Brigit's Flame -- "Mortals"
Prompt: "mortals"
Word Count: 1,822
Warnings: ...pretty much everything; please be discerning! XD
Author's Note: eltea is behind virtually all of the genius of this. I mostly just came up with a few things, then sat down to write it and scared myself shitless. I may never sleep again. Not that we'll be able to tell the difference.
"MORTALS"
She loves her forest. The yard is bordered by no fence, just as she bends to no law, and she opens her arms to the shadowed branches and the brittle leaves, breathing the crisp night that curls across the sky. It settles in her lungs, misty-cool like morning dew, and she opens her eyes. It’s beautiful, but there’s something… missing. Something more.
She will find it.
-
Trevor is hard-hearted.
He appreciates her figure and little else, and he makes no bones about it. He doesn’t like her décor, doesn’t like her clothes, and doesn’t like the distance from the neighbors (though she thinks he wouldn’t like it either if they were near, and then she would have no forest). He lies about his poker club and uses her without shame or penitence, because she is very lovely, and he does want to have her (presumably simply so that others can’t). He throws dishes when he’s angry and tears down the curtains when he flies into a rage.
She buys new dishes, and new curtains, and new sheets, the ones that come coordinated in the magazine. He tells her it pleases him, and she imagines that perhaps it does.
Perhaps it’s why he lets her keep the little white kitten that is sitting placidly on their back step one morning when she goes out to work in the garden. It has vast blue eyes and pure, thick fur, and it doesn’t scratch her when she picks it up and cradles it, cooing.
It hides under the bed when he starts pitching glassware, and she can’t blame it.
The next morning, she walks the mile to town in search of something old.
At the antiques store, she purchases a beautiful knife with ivory inset into the handle. She carries it home in her purse, stroking the twisting designs, dreaming that they are forest vines.
That night, she buries the blade in the center of his chest, and he doesn’t quite have time to wake up before it’s over and done with.
She wraps him in the bloodied sheets and drags him out to the yard. The sun is just rising when she finishes, and she lets the shovel fall from her blister-ridden hands to thump dully to the grass. When she runs a hand across her slick forehead, dirt smears, leaving wide dark streaks on her smooth skin.
She sits down by the grave and strokes the earth. She tells him that it pleases her.
-
Andrew is tight-fisted.
He suggests that she wear her old wedding dress, and he pawns all the gifts as soon as they return from an unimpressive honeymoon. He demands that she cede her spare change, and he refuses to eat at restaurants, swearing up and down that his charred mimicry is just as good for half the price.
She is sad when he sells her mother’s jewelry. He enthuses that they can buy all sorts of new things with the money, but she knows that he won’t buy anything; he just likes to have it, as he just likes to have her. He doesn’t do anything. It is the having that is important.
She isn’t sad when he decrees that they will buy the cheapest cat food from now on, as it will save them at least ten dollars a month. She asks what he will do with the ten dollars, and he answers Investment, as if she doesn’t know what the word means, and she overturns his plate of half-raw, half-singed spaghetti on him, and bargain marinara sauce floods down the front of his shirt. He shouts at her, and she screams back, and he slaps her, and she goes to their room to sulk.
Her kitten is bigger now, and it leaps up onto the cheap comforter beside her, and she tickles at the patch of black fur on its chest. Its ears swivel back and forth a few times, and then it picks its way delicately across the bed and hops down.
She stands and scours the house for something new.
He is in the guest bathroom, muttering, trying to scrub the stain out of his shirt in the bathtub, up to his elbows in the water. She hovers in the doorframe for a moment, and then she plugs in the blowdryer, flicks the switch to turn it on, and drops it into the tub.
She tosses a can of cheap cat food in after him before she replaces the first shovel’s load of soil.
When she’s finished, she pats the mound and explains that it’s an Investment.
-
Bradley is thick-skulled.
He likes to hunt things. She doesn’t understand what it is that he enjoys about the activity, or why fishing won’t suffice. She suspects that it’s mostly about traipsing out into the wilderness with other reeking men, toting hulking firearms that overcompensate for other discrepancies.
She explains four times that it’s fair for her to want to go on a spa retreat when he disappears into the woods for days at a time, but he can’t grasp the concept. He says that spas don’t build character, that they’re extravagantly expensive, and that she’s missing the point. He urges her to try something else.
She stomps her feet and musters tears, and he apologizes but doesn’t budge.
