, which is rare. Thank you Vinny Reads for being such a huge supporter of getting my family sheltered. If it wasn’t for this prompt, none of these words would have landed the way they did on the page.
[ Penny Dreadful, Season 1, 2014 - distorted by yours truly the character follows Vanessa Ives must watch with Eva Green. ]
SOC POV zero draft.
I am Eva—
Liquified sweat smolders my skin deep. Incandescence raw. Red abrasions slammed into my skin, hot. My veins pulsate, shivers throb with blood. Its essence doesn’t belong to me. Echoes of its home tremor through my body. Flesh stubborn, its body revolts against mine. Her laughter is squeamish with my desire. In my mouth, her skin harmonizes in its place, its home. Unbroken, tameless chimeras of deceit. Mirror panels fabricate my fairy tale, my screams escape my lips, drool wedged over her forehead. Legs buckled, our defiled legacy. The devil lives in me, and she has a name.
My flight of fancy. Candle lit tangerines. I am everyone, you are nothing. She drinks up my gasoline, sugar salt kerosene. Spirit gunk leaks from my eyelids. Thick dirty make up bathwater. Everything we beg to forget, we beg to come back. Her eyes a hazy blue porcelain, my laughter chirps and chatters onto the walls. In a room, high ceilings bounce, her body bone stiff. By daylight, you’ll be mine.
—Green
Part of our possession troubles for a lamb.
Cut roses start wilting within hours.
Every woman has a name, few demand a title.
My ghost face trades places with every person I meet. Traffics maps like clothes as seasons change. Burn victim. Charred skin burnt pizza layers. I wash in blood like a rumored Bathory. Consumerism is capitalism. Production factories scour the floor with lost souls. My industrial complex is a nightmare, my work is a dream.
In the mirror, I see my scarred skin welt B-side. Monsters soaked in blood. No names. We don’t say their names. It doesn’t have to be real.
Textile skin weaves over the body. Soft goods. Dry goods. Rotten drapery. Its linen weaves on my tongue. Synthetic varieties of magic. Gifts that don’t belong to me. Shared. Ambient laughter in the dark.
None of this is real. The devil tells me otherwise. Whispers overflown. We’re drowning. Mosquito lighting gone sour green. It buzzes at my hair. Flames jump on the center crown. I want to die, I don’t want the transition map. Its fat melts on my jowls.
Botox liposuction baby can’t save it. My inner bones crack into place. Twenty bodies make one whole Eva Green facial map. We don’t share memories. Wouldn’t know her life. Heard she was plain Jane. Her facial structure draws me inwards. The way an addict needs to feed.
The devil coaxes my cat like independence, unpredictability. Impulsive imposter. Says, the only way to transform is by giving her meat, bones and the parts that make the soul immortal. Says, it can’t be seen only felt.
The devil is charred burnt skin rubber like me. Talks like me, dresses carbon copy. Her prototype was made by others. Things she says, I’ll never meet. When we’re not canning for critters she tells me words I don’t understand. She pretends to be my lover. Her tongue tastes of bean soup and red wine reduced under low light.
Her eyes are buttons eclipsed from cut stones.
The devil says they call her Gwenofore, and I can call her Yenni.
In front of the mirror, I wait to go to the bar. Breathing exercises. Tongue at the roof of my mouth. My face shapeshifts to Eva. My skin sheds, flakey white to the sink. Dewy red pink blood. Fresh florals. Slimy aloe film spread over my face, moisturized. I don’t remember who I used to be when I was born. Who’s that woman?
In tandem my emotions drive through my brain, loud engine wheels churn the deeper cavernous parts of my psyche. It’s lost. I’m lost. I have no endings or beginnings. Meshed together like a bad ceramics class. Shades make shapes. Abstract and uncanny. There’s no guilt suture on my papillae. Virgin of love. Lady of the night, poison plasters my spine. Intention is betrayal. Intuition is fidelity. Thousands of songs, dolour behind my eyes.
My body is a boat at high tide, its vessel rocking to hymns chanted in the wind. Ropes and bells at the docks. Its funeral lives inside my ribcage, and for a glimpse I can taste what it means to be seen. The devil’s face dissolves beside me, and the unison of my flesh is born anew.
