GLITTER AND GOLD / writing storage

[tinkyboo]

would ya look at that it's another place for tink to be pretentious about its writing!! get ready for unfinished oneshots, boring poetry, etcetera, etcetera, please track and validate me.

[tinkyboo]

your antagonist / villain has died. who leaves flowers on their grave?

the stocky boy with the dark hair. he had a clumsy way of moving, half–stumble, pulled to and fro like he was used to radiating towards something (someone?). his hair flopped into his face, obscuring his features, and when he knelt down, he would bow his head like he was praying. the flowers he left were always slightly wilted, stalks crushed from being pressed into his hands, but they always seemed to last the longest, a spot of ruby red on the darkened earth.

the willowy girl with the white hair. she looked hostile, like she never wanted to be there, arms crossed over her chest and a snarl on her face. there was something harsh about her angular features, but when she thought nobody was watching, she would kneel down and sit there for hours, her expression softening into something resembling affection. once, she traced the initials on the gravestone, formed the words with her lips, and left silently. sometimes she didn't even bring flowers with her.

sometimes the white–haired girl dragged a smaller version along. sometimes the smaller one came alone, shuffling from foot to foot. they talked endlessly, their lips constantly moving, muttering, their fingers twisting together in constant motion. appropriately, they wore mostly black, heavy boots and t–shirts with various prints on them, and the flowers they brought looked like they'd been picked on the walk to the graveyard; scraggly bluebells and snowdrops, roses that looked like they'd been stolen from someone else's garden. they never stayed long, unable to stand still.

the slender boy with the dark hair. he once arrived just as the stocky boy was leaving, and there was a flesh of recognition in both of their eyes, and the stocky boy mouthed something that might have been 'weasel'. he never knelt down, just stood there, occasionally holding a small bunch of daisies. the last time he came, he brought a candle, and lit it at the grave, watching it flicker in the cold winter wind. when he left, the candle guttered out. he never returned to relight it.

there was another slender, dark–haired boy, but this one had bright blue eyes. he always brought a bottle of whiskey with him, taking steady sips from it and growing more and more emotional as he did, beginning by whispering and going on to rambled speeches announcing his love. on the rare occasion that he brought flowers, they were light and wispy, freesias that wilted as quickly as they had been placed. at the end of each visit, he would stumble away, his eyes glazed over, leaving the bottle beside the grave. that, at least, did not wilt.

the older woman with the frantic eyes. she brought armfuls of beautiful flowers; carnations, orchids, magnolias, an entire garden blooming on the grave. she would stay for hours, sobbing, talking, fists pressed into her eyes to stop tears from seeping down her cheeks. she quivered and shook, her breathing shallow and harsh, clouds of breath hovering in the cold air before dissipating. many years later, when she stopped coming, the grave seemed somehow emptier.

just once, a tall man with a cigarette. just once.

[maxine]

*squats*

[tinkyboo]

a friendly face, and icy glass – natasha, december 11th

i am normal.

i do normal things. i go shopping on saturdays to buy clothes and notebooks and makeup, and i complain about my homework. i am perfectly, exquisitely, oppressively normal.

i am also vaguely abnormal. i am not like other girls. not in a 'john green' kind of way, merely in a 'i might, at any moment, peel off my human exterior to reveal indelible darkness' kind of way.

for example, the summoning sigils that i have embroidered on the inside of my favorite jacket. or the multiple pentagrams in lemon juice on my bedroom walls. or the dozens of demonic presences that have followed me since i was born, and will follow me until the day i die.

they are watching me write this (hello, natasha of the future. they are watching you read this).

i did not ask for this hand, but i will play it through until the end. that is a quote. i'm not that profound.

it's snowing outside. surprisingly, dark presences are not thrilled by the thought of snowball fights. but i would like to play. i would like to be sufficiently normal to wrap myself in a coat and a scarf and go and throw snow around for a little while.

i am not sufficiently normal for snowball fights. i am sufficiently abnormal that i shall ritualistically burn this diary, but not until i've been normal enough to hide it in some traditionally teenage girl hiding spot. there is a dichotomy that exists between the slender body i stand in and the darker forces that govern me.

one of them has its hand on my shoulder. this is not unusual, but it is cold. it is a poor substitute for a snowball fight.

i am normal. i am normal. i am normal.

