you contain multitudes

This story is told in the second person (with "you" as the narrator), and contains body horror, severe injury, torture, death, themes of drug addiction and abuse, and mind control. [[Continue|Awake]]

Your eyes snap open as sleep rejects you yet again. You used to need an alarm, years ago. You considered the hour it took every morning to lurch out of bed to be stolen time. It’s funny that a part of you misses those hours more than seeing the sun that heralded them. [[Continue|Alive]]

You rise stiffly from the stained mattress, throw off the thick tangle of blankets burying you, hear them smack against cardboard shields where windows once were in the darkness. Muscle memory rolls you across the floor to the floor lamp switch, and harsh antiseptic light floods your rent-controlled studio tomb. You spare no time in pulling yourself off the floor, treading with well-practiced care over half-full paint pots, discarded brushes, torn canvas, the dead body, stacks of sketchbooks. The smell hasn’t gotten bad enough to reach the neighbors, yet – a painter that doesn’t need to breathe doesn’t have to worry about pesky side effects of unblocked ventilation – but you really do need to find somewhere to dump...whatever that body’s name was. You weren’t particularly thorough with it. It had little of interest to offer to you. That can wait, though. You woke with rare clarity of purpose, unity of thought. [[The canvas awaits.|The Canvas]]

Your brush drags its fingers across canvas, leaving reeking trails of oil and pigment as you are lost in rapturous contemplation. You paint with no vision, entrusting your hand to your muse. You feel its presence within you like a voice alone from the chorus; a gentle, guiding whisper in one language you will never know. Nameless impulses bubble up from within to heed its call, swelling forth into itching fingertips, each begging to burst forth from the prison of skin that contains you. Your brush hovers over paint. Your muse’s vision is becoming clearer. It wants... [[Hunger]] [[Fear]] [[Anger]]

(set: $arial to (font:'arial')) Deftly, with the practiced ease of a lifetime of repetitions, you graze a thumb between your lips. Fangs slice through skin, and you feel yourself fill the fat bead of blood already growing from the wound… $arial[You gasp raggedly for air, heart pounding hard enough to feel thudding in the thin veins along the back of your skull. Your insides burn hot enough to make the air sting like sandpaper as it brushes across layers of cold sweat. You double over and retch emptily yet again over the vomit that’s already dried into a flaky film around the edges. Cramping muscles have forced every last bit they can out of you, left you so agonizingly empty that your insides clutch at nothingness with each new spasm. The emptiness is killing you. Every new squeeze from within comes closer to bursting something. You’d heard stories of what happens to people like you, when their owners decide to cut them off. Some of them – the oldest ones – rot to pieces in minutes. You envy them. You claw forward and grip a pant leg. You see yourself, looking down at you on the floor. You see the look in your eye. Curious. Distant. Rapturous. Ravenous. You remember the sensation was less unique than you’d hoped.] The memories, so easily taken, flow with the blood down onto your palette. You swirl them into the pigment, turning the candy-bright red rusty, dull, and thin. You raise the brush back to [[the canvas|The Canvas 2]], and smear stolen lives across the sky.

(set: $arial to (font:'arial')) Deftly, with the practiced ease of a lifetime of repetitions, you graze a thumb between your lips. Fangs slice through skin, and you feel yourself fill the fat bead of blood already growing from the wound... $arial[You hold your breath and stay perfectly still. It doesn’t seem to have noticed you yet. The figure shambles past the kitchen laboriously. Each footfall makes the silverware in the drawer beside you rattle gently, punctuating long, scraping drags. If you hadn’t seen it, you’d swear it was a robber trying to drag your couch around. You got just enough of a look to be damn sure it wasn’t a robber, and your couch certainly did not bleed that much. The shuffling stops. The ringing silence is only broken by a rattling, a gurgling. Your mind wanders back to that bout of pneumonia in college; how you could never cough that last little bit out of your lungs. That maddening urge to expel, like there’s something living inside of you that won’t come out. Something that needs to be pulled out of you. Something is pulling your insides. You know you’re there. You want you to see. A sound like meat and gristle peeling apart approaches. You can’t help but turn to meet your eyes.] The memories, so easily taken, flow with the blood down onto your palette. You swirl them into the pigment, turning the candy-bright red rusty, dull, and thin. You raise the brush back to [[the canvas|The Canvas 2]], and smear stolen lives across the sky.

