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Written to the prompt by Making Up A Villain — villain who has read the stars to ascertain your doom
Originally posted on cohost on July 24th, 2024.
When Yihsuan’s unassuming neighbour tells her that her name is Lily, Yihsuan only doesn’t scowl because she’s already learned not to. She’s learned her unassuming neighbour Lily is formidable. Uncertain just how formidable, Yihsuan’s self-preservation keeps her less polite tendencies in check.
A part of Yihsuan—that would rather die than admit it—thinks it’s cute they share a name.
Lily had invited Yihsuan along for her “solution”. Her blank stares, vacant blinks, and little puppy dog tilts of her head did nothing to indicate her steely confidence and imposing calm that was earned from indomitable power and tremendous experience. She was nice about it all. She held out a hand and smiled when Yihsuan reluctantly took it. She felt Yihsuan’s jitters in her warm, gentle hold. She thought it was cute.
Yihsuan—having faced things powerful enough to have her shaking on her knees lucky to survive—keeps her composure well for someone who’s pretty sure she’s holding hands with potentially a repeat of that experience that she was very determined not to repeat. It was nerve-wracking. She felt the hand on hers as the jaws of something that would swallow her whole. She kept herself from imploding from the tension by glowering the whole while.
The trip around town was short. A wander through shops of herbs open to the street, a basement business of curiosities, a break for iced tea on a park bench. When Lily tells Yihsuan to meet her on their apartment building’s roof at twilight Lily calls it a date.
Yihsuan’s apartment is painted dark, rich tones. It’s furnished with dark, rich wood furniture lacquered and ornate. Sitting at the vanity, Yihsuan combs her long black hair until it shines pristine. She feels both foolish and fearful making decisions about lip gloss and if she should change into something that wasn’t black on black. The satin that her hair melts into is comforting. It helps to feel imperceivable.
For a moment she lets herself imagine her life proceeding as it had been if she hadn’t approached her unassuming neighbour; eventful but not nearly so terrifying. She wears shoes she can run in.
The roof of their unassuming apartment building is off limits but locked doors mean little to Yihsuan and nothing to Lily.
Yihsuan had of course investigated the roof while apartment hunting. She’s made at least one emergency landing here, cursing herself for running out of options and hoping her home wouldn’t be compromised. It’s nothing but mechanical units and piping, and the remains of some local food organization’s rooftop farming program.
Lily is waiting for her.
When she smiles, Yihsuan wonders if she’s died or is dying.
When she holds out a hand to take, swings her shoulders side to side, Yihsuan has never felt so trapped in such an open space.
In the evening chill, Lily wears a cardigan not unlike the elderly women running shops of herbs that reminds Yihsuan of her grandma. It’s big on Lily but probably too short for Yihsuan, who stands a head taller than Lily despite Lily’s platform sneakers. Cozy.
Lily leads her to a short wall with a blanket already spread out, sits and leans back, the hand that had held Yihsuan’s pats the fabric next to her.
Yihsuan taps her cooling fingers together, agitated in all number of ways, before situating herself next to Lily. This is not a very defensible position. She sucks her teeth and mutters darkly, “Awful romantic, isn’t it?” Her hand taken up by Lily’s again makes her jump, her wide eyes stare in the city night’s never dark at a smiling, unassuming face looking skyward.
“It’s starting.”
Above them the stars are dim in the city night’s never dark. Yihsuan watches them brighten despite the light pollution, watches more become visible. Then she watches them explode and fall from the sky.
I wrote part one at 1am and needed something going on to keep me awake enough to write, thought to myself “wait, I know a song about stars” and put it on a loop.
Originally posted on cohost on July 24th, 2024.
<< First < Previous ~ 2 ~ Next > Last >>
When Yihsuan’s unassuming neighbour tells her that her name is Lily, Yihsuan only doesn’t scowl because she’s already learned not to. She’s learned her unassuming neighbour Lily is formidable. Uncertain just how formidable, Yihsuan’s self-preservation keeps her less polite tendencies in check.
A part of Yihsuan—that would rather die than admit it—thinks it’s cute they share a name.
Lily had invited Yihsuan along for her “solution”. Her blank stares, vacant blinks, and little puppy dog tilts of her head did nothing to indicate her steely confidence and imposing calm that was earned from indomitable power and tremendous experience. She was nice about it all. She held out a hand and smiled when Yihsuan reluctantly took it. She felt Yihsuan’s jitters in her warm, gentle hold. She thought it was cute.