Invisibility no longer hidden by colors, how they would hallucinate around me, auras of my past life. Patches of lightning bolts, jarr my head. Trauma bruises deep purple and blues. My cerebrums wit breathes through its gills. Underwater, I drown.
Strained words jag my memory.
My soul skirmishes with the devil undertow.
One of us will win. One of us will have more to lose.
Her name was Ashes, burned before she was born. When I met her, my building was on fire. Her long legs scarred the ground when she walked. Demanded the room, like her presence was a charity. There’s one that separates the pack without needing an entrance. It’s in the air, her collision plays dead. Red soft velvety lungs. Free falling, I can’t say no to her.
Ribcages oppose each other, bruises form. String lights shimmer over our eyes. She says she knows me from somewhere. I pretend to acknowledge it, fingers underneath the ear lobes. Warmth at the tips. Her lips blueprint and match mine. I obey her rules, when her mouth opens. Exhalation on me. I wheeze when her nerves tingle my senses. Dark brown hair basked at first blush.
One weekend out of the month, she’s mine.
The devil says she wants her as the final sacrifice. In my dream, the devil replaces Ashes face. We live in a temporal lag, a long term error. Its sustainable deviation apart from this world.
The devil’s paradigm of love is only known by consumption. Undercooked meat, raw. Blood vessels pop like skins of raspberries burst in my mouth. Stains my lips, pomegranate. Our bedding is a disaster. Skin covered dolls sprawl across it, vinyl cool flesh. Limbs tangle when we sleep, there’s soft thuds when they slide and settle. Faceless eyes, pale and unblinking. Mirrors of their cornea reflect our movements. I feel them watch, still.
When it’s quiet, their sorrow sounds wretch into my belly. The devil says, I lose myself. The devil says many things it does not understand.
Ashes nails clench the back of my hair when she kisses me. Her thighs straddle me, cunt pressed deep into my knee bone. The bar is spinning, faster than I can catch my breath. My arms brace for death, holding onto her. Drunk on her spit.
Ashes tells me, when she stares into my eyes the world around her dies. Time stutters in slow motion love nostalgia. She sucks in all my air, and leaves me dry. Starved for more. My fingers twitch under her ribcage. Her tongue licks over my eyelids, and I want an infection.
Come back to my place this time. I don’t want to be interrupted.
Her fingers press on my throat blocking airwaves. She waits for me to gasp, before she tells me yes.
The dolls are waiting for their master.
Yenni told me once, humans taste better when the end is near.
Homelessness isn’t glamorous. Cigarette ashes blistered my mouth coarse. It was during a rain storm I found this place. Ripped up my socials number, shredded my ID cards. Named myself June. The in between month of all seasons. ‘Cause I figured, it would be a new leaf. Drifters, we travel through plane to planes of nonexistence. Belonging is for suckers, purified with their fake Gods. I had a box of picks, wandering in a half empty street. Abandoned houses galore. Could be infested with rodents or old folks isolated from reality. Anywhere is here right now.
Found an old farmhouse, looked like a half torn plantation home. Those places got an evil chew to the place. You can feel how wrong it is when you walk past them. Its the edge of despair. Long winding covered porches. The sticky hot hair sweeps up in your hair and through your skin. When it rains it’s warm enough to not feel the chill. How it would’ve stabbed your bad wounds in central standard.
Your body told you to carry on, but you couldn’t stop looking at it. Something was inside. A creator of violence. Without speech it felt deceitful. Dead gods. Something I am not supposed to see. I’d just take a peak. It was paranoia. Fantasies I’ve created on the road. The mind wanders when it wants to redeem itself from the lies.
Busted down the boarded window in the back with my boot. Expected a loaded shottie in my face. Met with cobwebs. What lived in here didn’t stir. It invited me inside. Floor covered with dirt and dust. It appeared to be some backwoods quarters, a fifties fridge sealed shut. Mold infested the counters, enough that when your fingers brushed against it particles flew in the air like smoke. Nothing had seen electricity or light for a while. Air was dense. Couldn’t even cut it with a lemon. I wrapped my wet clothes over my mouth and slapped my flashlight on.