[tinkyboo]

[i]a list of things of which you should be mortally afraid

you have been driving down the same stretch of road for hours. you tell yourself it is evening. you do not remember what evening feels like any longer. you do not remember what anything feels like any more. the speed limit is slowing down.

your mirror has a crack at the top from where you threw your hairbrush at it. you have been meaning to get it fixed. you keep telling yourself you will get it fixed. you have never got it fixed. sometimes, you think you see something crawling out of the crack. it is never there when you turn to look more closely.

the corn fields are all-encompassing. the corn is tall, stretches over your head. you can't see anything before you, except for more corn. the corn is shimmering like water, like ripples over a still pool. you are yearning for the harvest, but something tells you that you do not want to see what will be revealed when the corn is cut.

the roadside stall sells lemonade and peaches. the woman running it has too many teeth. something red runs in the cracks of her ever-aging hands. she says that it is watermelon juice. you hope that it is watermelon juice. the peaches are never in season, but you buy them anyway. they are cyanide-bitter on your tongue.

the school library is silent. you are walking between the rows upon rows of books. you swear you have seen that one somewhere before. in each row, the same book. the same book. when you raise your hand to take it out, the librarian hisses. you wish you had not turned around to look. you can't unsee it. you'll never be able to unsee it.

the memorial stands tribute to those burned there. you do not remember a time when anyone was burned there. it is not in your history books. the memorial stands. they tell you better times have come, but sometimes, you think you hear screaming. you think you smell scorched flesh. you do not turn around.

"bless your soul," says the woman at the diner to your friend. you do not turn back. you keep walking. you do not know what they did wrong, but you do not want to. come monday, someone else is sitting in their desk. bless your soul. bless your soul. bless your soul.

you wake in the middle of the night. there is something in your room. you cannot tell what it is, but when you put your hand to turn on the light, your flesh grazes the wall. something moves underneath it. you freeze solid, stay like that all night. when the sun comes up, you wish that it had stayed down. you wish you hadn't removed the cross your mama put up.

the river has seen it all. the river remembers, the river knows what you wish it did not know. you go down at twilight, in the heat of summer. there is something screaming, but it is not the cicadas. you slip off your clothes. the river beckons you. you have been baptized once, but there is something in the woods at night. you need all the blessings you can get.

[tinkyboo]

LOLA LANCASTER RAMBLE

lola has freckles. a scattering of them across her nose and cheeks, as if someone flicked golden paint at her face and left tiny marks, imprinted on her skin. and she [i]hates them, hates the way they make her look even younger than she already does, with her skinny kneebones and big eyes and little pointed teeth. it's just one in a long list of things that lola hates about herself, but if she started reciting everything that kept her awake at night making her wonder what the most painless way to die would be, then she'd be there for a while, lazily drawing out the syllables. that's another thing she hates, another thing her parents hated – she can't talk properly. or rather, she can, but she won't. she's able to enunciate her words just fine, and her vocabulary is decent too, but instead she mumbles and laughs and drawls and swears her way through her sentences.

until she's mad.

you can tell when she's angry because she looks alive suddenly, looks like she's just had a bright electric shock and now everything is on high alert, everything standing on end. her nose twitches like a ferret and her hands shake and her eyes are brighter, darting, watching you like a cat watches a mouse. and suddenly her sentences are clipped, short, interrogatives demanding you give her an answer until you're pinned back against a wall and she's still barking at you, still snapping her way through the cross-examination, look at me, look at me when i'm fvcking talking to you!

that's the kind of language she learned at her father's knee.

she's not her father's daughter, not really, and she's not her mother's daughter either. she's detached, floating, but a lonely child will cling to anything they're certain of, and she knows what gets her what she wants. so she goes on and on, gets louder and louder, hammers her point home like she's banging a nail into your head and hurts so much you'd do anything to get her to stop. that's what her dad used to do. bang bottles against walls and his fist against tabletops and his voice against the inside of lola's head, rattling around until she's screaming, covering her ears and sobbing for him to stop it, stop it, stop yelling at me!

she's not big, she's not tough, she's a skinny underfed little girl with clothes two sizes too big for her and so she has to scream, has to kick and shout and swing a baseball bat at your head so you'll know she means business, and she won't stop until you give in.

they fvck you up, your mom and dad, and she's so fvcked up she can't begin to untangle herself, can't look for the end of the christmas lights that she's gotten herself so wrapped up in. everything she does, everything she is can be traced back to her parents – she's so scared of being alone because they ignored her, she eats everything that's put in front of her because they starved her, because what if she never gets another thing to eat again, she wants to be the best, she has to be the best, has to be the favorite, because she was never their favorite. her dad was angry and she's angry, her mom was delusional and she's delusional, and history is holding her hostage, trapped in a cage created by blood ties she can never break – you can't run from what's in your genes.

her parents both had freckles too.

[crows]

sits