Yihsuan—having faced things powerful enough to have her shaking on her knees lucky to survive—keeps her composure well for someone who’s pretty sure she’s holding hands with potentially a repeat of that experience that she was very determined not to repeat. It was nerve-wracking. She felt the hand on hers as the jaws of something that would swallow her whole. She kept herself from imploding from the tension by glowering the whole while.
The trip around town was short. A wander through shops of herbs open to the street, a basement business of curiosities, a break for iced tea on a park bench. When Lily tells Yihsuan to meet her on their apartment building’s roof at twilight Lily calls it a date.
Yihsuan’s apartment is painted dark, rich tones. It’s furnished with dark, rich wood furniture lacquered and ornate. Sitting at the vanity, Yihsuan combs her long black hair until it shines pristine. She feels both foolish and fearful making decisions about lip gloss and if she should change into something that wasn’t black on black. The satin that her hair melts into is comforting. It helps to feel imperceivable.
For a moment she lets herself imagine her life proceeding as it had been if she hadn’t approached her unassuming neighbour; eventful but not nearly so terrifying. She wears shoes she can run in.
The roof of their unassuming apartment building is off limits but locked doors mean little to Yihsuan and nothing to Lily.
Yihsuan had of course investigated the roof while apartment hunting. She’s made at least one emergency landing here, cursing herself for running out of options and hoping her home wouldn’t be compromised. It’s nothing but mechanical units and piping, and the remains of some local food organization’s rooftop farming program.
Lily is waiting for her.
When she smiles, Yihsuan wonders if she’s died or is dying.
When she holds out a hand to take, swings her shoulders side to side, Yihsuan has never felt so trapped in such an open space.
In the evening chill, Lily wears a cardigan not unlike the elderly women running shops of herbs that reminds Yihsuan of her grandma. It’s big on Lily but probably too short for Yihsuan, who stands a head taller than Lily despite Lily’s platform sneakers. Cozy.
Lily leads her to a short wall with a blanket already spread out, sits and leans back, the hand that had held Yihsuan’s pats the fabric next to her.
Yihsuan taps her cooling fingers together, agitated in all number of ways, before situating herself next to Lily. This is not a very defensible position. She sucks her teeth and mutters darkly, “Awful romantic, isn’t it?” Her hand taken up by Lily’s again makes her jump, her wide eyes stare in the city night’s never dark at a smiling, unassuming face looking skyward.
“It’s starting.”
Above them the stars are dim in the city night’s never dark. Yihsuan watches them brighten despite the light pollution, watches more become visible. Then she watches them explode and fall from the sky.
<< First < Previous ~ 2 ~ Next > Last >>
I wrote part one at 1am and needed something going on to keep me awake enough to write, thought to myself “wait, I know a song about stars” and put it on a loop.
Written to the prompt by Making Up A Villain — villain who has read the stars to ascertain your doom
Originally posted on cohost on July 23rd, 2024.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh yes.”
There had always been grim portends on the periphery. Having freshly returned from becoming the worst possible solution to a terrible problem—not entirely not her fault—she had noticed them all anew, and then noticed the person they were orbiting: A neighbour in her unassuming apartment building, unassuming herself in all ways.
After two weeks paying attention to her neighbour and all the grim portends about her—just to be certain—Yihsuan finally made an approach. When met with a blank stare, her attempt at friendly and personable social engineering crumbled. Her chipper tone and bright “Oh, I’ve seen you around” dropped to a tongue click and a sharp inhale before taking the seat opposite in the coffee shop around the corner that she’d otherwise never step foot in.
“Look,” Yihsuan set her arms on the much-too-small cafe table, crowding out her neighbour’s coffee into her neighbour’s hands. “We live in the same building.”
Her neighbour nodded in a placating way, still waiting for what this was about.
“It’s actually a bother, how much this stuff happens around you.” Yihsuan hunches over, meeting her neighbour’s height as she exhibits her dislike for where she was and the situation she had put herself in. “The elevator, the hedge at the back gate, the bees, that windstorm that got inside. The road paint not drying. I lost a very cute pair of shoes to the road paint that wouldn’t dry.”
Her neighbour pursed her lips together, a little vacant from this unexpected intrusion that certainly wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen to her—given the elevator, hedge, bees, windstorm, road paint, and more.
