In These Soft Moments
Up and down the city road, in and out the eagle.
It is in these soft moments, these moments of shrouded isolation, when I feel the growths the most. Everything starts at the outer rim of my spine. The bones grow outward from there. They lengthen in lattice crosses. The sensation is far from painful; it is much more natural.
This is the closest I can come to a description: imagine what it feels like breathing, not the intake of air, but the oxygenation of the blood cells in the lungs. Things that come—of their own accord—are the hardest to describe with detail.
If the blood in your body didn’t get enough oxygen, would you feel it? Not the panic of suffocation, but on an internal and cellular level. Maybe you would; maybe you are more somatic than I am. I don’t feel my body do what other bodies do; I feel my mind do things. I feel my brain mushroom cloud ideas. I feel urges take over where maybe the majority position is passivity or rest.
When I fold myself into this trunk, my ribs grow out of my back and into soft polished wood below. I am connected. I feel the rumble of footpads trodding the loose boards. My body syncs up with the motion of perceived life. I blur in darkness, and my mind seeks through extraneous bone wings.
I have no special affinity for this trunk. Counterintuitively, it allows…space, and an elevated vantage, a dim glimmer of life’s misery buffet. The building’s employees are insufferable. Although their failings are not overt, they, individually, and as a group, never fail to adopt some subversive affectations; things as simple as outlandish clothing or hair. It is all a nod to feeling themselves exceptional. They believe this material change will separate them from the punters.
“Tickets! Have your tickets ready!”
Oh, rest assured, I will have my ticket ready.
I grasp this permissive figment tightly in my thin, cramped hand. If asked, I will present it with reserved dignity. I am never asked.
I will not be intimidated by an occupation or some vague duty-related authority. Some of the ticket takers attempt social levity, but I do not respect their façade. From my trunk, I imagine staring at them, and in this imagination, I give evisceration as a response.
The building that my trunk resides in requires a pass to enter. This pass comes in the form of a ticket.
I require all of it to stop.
I rattle with anxiety; my rib wings dig in and try to hold me still. I could kill these ticket takers, but they don’t fit the brief, per se, and the attention this shredding would garner would be too great; the victim also would simply be replaced. A carbon copy version would slide into the invisible niche.
I’ve heard and envisioned all the shows for years; the hits and the flops. I have hallucinated all the minor physical alterations and dalliances of all the workers, and they are the same, or close enough so that I can express this opinion without fear of some delusional hyperbole.
It is some of the audience that I seek. I have no itch of the bloodthirsty; in fact, I know very well that I will, in most cases, not find any quarry worthy of consumption.
It is a discernment process.
Remove the notion of the apex or the carnivore because I am selecting with the aid of my rib wings. We, due solely to the gifts of serendipity and happenstance, are tapping into the steel that supports this building. We tap into the beams that have been laid beneath us. We see the patterns of humanity as clearly as the blueprints of construction are mapped. We see the passion play that is this life, shadowed by the faulty acts. We view ourselves not as judge or jury but as a selection process. Not death, or some romantic scissor snipping the strings of fate. We are murder’s personified divining rods.
All this perhaps comes across a bit grand, and it is grand, so let’s drop the esoteric pomp. In the common vulgarity of it—we cold-read the vulnerability of a victim; we stalk to remove them from the established leylines. I act with the aid of that which momentarily reaches outside of myself, and into the pathways of creation.
Patrons are patterns. They are what we like to call socially calcified. Depending on a variety of factors, there are only so many variables that can be formed. Specific versions of these variables are not only easily culled, but they represent blocks that are in dire need of removal. These targets or victims restrict the flow of certain things; I hesitate to say energy because that is not the correct term, although it could be close depending on your semantic leanings. As far as I am aware, I am the only one who has been let in on these things, and although my jurisdiction is limited, I can only imagine that whatever these blessings are will increase over time.
Tonight I sequestered myself with what some might call my eyes towards the lid of this trunk. The sensation running through my body is bone-on-bone, dry dusty chalk grinding against dry dusty chalk. My rib wings have pierced the floor and vibrate at a fine point against the wheels of creativity, like a needle on a record. The song this implausible configuration plays is a squeal in my brain. It is a sharp ping of choice.