Not that I would need it. Turned a sharp corner to find a feast with candelabra stands lit with pillared white wax. Turkey cooked with a sheer glaze, a bowl of fondue and a bouquet of crisp baguettes. Bottles of wine lined up uncorked. Chairs sat with fine china on either end. There were folded papers on the plates. Names written, just two. On my close side was Gwenofore and the other was June.
Fuck. I held my folded name in my hand. Didn’t talk to myself this time or talk myself out of it. Trapped, there was a woman standing at the end of the table. Air had gotten harsher. My lungs choked up. Don’t know where she came from, and I didn’t want to ask.
“Saw you from outside, you must be tired from your travels.”
“How the fuck do you know my name?”
She laughed, her teeth black. “I see everything, June.”
My brain left inside an echo, fumes plugged my head. She wasn’t wrong. Exhaustion wasn’t half of it. Crunched the paper between my fingers. This didn’t make sense. Places like this are supposed to be dead. Gwenofore looked alive. Her skin glowed, visitor elsewhere. The taint of this world censored from her body. Skin primed, remodelled.
“I have something you want, June.”
“You don’t know me. You’ll never know me.”
“You are my guest. Please sit down.”
My body couldn’t resist whatever pull Gwenofore had on me. I shut my eyes, I didn’t want to watch my body marionette its way through this performance. It felt as though a knife went through my back. Seduced by her tongue. A guest, a souvenir. There was no difference. I let my hand stab into the turkey, I couldn’t watch it happen. Afraid of what I might see.
Juicy, greased turkey meat wet my bottom lip with acid. It tasted gamey. Not real. Whatever inside wasn’t normal. My mouth sucked the fat between my teeth. Chunks rubbed the upper gums in a see saw motion. It felt alive, like larvae. Failed attempts at survival, them and I.
Courage didn’t come easily, my eyelids opened. Braced for impact. Welcomed by nothing at the table. Fork pointed to the ceiling. Bent its middle a bit. Cheap iron.
Gwenofore disappeared, the candelabras still burned. Dropped the fork. Fuck this. My legs unbuckled, shoved the chair to the floor with a crack. My feet tripped over air, and slammed right into an invisible wall where the open window and I saw each other. Arms bruised. Figures.
Dead Gods don’t let people waltz out of here. Never felt free to begin with. Country was plagued by oligarchies.
Time churned in my brain, melted its metal through my fluffy squished innards. Thought the upstairs might’ve meant a way out. This dead God wanted a piece of me. It couldn’t be bought or paid for with simplicities. I was nobody with a body.
Dropped to my knees at the top of the stairs. Adrenaline screamed into my chest, crunchy. A paper cut out human, I fell to hell.
Landed in a room of mirrors. Its whirlpool sucked me in. Must’ve fallen through a shaft. One moment you’re in a hallway. The next you’re at the willpower of your reflection. How I got locked in, I’ll never know. Up close, I could see all the scars I’ve peeled on my face. Broken nails nestled deep past the epidermis. Rivets, where nail beds began and settled. Tears make it less ill. Cadence seeps. Flashbacks and guarded memories.
Scalpels were a different kind of drug. A release. An exchange of give and take.
Whistles of another called the devil spoke to me. Couldn’t unhear its words. Its descent sank into my ear drums. Pierced my organs with fountains of needles. Bled orange cone lucid. Reminded me of my task. I left the world behind to die, to surrender.
My fingers could not stop peeling, plucked the layers of my face clean off. It didn’t hurt. Not here. Not in this place. Says, I am important. Loves me like a bedside table. Sounds of petals removed from a stem resurrect in my ear.
Restless, my legs clamp tight. Visuals of Eva Green reflect on my face, a stifled secret. I smile, her face isn’t mine. Panoramic. Her thorns show themselves to me. Finger on the cheekbone. Scarless. Screaming felt natural, powerful. It wanted me, it wanted this. I feel Gwenofore inside of me. Our faces shutter between each other.
The whispers tell me they’ll give me the truth.
The devil says she loves me when I rip off my skin. Says, it’s the price of beauty.