“So I was curious.”
Her neighbour blinks at her, shifts the way her fingers cradle her coffee.
“I wanted to know how long I’d have to put up with your whole,” Yihsuan waves a hand in a circle, encompassing her neighbour’s unassuming and somewhat vacant personage. Her hand lands on her neighbour’s wrist, dropped there like her attempt friendly and personable. “You have like, a month, maybe.”
To her merit, she took it in stride. “Are you sure?” She took a sip of her coffee with the hand that wasn’t held by Yihsuan.
“Oh yes.”
She nodded thoughtfully, placed her hand on the much-too-small cafe table without disturbing Yihsuan’s hold on it, seemed to consider the situation in more depth than she had been the whole while. “Consult the stars, did you?”
Taken off guard, Yihsuan stills and squints at her neighbour who takes another unassuming sip of coffee. “Yeah.”
“I have a solution for that.”
Originally posted on cohost on July 23rd, 2024.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh yes.”
There had always been grim portends on the periphery. Having freshly returned from becoming the worst possible solution to a terrible problem—not entirely not her fault—she had noticed them all anew, and then noticed the person they were orbiting: A neighbour in her unassuming apartment building, unassuming herself in all ways.
After two weeks paying attention to her neighbour and all the grim portends about her—just to be certain—Yihsuan finally made an approach. When met with a blank stare, her attempt at friendly and personable social engineering crumbled. Her chipper tone and bright “Oh, I’ve seen you around” dropped to a tongue click and a sharp inhale before taking the seat opposite in the coffee shop around the corner that she’d otherwise never step foot in.
“Look,” Yihsuan set her arms on the much-too-small cafe table, crowding out her neighbour’s coffee into her neighbour’s hands. “We live in the same building.”
Her neighbour nodded in a placating way, still waiting for what this was about.
“It’s actually a bother, how much this stuff happens around you.” Yihsuan hunches over, meeting her neighbour’s height as she exhibits her dislike for where she was and the situation she had put herself in. “The elevator, the hedge at the back gate, the bees, that windstorm that got inside. The road paint not drying. I lost a very cute pair of shoes to the road paint that wouldn’t dry.”
Her neighbour pursed her lips together, a little vacant from this unexpected intrusion that certainly wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen to her—given the elevator, hedge, bees, windstorm, road paint, and more.
“So I was curious.”
Her neighbour blinks at her, shifts the way her fingers cradle her coffee.
“I wanted to know how long I’d have to put up with your whole,” Yihsuan waves a hand in a circle, encompassing her neighbour’s unassuming and somewhat vacant personage. Her hand lands on her neighbour’s wrist, dropped there like her attempt friendly and personable. “You have like, a month, maybe.”
To her merit, she took it in stride. “Are you sure?” She took a sip of her coffee with the hand that wasn’t held by Yihsuan.
“Oh yes.”
She nodded thoughtfully, placed her hand on the much-too-small cafe table without disturbing Yihsuan’s hold on it, seemed to consider the situation in more depth than she had been the whole while. “Consult the stars, did you?”
Taken off guard, Yihsuan stills and squints at her neighbour who takes another unassuming sip of coffee. “Yeah.”
“I have a solution for that.”
Written to the prompt by make-up-a-wizard — wizard who can hardly even remember how the world ended anymore
Content warning: memory loss
After writing part 1 and 2 in quick succession, this prompt came around and so here’s what happened to the villain who ended the world. I wrote these as a person with pretty significant memory issues, the first part and this one are pretty much just me.
Originally posted on cohost on June 17th, 2024.
Not because the end of the world wasn’t important. Important things were just as easy to forget. Everything was just as easy to forget, because forgetting happened and there was nothing he could do about it.
It all shifted about and faded, even if he tried to remember exactly as it was. He could wake up every day and tell himself the same story he told himself yesterday but thinking back to the moment, the senses changed; the time of day, the temperature, how many eyes were on him, what those people sounded like, how laboured his breath, the tone of his voice, the weight in his hands. It all changed.
And so did the words. He could tell himself the same story every day, but he couldn’t actually know or rely that those were the same words. First the meanings shifted, the connotations. They slipped about like the senses. And then they were misplaced.
With time, just like how he couldn’t remember when it happened—if there were people there, what he was doing, what he felt—he couldn’t remember the story right. He could repeat it every day and the words would still slip away from him. Everything did, all the time. And he was okay with that.