(set: $arial to (font:'arial')) Deftly, with the practiced ease of a lifetime of repetitions, you graze a thumb between your lips. Fangs slice through skin, and you feel yourself fill the fat bead of blood already growing from the wound... $arial[You smile over your glass and imagine your host’s sun-bleached corpse as the toast is raised. Fucking sanctimonious prick. This should all be yours. You spend fifteen years breaking your back for the company, and this is the thanks you get? To watch some brat you helped onboard get promoted over you? You have the clients, you have the contacts, you grease the wheels, but the new guy can make the CFO laugh so he gets the corner office. Your blood boils just thinking about it. He’s giving a speech now. You’re too furious to listen past the platitudes. You’re all smiles, though, and you manage to nod graciously and mouth “thank you” when he tosses some scrap of a compliment your way. Patience is how you got this far. Patience, and a little strategic blackmail. He’ll screw up, sooner or later. You’ll get something on him, and then you’ll be the one giving the orders again. That, or he’ll call your bluff, and then the fun really begins. You feel a gaze boring the hole in the back of your head. You turn, and lock eyes with yourself across the restaurant floor. You don’t recognize what’s happened, but see a look that’s far too familiar in your eyes, and turn away shaken. You never know when corporate blackmail will come in handy, but it’s always so fun to find.] The memories, so easily taken, flow with the blood down onto your palette. You swirl them into the pigment, turning the candy-bright red rusty, dull, and thin. You raise the brush back to [[the canvas|The Canvas 2]], and smear stolen lives across the sky.

Their lives were only carried in their blood, at first. You were an incautious eater and left many bodies in your wake. Each one’s heartsblood carried their name, their voice, echoes of their mind. Their memories flowed through your veins like your body had lived them. With time came control, and your taste was refined enough to draw the life from pints, then mouthfuls. Practice and obsession honed your power. Now, you can hear the blood sing in its owner’s veins from across a room, or reach into their eyes and take the thoughts behind them. Now you have cravings deeper than blood. You seek memory, identity, sensation. Your mind sings with a thousand voices, and it is never enough. Your hand pauses mid-stroke. Your muse whispers once more. It calls for... [[Something Otherworldly]] [[Something Merciless]]

(set: $arial to (font:'arial')) You milk the blood from the wound a second time, focusing once more on the memory to be carried in its flow. $arial[You sit at the edge of the water and watch the lights walk across it. When you were young, your father told you about them. He said that the lake people would dance with each turn of the seasons, which is why it was so important to never look outside on nights of the solstice. They didn’t like to be disturbed, you see. You figured he was telling tall tales and told you not to look so you wouldn’t catch him on his lie. Then you stayed up late one freezing winter’s night and heard him leave the cabin, saw the lights glimmering through your curtains. The note he left said that the lake people had called him in his dreams, that they had a great task for him. It’s the last thing you ever heard from him. The dreams came for you tonight. Somehow, you’re not afraid. You can’t remember the dreams, but the gap where they should be makes you feel so comfortable. They want you out here, watching, listening. You barely feel the cold around you, and only distantly wonder why the ice is all gone from the lake. You’re too transfixed by the lights skimming across the surface, ripples playing across the mirrored surface of the still water. Soon you see more lights in the reflection than there are above the surface. Their dances sweep across the sky at the bottom of the lake, swapping from partner to partner with unimaginable grace. They glow brighter than the stars, and dance more beautifully than their march across the heavens. A light extends a hand to yours, an invitation to dance. You’re neck-deep in the freezing water when your father’s screams reach you, and hands pull you back to shore. Years will pass, and your waking mind will call this memory a nightmare. You know better, when it lingers in your mind long after the blood is gone.] You dip the brush in blood and black paint and dot [[the canvas|The Canvas 3]] with the evening stars, dancing over the city.