“Look here! No here! Listen here! Head up now!”
I follow along like an obedient puppet, although it is a greater me marionetting myself. Still, it is life flowing through a mechanism of proto-life. Do not for a minute accept this resignation of culpability as joy or willingness; I am beyond struggling against an imperative I never agreed to.
“Yes, we go on around 8. Great, I’ll meet you out front. I can’t wait to see you.”
Pinkish alabaster flesh stretched over a thin, weak skull. Purple undertones hidden by a blush of exhaustion. Washed in bleach and sheared into shape. I understand that performing can be difficult, and that separation can be hard, so part of me feels ashamed for noticing the tone that this one lets off. I shudder when they have been chosen.
I’ve managed to focus attention, without drawing any on myself. My rib wings retract and periscope back into my body; a creak echoes as the only evidence. The heavy red curtain deadens the sound. The prey is marked, and from this point forward, until the culmination, I am basically locked into motionless motion. It is about details for now; I telepathically scan for signs of where they stand in relation to my trunk. If they are left, I will stay left; if this swings right, I will be permitted to swing right. I will follow; it is not a scent or a sound, but a sense learned via decades of practice. What I can glean, I will glean. The need for material individualization has made this clue gathering process easier in some respects. Perfumes, colognes, shampoos, deodorants, and soaps all now bear distinct auras.
This, of course, is not a concrete choice, and circumstances change rapidly; I have, in the past, even had targets outgrow their ping before the curtain rose. As always, there is the opportunity that I am left undisturbed. A latch left latched, but we have contingencies for those occasions.
Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle.
I can feel the anticipation rise, and the bodies multiply. Mumbles reach my depth. The tone of the target ramps up, as I home in on the moment of expulsion. Muffled voices grow louder as they congregate by my station. Words become clear, and I intentionally rattle the trunk.
The latch jingles and shakes.
A pause in speaking, however brief.
They are aware of something stirring. We hum a bit louder.
Up and down the city road, in and out the eagle.
Our hand releases the grip on our imaginary ticket, and our nails grow longer rounding our fingertips. Our jaw unhinges and specs of viscous corrosion drop on our motley top. The rib lattice seeps out, putting enough pressure on the top of the trunk so that when the latch is unlatched, the pop will be sufficient.
I will start again.
All around the cobbler’s bench.
They all hear this time. Those backstage, they all hear.
“Is there someone in the trunk?”
“You hear that right?”
An orchestra plays something banal and welcoming; the lights on the house dim,
“Places, please, as the show is about to start.”
I listen for my tone; I listen for the chosen one, the one who blocks the leylines. The one who prevents the smooth transition of energies. They are further away than I need them to be.
Someone else approaches. I ease back into a relaxed posture. Steps fade away into the background.
The show has begun; the performance is underway. My latch remains latched for now. Another time perhaps, another chance to be the star of the show. This old chest rarely opens anymore. These old bones rarely get what they want. I will slow my breathing and listen between the polite acceptance of the performance. It’s all a show.
We keep one ear on the crowd and the other scanning for something that shines out. Something that means something more and something less at the same time.
The show must go on, even when I am not the star.
Eye in the Sky: The Horus Cycle
DEEr JErky and OthEr Cryptids
this is deliciously sinister and impeccably weighted. an ancient vampiric gargoyle jack in the box? that's what im thinking...
...that's the way the money goes round... but it's not a weasel is it!
Ligotti is definitely an anti-natalist, his arguments in Conspiracy Against The Human Race are plagiarized wholesale to form dialogue for Rust Cohle in True Detective. But there's nothing right wing about his expressed point of view in either fiction or non-fiction to my mind.
In fact one of the key sources he relies on is Philipp Mainlander who was an early socialist utopian - though his utopianism took the unusual form of advocating for mass suicide.
Anyway, Ligotti's fiction is baroque and dreamlike, very Lovecraft in its style and very much like your own work in its strangeness.