He had to be. He didn’t have any other choice. He had to be an amorphous, abstract, haphazard semblance of a person. He had to live day to day not remembering who he was, hoping there was some immutable part of him so that he didn’t have to apologize to yesterday’s him, and the day before, and all the days stretching back before then—that today’s him was betraying all those past versions of himself.
But he could hold onto the bare minimum. He knew he ended the world. He wasn’t so sure the world was better for it. It was impossible for him to remember every or even most days spent wandering this ended world to make any sort of judgement on “better”.
So he wanders, unsure of why, until he’s not sure if he wants to. And then he stops someplace, for no particular reason, until the immutable part of him that tells him he should be wandering pulls him away.
And all the while, his memories shift and fade. And every day he feels a different type of guilt about something he remembers different from yesterday.
Content warning: memory loss
After writing part 1 and 2 in quick succession, this prompt came around and so here’s what happened to the villain who ended the world. I wrote these as a person with pretty significant memory issues, the first part and this one are pretty much just me.
Originally posted on cohost on June 17th, 2024.
<< First < Previous ~ 3 ~ Next > Last >>
Not because the end of the world wasn’t important. Important things were just as easy to forget. Everything was just as easy to forget, because forgetting happened and there was nothing he could do about it.
It all shifted about and faded, even if he tried to remember exactly as it was. He could wake up every day and tell himself the same story he told himself yesterday but thinking back to the moment, the senses changed; the time of day, the temperature, how many eyes were on him, what those people sounded like, how laboured his breath, the tone of his voice, the weight in his hands. It all changed.
And so did the words. He could tell himself the same story every day, but he couldn’t actually know or rely that those were the same words. First the meanings shifted, the connotations. They slipped about like the senses. And then they were misplaced.
With time, just like how he couldn’t remember when it happened—if there were people there, what he was doing, what he felt—he couldn’t remember the story right. He could repeat it every day and the words would still slip away from him. Everything did, all the time. And he was okay with that.
He had to be. He didn’t have any other choice. He had to be an amorphous, abstract, haphazard semblance of a person. He had to live day to day not remembering who he was, hoping there was some immutable part of him so that he didn’t have to apologize to yesterday’s him, and the day before, and all the days stretching back before then—that today’s him was betraying all those past versions of himself.
But he could hold onto the bare minimum. He knew he ended the world. He wasn’t so sure the world was better for it. It was impossible for him to remember every or even most days spent wandering this ended world to make any sort of judgement on “better”.
So he wanders, unsure of why, until he’s not sure if he wants to. And then he stops someplace, for no particular reason, until the immutable part of him that tells him he should be wandering pulls him away.
And all the while, his memories shift and fade. And every day he feels a different type of guilt about something he remembers different from yesterday.
<< First < Previous ~ 3 ~ Next > Last >>
Written to the prompt by Making Up A Villain — Villain who can’t remember why they started this
Content warning: memory loss
Originally posted on cohost on May 23rd, 2024.
He wasn’t entirely wrong and that was the worst part of it all. Asher had to admit he wasn’t entirely wrong and that things were better and different, and the opportunity—imposed and inescapable—for change was a powerful and uplifting force despite all the tremendous horrors unleashed.
He who hefted the blade—he who wasn’t entirely wrong—saw all his plans come to fruition; saw the aftermath; saw just one impression of violence upon the world and broke. In the makeshift dungeon, those who deliver his meals started their duty with venom, then pity, and now a strange warmth trying to convince him that things are better now. The world is better. He succeeded.
“Some better world,” he spits at Asher, paying no mind to the departing failures to convince him and instead gesturing at his physical imprisonment with his eyes that were so much more tired and distressed than spiteful.
Asher sniffs dismissively and unbothered. He surveys the makeshift dungeon that he’s been avoiding up until the excuse of helping sort and settle things ran out. He’s aware he’s being watched with that particular distrust he wishes he didn’t know all too well, so he lowers himself to the floor to sit opposite he who was more or less shackled down here. “You didn’t think they were going to let you go, after everything you did?”
Honestly, he had thought he would die during the whole blade tearing the earth asunder. “Seems antithetical still.”
If Asher didn’t know he wasn’t remembered; if Asher hadn’t steeled himself to the fact that he who sat opposite Asher wouldn’t have the same reaction he used to, Asher would have barked his deepest, head-tilting-back laugh. He chuckles instead. “You’re not wrong.”
