Another Cycle of the Moon

Re: Another Cycle of the Moon

Postby girl » Fri Oct 17, 2014 3:52 am

A baby. The physician's hand drops from knot in the shawl pressed close to her shoulders,, a dead-stone reaction to the transformed and refreshed sight behind her. A palm lifts to scrub gently at her closed eyes, swiftly followed by its companion to work in unison, employed as if to combat her falsely-observing eyes, as if there were some stubborn sleep seeds planted in the corners of her eyes preventing true ocular absorption of the scene proceeding before her.

“B-b-b-ut,” the physician splutters at first, that veneer of calm thrown by the circumstances at hand, at the presentation of the Jernoan before her, at the babe in her arms. Her gaze turns from the babe towards the expected bump below it and, when she finds no lingering sign of the cumbersome convexation of the other girl's middle, the physician blanches.

Gloria! Did you...did you have her without me? I lost her?” the questions comes in a single heated rush of breathy words, care no longer given to the disruption of those around her.

She'd been about to voice some concern about that bundle, but the mouth that opened to speak snaps closed as other senses are employed. There comes that familiar and viscous scent, tinny and close, pervasive—blood. Any further healthy hue apparent in the woman's countenance bleeds away, replaced with worry. The thought of the baby with the dark eyes is suddenly less important, at least to her sleep-addled brain, than that stomach clenching odor.

“Blood. I smell blood.”
User avatar
girl
Member
 
Posts: 56
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:05 am

Re: Another Cycle of the Moon

Postby Rance » Fri Oct 17, 2014 5:04 am

"You were there," Gloria said, still alight with cheer. "Don't you remember? I was so frightened, Menna Mercy. I'd never known pain like that in my life, like -- like it had blossomed from within me, a burning, screaming coal searing my insides until it could come out.

"I was implacable. But you said all mothers are like that in those moments, during that miracle."

A sweep of tea-stained skirts carried her forward. The whole of the girl's thick frame seemed to intent upon cradling, protecting the silent little passenger in her arms. Her dark, callused finger remained to pacify the infant's searching, clucking mouth, and toothless gums noshed ferociously upon the Jerno's patient fingerpad. "Are you well? Did I wake you," Gloria asked, her chin turning with wariness and concern. The ribbons of her tattered bonnet whisked across her bosom, the shredded edges dipped in color like red, red wax.

"You lost her, Mercy. Do you recall," Gloria said, her voice lowering to a bass-ridden whisper contained in her chest. "Perhaps it was because I -- I wasn't ready, or you believed I wasn't. You snipped her from me with your shears and you never let me hold her. You gave her to someone else, gave her another breast to suck.

"You lost her. But I forgive you. Here, look at her. Look..."

A trembling hand drew aside a corner of the swaddling that bound that warm-cheeked face
revealed the infant's leathery neck
and showed
the tiniest little pinpricks on copper-dark skin
each a wheal as minor, as imperceptible as an insect's angry sting.

(I smell blood, Mercy said; and that was that odor in the air, a throat-clogging stink of iron
that thrummed on the palate like
the
aftertaste of a poorly-sifted tea. And
drip, drip, drip
droplets danced, spattering to the wooden floorboards
for Mercy's gown hem grew rapidly warm and heavy, like she'd just dashed through a hot summer rain

wet with blood.
)
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: Another Cycle of the Moon

Postby girl » Sat Oct 25, 2014 5:03 am

Mercy watches aghast as Gloria recounts the events that, in her apparent cognitive absence, had transpired. The story unfolds and recognition, hinged on her particular brand of verbiage or beside manner, at each turn brings her to a terrifying conclusion: though Gloria had said 'lost', she did not mean it in the most innocent sense of the word. Mercy rubs her hands across her upper hips reflexively in response, the motion repetitive and internally comforting, at least on some level.

When she does finally find her voice, the words that are whispered are like an invocation, feeling alien as they fall from the young woman's mouth. Her voice, though soft, is awash with a myriad of emotions, at once confused and sad and a little bit outraged.

“I lost her, I lost her, I lost her. I lost her,” she repeats, eyes and voice blank.

The blanket is drawn to the side with all the loving care one would expect from any mother, even one so bloodied and young as Gloria, and dutifully (and without will) Mercy leans forward to inspect that gruesome, dark-eyed infant. There, upon its fleshy neck, a perfectly articulated set of fang marks, the obvious product of preternatural predation. Those hands which had not stopped their rubbing do so now, twisting instead in the thin material that makes up her nightclothes, clenching and unclenching.

Slowly does white shift to red as the blood wicks swiftly upward, a grisly dye.
User avatar
girl
Member
 
Posts: 56
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:05 am

Re: Another Cycle of the Moon

Postby Rance » Sat Oct 25, 2014 9:45 am

"You lost her," Gloria chimed with a smile, a young woman confirming the physician's observation like a mother educating a learning child.

The infant blindly peered up at Mercy from the depths of the swaddling robes, its tiny limbs jerking and flinching in all the natural, poorly-motorized spasms befitting its age. But newly born this one was not: the girl-child wore the skin and form of a half-year's age, a being long-since freed from the prison of its mother's womb. A wrinkled arm whimsically lifted from the mass of wrappings to bat at Mercy's hand, seeking out a finger to capture with tiny digits.

"You swept her out from under my shift. I heard her," the seamstress murmured, "give out the first sobs of life. But you never let me see her face before you surrendered her to a beast, a beast that finds its nourishment in children.

"But now she's returned to me. Don't you see? She's beautiful. She's perfect."

And here, as the sopping blood began its damp, spreading-blossom crawl up from the hem of Mercy's nightgown and toward her hips, her ribs, her bust, the Jerno girl leaned forward that the child might nearly be crushed between them. She bared her brittle, yellowed teeth in a jilted smile. From the gaps in her mouth, a crackling foam began to emerge and ran down into the divot on Gloria Wynsee's chin. The liquid spilled out of her, formed miniscule hands that reached out for the physician as it fell from the young woman's mouth like fire-heated wax.

Black oil. A deluge. It cried, too, from the cracks in the walls, slithered up from the floorboards, lapped and clucked at Mercy's toes, her shins, clamored for her knees--

(Catch-Catch-Catch shed us from his gorgeous skin and gave me like a useless gift to her; I festered; I drove her to make another him--

I'll whisper nothing-nothings in your ear, Merciful, Merciful. And you cannot burn me out.
)

The world began to crumble.
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Previous

Return to The Broken Dagger



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

cron