She seethes in the bathroom, sitting with her back to the cabinet, the door open a crack in case he changes his mind. Instead, her sleek little cat comes, and it sets its paws on her shins, looking to be petted. They’re black like the tuft on its chest, as if its feet have been dipped in oil.
She scratches behind its ears and wipes her nose, and it saunters off down the hall. She stands and goes the other way, towards the living room, where he is engrossed in the loving process of polishing his guns.
She stands behind him, watching, wordless, until he raises one she likes. She asks if she can borrow it.
Absently indulgent, he lays it in her hands and begins to detail its features. She doesn’t care about its features. She cares that it’s loaded.
She lifts it in both hands and puts a single bullet through one of his wide, disbelieving eyes.
She flings handfuls of bath salts into the grave, and then she fills it again.
The stars gleam as she trails her fingers in the luscious dirt, and she smiles at her forest. It’s wonderful, this place she has made. It’s almost perfect.
Happy trails, she bids him.
-
Chris is foul-mouthed.
He curses like a sailor with a vengeance-not only when he’s angry, though particularly then. He has a series of favorite words, and they all carry a lot of weight for their few letters.
He vituperates things, needlessly, and she comes to feel that her ears are perpetually stinging. His coworkers are fucking ridiculous, the network news is total bullshit, the medications overflowing from the bathroom cabinet are a pain in the ass.
She shouldn’t be a whiny bitch, what’s the fucking problem?
It is poison in her ears. She tries to make light of it and purchases him a thesaurus. She discovers that he has a natural gift, and that is for sending words darting off of his tongue with edges of inimitable spite.
She’s not fucking perfect either, and if she’s going to turn it into some big fucking deal, she can go fuck herself, because he isn’t interested.
She stands at the window in the living room, looking out at her forest, and considers things.
He mutters something about a crazy fucking cat lady and asks her when dinner will be ready.
She looks down, and her cat looks up at her, a spot of lush black fur surrounding one of its bright blue eyes.
She answers that dinner is forthcoming, and he flops down to insult the television, and she goes to open the bathroom cabinet. She finds his bottle of Amytal, takes it into the kitchen, and grinds all the blue pills into powder. She rolls it into the ground beef.
A few hours later, his vital functions peter out and cease altogether.
She throws the thesaurus in after him.
Fuck you, she mutters as a shower of dirt obscures his face.
-
She stands before her forest, flanked by two low hills on either side, and she smiles, fully, contented at last. She has won. She is a queen. She is a goddess. She is Persephone, and her lovers lie motionless, unprotesting, subjugated at her feet. They won’t leave. They won’t fail. They will do nothing but worship her here, in this silent world of her own creation. This is her graveyard, her underworld.
Persephone reigns.
She turns, and the cat is there. It gazes up at her with pale eyes, whiskers spreading from the patch of black fur about its nose and mouth. It doesn’t blink.
She stares back. Its claws leave pinprick holes in the soft soil, and the tips of her fingers tingle strangely. It knows, somehow. It understands, and a slow tremor creeps beneath her fragile skin at the thought.
After a long, long moment, she picks it up, carries it inside, and places it in its crate. She closes the door, latches it, and carries the crate out to her forest, where she sets it down and turns it to face away from the house, and then she goes back inside. She has returned it to her forest. She doesn’t need it anymore; it should stay there.
She can’t help glancing out the window as she makes dinner and paces the living room.
When she steps into the bedroom, the cat is already curled up at the foot of her bed. It looks up at her. It doesn’t blink.
She douses its food with rat poison.
The bowl is empty; the cat is fine.
She carries it the half-mile to her neighbors’, drops it into the well, and listens for the splash before she replaces the formidable square of wood that serves as a cover.
It is sitting on the doorstep, licking moss from its wet fur, when she returns.
She opens the door, and it follows her in. She finds one of Bradley’s guns, and she returns to the living room, where the cat is waiting. It looks at her, and it doesn’t blink. She fires four bullets into its head and doesn’t bother to clean up the splattered mess on the floor. Shaking now, leaving the gun on the couch cushion, she locks the bedroom door and strives to sleep. The curtains are drawn mostly shut, but a sliver of windowpane gleams in the gap. She left the living room lights on, and a glowing line breathes yellow through the crack beneath the door.
When she opens her eyes the next morning, the cat is sitting on her chest. It doesn’t blink.