(set: $arial to (font:'arial')) You milk the blood from the wound a second time, focusing once more on the memory to be carried in its flow. $arial[Your scream echoes across the snowbanks as the hammer falls. You try to crawl back, away from the blow, but your hands skid through cloud-like tufts of snow. The impact wrenches your scream out further. Your knee is in pieces, bent backwards on itself, bone shards agonizingly outlined by muscle they were never meant to be encased in. You look up at yourself, holding the hammer. Your eyes are dead. There’s no anger, no pleasure. You know little about yourself, only that you’re one of the goons here on the Court’s orders. Your master had you guarding the west exit of the manor, to make sure nobody got in. He knew the Court was after him. Why did he post normal people like you on the exits? He must have known you wouldn’t stand a chance. You lift the hammer again, and you scream and beg. You’ve already dropped your gun, you’re in no shape to stop yourself. You babble passwords, layouts, throw your keys, anything to keep that hammer from falling. You enjoy the begging for a time, as you weigh which of your options to take. You realize there’s still just enough willfulness left in you that if you leave now, you’ll report you on the radio. You drop the hammer on the other knee, and memorize the scream, the feeling of bone splintering. You won’t be any trouble now. You, on the other hand...] You mix the blood in white and grey, and layer great mounds of snow at the base of the city's buildings, [[the canvas|The Canvas 3]] covered in great snowdrifts littered small figures, lying in red wells.

The life your body once had is hazy to you now, no more unique than the fragments that drowned it. You still use its name, for convenience. You let others believe it’s who you are. The truth of it is messy, complicated. The others like you are, if anything, even less equipped to understand than the humans are. Sometimes it feels like a stretch to call them like you at all. They don’t feed the way you do. They only take the blood, not the life it carries. A pack of corpse-gnawing leeches, posturing in Armani suits as if the stench can’t breach the Italian wool. They squander what little power they have, while posturing as if it makes them gods. [[And so you paint.|Pain]]

(set: $arial to (font:'arial')) You squeeze your thumb a third time. The muse needs no interpretation, this time. You know the sensation it wants. $arial[The thin sliver of sunlight begins to sweep across your fingers. You’re giddy with anticipation. The first sensation is an uncomfortable tightness, as the skin dries and shrinks against muscle. Thin wisps of smoke rise as cracks begin to rip open across your hand. They’re small, at first, bleeding thinly like skin left exposed to winter air, but the cracks soon become rifts. The muscle desiccates, and pain starts to flood your mind. Your arm contorts, trying to pull away on reflex, but your restraints perform admirably. It wouldn’t do to go this far and not see it through. Even as your muscle withers and hardens, your skin begins to flake away like ashes carried on the heat now rising from your gnarled fingers. The slow, merciless sweep of sunlight through the crack in the window cover begins the process anew bit by bit across your forearm as your hand is covered in guttering flames. Instinctual panic grips your body, only to be held back by further restraints. Your mind savors your meat screaming in terror and pain as a finger breaks off, the bone crumbling like fading coals. The light’s path will only take an arm from you. A few weeks, a few humans drained, will knit it back from the stump. No matter how much you take from others, little can replace the thrill of putting your own shell on the line.] Your hand aches pleasantly at the memory. The rust-red tongues of flame you lay [[on canvas|The Canvas 4]] almost seem to flicker and writhe when they're in the corner of your eye.

You first noticed your blood’s curious properties when experimenting with mortals’ responses to it. It could be used to enslave them, empower them, destroy them with its lack – but you did not expect it to still carry memory. Mortal minds could be rewritten, changed as readily as yours. This amused you, for a time, but quickly grew both tiresome and prohibitively expensive. It was then that your muse first entered you. When it taught you the secret ways to make blood sing to blood. When you realized just how open eyes could be. You set your brush down, [[your work|Your Work]] complete.

A city burns on the canvas before you. Corpses hang from windows, pile up in snowbanks. Flames roar up from high rises and sweep through alleyways, coloring the evening sky red. The sun has just dipped below the horizon, and the stars glow in the dim light beyond the flames. A vision of a future, yet to come. There will be a reckoning, some night soon. You've seen it in the minds on the street. A growing, dim awareness of things like you. An awareness the others fear, that they attribute to isolated hunters, that they deny exists at all. You pick up the canvas as it dries, and carry it across the room. You can save them from themselves. Your blood carries messages, memories, and emotions. Other artists must, ultimately, trust the viewer, if they wish for their works to be understood a certain way. Your work is different. Your work cannot be misunderstood, because your work's meaning embeds itself in the eye of the beholder. Why make art to convince, when you can make art to command? Why let others grope blindly for meaning when you can show it to them? One night soon, you will show your work to the world, and the world will be as you are, and you will take them all into yourself and you will be made whole and perfect.