Yenni lights up the place when I bring meat home. Says, she makes the place lived in. It’ll feel more natural than a dump truck in a gas station. No messages. No late night calls from the telephone. Our home sucks up the signals. Radio silent chemistry.
The dolls don’t move, their hollowed out bodies hang forward. Clothes pinned up to dry. Spiders live there, orchestrate movement we cannot see.
Ashes digs her nails into the dip of my hip bones. Legs jolt liberated. Animated away from my body. Tongue pushes down my throat. It wiggles and teases with my uvula. Torrid gummy liquid flushes my viscera. Hatred for her is the denial of her power. Clothes rip where they don’t groove. My scars open to new viewers’ eyes.
Imperfect, our lips string up hints by the speckle of eyes. When they match and when they fight. Ashes uses my body to dust surfaces. She makes me fly, my wingspan—sixteenth feet. Lips punch upholstery needles omnipresent across my body. Pain and release.
Give in to the sound. She writes down my numbers, pages of body counts. Numbers that fill the jiggle of my thighs, the plump of my breasts. Words are blunt instructions. Our screams let it out.
Yenni watches behind the walls. Says, the only way to love is to rip it all off. In a heart shaped fountain of fame. The more they swallow, the more they need.
Ashes carries my wounded bird wings to the bed. She sits over my peak, rockaway beach. Milked labia, dreamwave honey. My x ray vision is perforations drenched in sweat. Eva replaces Ashes face, I am her pony ride. Smacks into my long lips, princess peach.
Losing control, out of my mind. Ashes, Eva, Ashes, Yenni, Eva. A clashing face for a hazy vibration. They blend like oil paintings in heat, under pressure. Suffocated for air, I don’t stir. Her nails peel my legs shredded spools of cassette reels. Pitches higher on the right, lower on the left. Body motions ricochet.
Dolls behind my head begin to twitch, unnatural. Ashes grabs my throat and forces my face to look at her. Fear consumes me, when I watch black oil pull into the holes of her body. Her holes, a vain economy, vacuums up our substances.
Ashes whispers about the dolls. No one loved them, but she did. She loved another. I stole from her.
Yenni is everywhere, she’s the moon, the sun.
Yenni lives in the particles we eat.
Yenni makes life and takes it away.
A hush composes between us, Yenni’s fingers slide along Ashes jaw deliberately. Thumbs brush and hinge where tension lives. Her palms cradle her cheeks, Ashes is expressionless, mouth spread. Candle wax burns the outer layers, exposing the muscles, meat underneath. The scent of burnt hair and smoke hugs my senses. Folds my body into a box, trapped with insomnia and cabin fever. Angel hair thin muscle ligaments detach and weave, threads without needles attached. Elegant asymmetry serpentine, Ashes arms rise above her head to make the sun.
Dolls surround our bodies, fingers pet our skin remains. Their heads twist wrong, cakeholes mouth devotion. Violet bone ash sprinkles near my head, its soup powders my face. Air begins to thin around me, chest tightens and clenches my heart. Its anthrax infection attempts to swallow me whole.
My reaction wanes with my weakness, I see Eva. I refuse to see anyone else. Slow motion car crash explodes in my head. Nothing connects to here. Degenerative, exploitative. Ashes face replicated like mine.
By blood loss, I day dream of Eva’s face manifested under a smoky light. Hands intertwined, Ashes and I. Cities faraway, June summer tastes of Ash. Pockets of the dream world burn like paper, Yenni’s face reminds me where I am. Made of glass, nothing lasts-s-s.
The devil steps into Ashes body, wears her snakeskin. Competing colors. Double vision, I pretend Eva is still here. She’s real. We’re real. Refuse to believe what’s in front of me. Kiss my middle finger and point it at the devil.
The Devil says, it’s time for the soul to evacuate. Says, there’s better sins.
Ashes pulls out a knife behind her, tongue stretched out.
“Your blood will fertilize the soil.”
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still processing. im in a haunted lesbian zombi demon ghost train time warp vampire restAurant movie. on fire, but I didn't get my dessert yet so I'm not leaving.
I am bewitched