Scales 026

026; creatures within.

Warning; Scales is a body-horror and, at times, terrible terrain for the mind.

Oh, good! You have the right day, after all. We were beginning to worry when you’d find yourself here.

So, the madame is still under the weather—it would seem. She’s ‘tucked away in a memory’ as they say.

A laugh wriggles itself through the slippery creature’s belly causing them to double over and writhe as their arms clutched and clawed at the offending sound. Chasing the laugh up through its mouth.

I laugh because it is amusing.

I laugh because it is interesting to think that just because one is in a memory, that one is safe from grief. The happiest of memories, still, contain loss. It is in the nature of the thing. A fact so often missed until it is remembered, and forgotten, again.

The merry-goes-round, as nothing goes right. It just ‘goes.’

In any case, the madame is ‘sleeping it off,’ as they say. Banishing the sisters, ‘fear and guilt,’ as they fight for last words. She hides in happier places, deeply hidden. No matter. I can see what’s in her mind’s eye:

Serrated teeth in perfect rows.

The animated corpse of her dead friend, now monster.

Lily’s blood adorning the walls.

As much as she tries to cover it up with better pictures, stronger memories, the marquee on the theater still reads:

“It’s all your fault.”

Again, no matter. You didn’t come here for a sob story, did you? No! You came here for something fantastic! Something new, right?

Unfortunately, traveler, I’m going to have to disappoint you. Implore you, even, to think differently. What does this grief, this madness, owe you in our story.

The madame, nor I, can give you anything new. Nothing new at all. Because there is nothing new left. It is all gone. It was all taken. All of it. At every turn, with every stride. We took, and gave, as much as we could and still lost it and more. The way here was not always fair or right, but it was at least understood. We understood where we were, even if we were angry about it, but this? This is insane. There are no governances, or allowances, here that abide by natural laws.

No ghosts to pray to. No graves to visit.

The light is low, friend.

And unless you would like to find yourself in the jaws of something ‘fantastic,’ I would suggest you leave.

What we face here is not death, it is obliteration.

Come back when the porch light is at its brightest.