She is no goddess.
Word Count: 1,822
Warnings: ...pretty much everything; please be discerning! XD
Author's Note: eltea is behind virtually all of the genius of this. I mostly just came up with a few things, then sat down to write it and scared myself shitless. I may never sleep again. Not that we'll be able to tell the difference.
"MORTALS"
She loves her forest. The yard is bordered by no fence, just as she bends to no law, and she opens her arms to the shadowed branches and the brittle leaves, breathing the crisp night that curls across the sky. It settles in her lungs, misty-cool like morning dew, and she opens her eyes. It’s beautiful, but there’s something… missing. Something more.
She will find it.
-
Trevor is hard-hearted.
He appreciates her figure and little else, and he makes no bones about it. He doesn’t like her décor, doesn’t like her clothes, and doesn’t like the distance from the neighbors (though she thinks he wouldn’t like it either if they were near, and then she would have no forest). He lies about his poker club and uses her without shame or penitence, because she is very lovely, and he does want to have her (presumably simply so that others can’t). He throws dishes when he’s angry and tears down the curtains when he flies into a rage.
She buys new dishes, and new curtains, and new sheets, the ones that come coordinated in the magazine. He tells her it pleases him, and she imagines that perhaps it does.
Perhaps it’s why he lets her keep the little white kitten that is sitting placidly on their back step one morning when she goes out to work in the garden. It has vast blue eyes and pure, thick fur, and it doesn’t scratch her when she picks it up and cradles it, cooing.
It hides under the bed when he starts pitching glassware, and she can’t blame it.
The next morning, she walks the mile to town in search of something old.
At the antiques store, she purchases a beautiful knife with ivory inset into the handle. She carries it home in her purse, stroking the twisting designs, dreaming that they are forest vines.
That night, she buries the blade in the center of his chest, and he doesn’t quite have time to wake up before it’s over and done with.
She wraps him in the bloodied sheets and drags him out to the yard. The sun is just rising when she finishes, and she lets the shovel fall from her blister-ridden hands to thump dully to the grass. When she runs a hand across her slick forehead, dirt smears, leaving wide dark streaks on her smooth skin.
She sits down by the grave and strokes the earth. She tells him that it pleases her.
-
Andrew is tight-fisted.
He suggests that she wear her old wedding dress, and he pawns all the gifts as soon as they return from an unimpressive honeymoon. He demands that she cede her spare change, and he refuses to eat at restaurants, swearing up and down that his charred mimicry is just as good for half the price.
She is sad when he sells her mother’s jewelry. He enthuses that they can buy all sorts of new things with the money, but she knows that he won’t buy anything; he just likes to have it, as he just likes to have her. He doesn’t do anything. It is the having that is important.
She isn’t sad when he decrees that they will buy the cheapest cat food from now on, as it will save them at least ten dollars a month. She asks what he will do with the ten dollars, and he answers Investment, as if she doesn’t know what the word means, and she overturns his plate of half-raw, half-singed spaghetti on him, and bargain marinara sauce floods down the front of his shirt. He shouts at her, and she screams back, and he slaps her, and she goes to their room to sulk.
Her kitten is bigger now, and it leaps up onto the cheap comforter beside her, and she tickles at the patch of black fur on its chest. Its ears swivel back and forth a few times, and then it picks its way delicately across the bed and hops down.
She stands and scours the house for something new.
He is in the guest bathroom, muttering, trying to scrub the stain out of his shirt in the bathtub, up to his elbows in the water. She hovers in the doorframe for a moment, and then she plugs in the blowdryer, flicks the switch to turn it on, and drops it into the tub.
She tosses a can of cheap cat food in after him before she replaces the first shovel’s load of soil.
When she’s finished, she pats the mound and explains that it’s an Investment.
-
Bradley is thick-skulled.
He likes to hunt things. She doesn’t understand what it is that he enjoys about the activity, or why fishing won’t suffice. She suspects that it’s mostly about traipsing out into the wilderness with other reeking men, toting hulking firearms that overcompensate for other discrepancies.
She explains four times that it’s fair for her to want to go on a spa retreat when he disappears into the woods for days at a time, but he can’t grasp the concept. He says that spas don’t build character, that they’re extravagantly expensive, and that she’s missing the point. He urges her to try something else.
She stomps her feet and musters tears, and he apologizes but doesn’t budge.
