MABEL
Unaware of his own panic, the girl settled into herself. Into claws. Into manifestations. Into pockets of water drowning her from the corner of her eyes, spiraling over and over again as she was wound into its waves. No sanctuary, no haven, no sanctum here and there; everything a smoldering haze of grief, of torment.
Maybe she shouldn’t have come back.
The ivory shadow towered above her, and for an instant she thought about not moving. Becoming a piece of the backdrop, surrounded and swallowed by the rest of the hollowed world. It’d already happened once before. Why not again? She’d had peace and had been too greedy, too avaricious, to stay within its threshold – and now she was gripped by a stupefying fear.
Then he was near and she fought back the urge to hiss like some rabid, ravenous animal; too afraid to do much else but become some snarling heathen. The willowy edges of her were gone for the moment, and from therein Mabel began to recover the vitriol of before; but didn’t know where to put it, where to place it. It had no meaning now anyway.
“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered into the wood and the eaves, the old, sunken god damned house, with everything gone and turned to ash, to dust, to nothing but embittered memories. The vocals choked past her and she was ashamed to admit the semblance of everything else freezing over her, driving her into a tiny ball. “The water.” As if that explained anything; why she still wore her death rags, her collapsed crown.
Maybe she shouldn’t have come back.
The ivory shadow towered above her, and for an instant she thought about not moving. Becoming a piece of the backdrop, surrounded and swallowed by the rest of the hollowed world. It’d already happened once before. Why not again? She’d had peace and had been too greedy, too avaricious, to stay within its threshold – and now she was gripped by a stupefying fear.
Then he was near and she fought back the urge to hiss like some rabid, ravenous animal; too afraid to do much else but become some snarling heathen. The willowy edges of her were gone for the moment, and from therein Mabel began to recover the vitriol of before; but didn’t know where to put it, where to place it. It had no meaning now anyway.
“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered into the wood and the eaves, the old, sunken god damned house, with everything gone and turned to ash, to dust, to nothing but embittered memories. The vocals choked past her and she was ashamed to admit the semblance of everything else freezing over her, driving her into a tiny ball. “The water.” As if that explained anything; why she still wore her death rags, her collapsed crown.
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
