I can hear you, I've got this tin can with a string through
*There's blood on the sheets again and for once it isn't Barty's fault. Sticky browning-red spreading out from one corner, expanding like an early universe across the vast, empty vacuum of the duvet.
It does that.
The Black family summer home has an impressive amount of bad habits and ghostly blood is only one of many. Creaking and expansive, its hallways are always rearranging themselves and the doors never seem to lead anywhere twice. It's a bumbling sort of incompetence, sickly and well-meaning and just a little bit tricky, like some curmudgeonly old man with a heart of gold. It can’t, however, out-craft a Crouch. Barty’s bedroom is in the pantry tonight - he’s found it - and he indulges his victory with a cocoon. He’s determined to stay, even with the shelf of biscuits half-merged in the headboard, two tin curves burrowing into his scalp. Above him, the ceiling sags like the turkey neck of a hag, low and drooping and battered, a candle filled hoop twisting fitfully from frail beams. He watches it turn. Back and forth, back and forth. The little flames on the candle dance to the consistent rhythm. His eyeballs dance to it too, disobeying heavy lids. Back and forth, back and forth, back and - still. The flames stand straight up to attention, the hoop stopping with a subtle violence.
It’s a slow and almost imperceptible sound. The purposeful friction of bone and skin against shingle. He can hear it on top of him, like twelve half-dead reindeer pulling a sleigh of rattlesnakes. And then, before there are even thoughts, there are pipes - something slipping under his pores and pumping sand and heaviness into his muscles. It braces against his ribs too, crushing his lungs into pulp and pressing his heart up into his oesophagus. There's no time for whys, no pause for atmospheric build. Instead, shapes merely lose form and meaning, wavering somewhere between existence and a parallel dimension where everything is a rounded, indescribable mass. Even the air is a rounded mass, something viscous and Too Big to enter his nostrils. And just like that it releases Barty with a shock, a sudden and electric relief as oxygen forces its way back into his mouth, inflating him with a wheezing gasp and a shudder that energizes all his limbs and pushes him up until he's a 90 degree angle. Until his eyes open and he realizes nothing has changed. The walls are straight and the furniture is intact, the air as stale and dust-filled as ever.
A part of him knows before he looks, synapses having fired and calculated and arrived well before his head can turn toward the window and see the fluttering tail-end of whatever just scuttled over the roof.
There's blood on the sheets again and now it really is Barty's fault. Sticky deep-red dripping from his nose. *
It does that.
The Black family summer home has an impressive amount of bad habits and ghostly blood is only one of many. Creaking and expansive, its hallways are always rearranging themselves and the doors never seem to lead anywhere twice. It's a bumbling sort of incompetence, sickly and well-meaning and just a little bit tricky, like some curmudgeonly old man with a heart of gold. It can’t, however, out-craft a Crouch. Barty’s bedroom is in the pantry tonight - he’s found it - and he indulges his victory with a cocoon. He’s determined to stay, even with the shelf of biscuits half-merged in the headboard, two tin curves burrowing into his scalp. Above him, the ceiling sags like the turkey neck of a hag, low and drooping and battered, a candle filled hoop twisting fitfully from frail beams. He watches it turn. Back and forth, back and forth. The little flames on the candle dance to the consistent rhythm. His eyeballs dance to it too, disobeying heavy lids. Back and forth, back and forth, back and - still. The flames stand straight up to attention, the hoop stopping with a subtle violence.
It’s a slow and almost imperceptible sound. The purposeful friction of bone and skin against shingle. He can hear it on top of him, like twelve half-dead reindeer pulling a sleigh of rattlesnakes. And then, before there are even thoughts, there are pipes - something slipping under his pores and pumping sand and heaviness into his muscles. It braces against his ribs too, crushing his lungs into pulp and pressing his heart up into his oesophagus. There's no time for whys, no pause for atmospheric build. Instead, shapes merely lose form and meaning, wavering somewhere between existence and a parallel dimension where everything is a rounded, indescribable mass. Even the air is a rounded mass, something viscous and Too Big to enter his nostrils. And just like that it releases Barty with a shock, a sudden and electric relief as oxygen forces its way back into his mouth, inflating him with a wheezing gasp and a shudder that energizes all his limbs and pushes him up until he's a 90 degree angle. Until his eyes open and he realizes nothing has changed. The walls are straight and the furniture is intact, the air as stale and dust-filled as ever.
A part of him knows before he looks, synapses having fired and calculated and arrived well before his head can turn toward the window and see the fluttering tail-end of whatever just scuttled over the roof.
There's blood on the sheets again and now it really is Barty's fault. Sticky deep-red dripping from his nose. *