She seethes in the bathroom, sitting with her back to the cabinet, the door open a crack in case he changes his mind. Instead, her sleek little cat comes, and it sets its paws on her shins, looking to be petted. They’re black like the tuft on its chest, as if its feet have been dipped in oil.
She scratches behind its ears and wipes her nose, and it saunters off down the hall. She stands and goes the other way, towards the living room, where he is engrossed in the loving process of polishing his guns.
She stands behind him, watching, wordless, until he raises one she likes. She asks if she can borrow it.
Absently indulgent, he lays it in her hands and begins to detail its features. She doesn’t care about its features. She cares that it’s loaded.
She lifts it in both hands and puts a single bullet through one of his wide, disbelieving eyes.
She flings handfuls of bath salts into the grave, and then she fills it again.
The stars gleam as she trails her fingers in the luscious dirt, and she smiles at her forest. It’s wonderful, this place she has made. It’s almost perfect.
Happy trails, she bids him.
-
Chris is foul-mouthed.
He curses like a sailor with a vengeance-not only when he’s angry, though particularly then. He has a series of favorite words, and they all carry a lot of weight for their few letters.
He vituperates things, needlessly, and she comes to feel that her ears are perpetually stinging. His coworkers are fucking ridiculous, the network news is total bullshit, the medications overflowing from the bathroom cabinet are a pain in the ass.
She shouldn’t be a whiny bitch, what’s the fucking problem?
It is poison in her ears. She tries to make light of it and purchases him a thesaurus. She discovers that he has a natural gift, and that is for sending words darting off of his tongue with edges of inimitable spite.
She’s not fucking perfect either, and if she’s going to turn it into some big fucking deal, she can go fuck herself, because he isn’t interested.
She stands at the window in the living room, looking out at her forest, and considers things.
He mutters something about a crazy fucking cat lady and asks her when dinner will be ready.
She looks down, and her cat looks up at her, a spot of lush black fur surrounding one of its bright blue eyes.
She answers that dinner is forthcoming, and he flops down to insult the television, and she goes to open the bathroom cabinet. She finds his bottle of Amytal, takes it into the kitchen, and grinds all the blue pills into powder. She rolls it into the ground beef.
A few hours later, his vital functions peter out and cease altogether.
She throws the thesaurus in after him.
Fuck you, she mutters as a shower of dirt obscures his face.
-
She stands before her forest, flanked by two low hills on either side, and she smiles, fully, contented at last. She has won. She is a queen. She is a goddess. She is Persephone, and her lovers lie motionless, unprotesting, subjugated at her feet. They won’t leave. They won’t fail. They will do nothing but worship her here, in this silent world of her own creation. This is her graveyard, her underworld.
Persephone reigns.
She turns, and the cat is there. It gazes up at her with pale eyes, whiskers spreading from the patch of black fur about its nose and mouth. It doesn’t blink.
She stares back. Its claws leave pinprick holes in the soft soil, and the tips of her fingers tingle strangely. It knows, somehow. It understands, and a slow tremor creeps beneath her fragile skin at the thought.
After a long, long moment, she picks it up, carries it inside, and places it in its crate. She closes the door, latches it, and carries the crate out to her forest, where she sets it down and turns it to face away from the house, and then she goes back inside. She has returned it to her forest. She doesn’t need it anymore; it should stay there.
She can’t help glancing out the window as she makes dinner and paces the living room.
When she steps into the bedroom, the cat is already curled up at the foot of her bed. It looks up at her. It doesn’t blink.
She douses its food with rat poison.
The bowl is empty; the cat is fine.
She carries it the half-mile to her neighbors’, drops it into the well, and listens for the splash before she replaces the formidable square of wood that serves as a cover.
It is sitting on the doorstep, licking moss from its wet fur, when she returns.
She opens the door, and it follows her in. She finds one of Bradley’s guns, and she returns to the living room, where the cat is waiting. It looks at her, and it doesn’t blink. She fires four bullets into its head and doesn’t bother to clean up the splattered mess on the floor. Shaking now, leaving the gun on the couch cushion, she locks the bedroom door and strives to sleep. The curtains are drawn mostly shut, but a sliver of windowpane gleams in the gap. She left the living room lights on, and a glowing line breathes yellow through the crack beneath the door.
When she opens her eyes the next morning, the cat is sitting on her chest. It doesn’t blink.
She is no goddess.