The silence that doesn’t so much spread through the space but is the space—the silence and space Asher is intruding on—finishes his implication.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
Asher shrugs, palms up and held wide. He drops them behind him and leans back, disarming the whole concept of ‘shackled in a dungeon’ with a relaxed pose and the most sardonic smile on his face.
He who is not at all more or less shackled down here itches with the faint recollection of that sardonic smile, but he’s not sure if he remembers it or he’s seen it just now and is retroactively applying what is clear and in front of him now to all the memories of all the faces he doesn’t quite remember the exact shape of the smile he thinks was on them. It’s a familiar, uncomfortable feeling. “And what? Do I have to pass some conversation with you to be released?” His response to Asher’s repose is hiked shoulders of suspicion.
“Nope.” Asher is holding back so much and he’s doing a very good job at it. He knows this because the squint his answer earns isn’t calculating something that can be read—he’s not giving anything to read. “I just wanted to talk before you go.”
The squint squints harder.
“Assuming you’ll disappear into the world and all.”
The squint squints so hard that his eyes appear closed and, for a brief moment, Asher closes his eyes and transports himself to another time and place—several other times and places—where there was silence and conversation and just sitting with no animosity. When he opens them, he’s still opposed with tired and distressed but somehow less distrust and suspicion.
Asher is trying not to dwell on why. He’s supposed to being doing a very good job at holding back, which involves an air of uninvolvement. He’s sure he’ll be spending the rest of his life dwelling on this entire conversation and everything that lead to it, everything that will have lead to the disappearance of the person in front of him now.
“Naturally.”
“Right.” Asher had never thought it made sense to just leave everything behind after tearing it all asunder, but he’s holding back.
Hesitating from just getting up and leaving, he asks, “It’s really better out there?”
Asher looks up, at the supposed direction of out there. It hadn’t been easy sorting and settling things. After this conversation, he’s planning on helping sort and settle things in other locales—which, he belatedly realizes, is a type of disappearing into the world. “It’s a work in progress, but yeah.”
As though the wind were knocked out of him, he wheezes, “Fuck.”
They sit there like that, for a while, in the silence. Asher maintains his relaxed uninvolved composure while disappointed in himself for prematurely enjoying sitting together in silence and missing the change of attitude. He who is about to disappear into the world is clearly processing and coming to terms with the alleged better world enough to get up and face it.
When he does, he brushes himself off and does that thing that always bothered Asher, with the neck cracking. He holds out his hand for Asher to shake.
He knows this hand. These calluses, the crick of the thumb as it grips him, the particular fit of the shape and size in his own. He doesn’t remember why, he just remembers a hundred moments and a thousand more connected to them—some false, some real but misattributed, and most of them making enough sense to create the net of an impression of a person he could maybe remember.
So he pulls.
Asher isn’t expecting it. His stance is broken with a step forward that is immediately pushed back by an uplifting embrace. He chokes. His hold on holding back breaks and tears well in his tightly shut eyes. “Did you remember?”
“No.”
Asher exhales a shaky, confused sob.
“But that’s okay.”
Content warning: memory loss
Originally posted on cohost on May 23rd, 2024.
He wasn’t entirely wrong and that was the worst part of it all. Asher had to admit he wasn’t entirely wrong and that things were better and different, and the opportunity—imposed and inescapable—for change was a powerful and uplifting force despite all the tremendous horrors unleashed.
He who hefted the blade—he who wasn’t entirely wrong—saw all his plans come to fruition; saw the aftermath; saw just one impression of violence upon the world and broke. In the makeshift dungeon, those who deliver his meals started their duty with venom, then pity, and now a strange warmth trying to convince him that things are better now. The world is better. He succeeded.
“Some better world,” he spits at Asher, paying no mind to the departing failures to convince him and instead gesturing at his physical imprisonment with his eyes that were so much more tired and distressed than spiteful.
Asher sniffs dismissively and unbothered. He surveys the makeshift dungeon that he’s been avoiding up until the excuse of helping sort and settle things ran out. He’s aware he’s being watched with that particular distrust he wishes he didn’t know all too well, so he lowers himself to the floor to sit opposite he who was more or less shackled down here. “You didn’t think they were going to let you go, after everything you did?”
Honestly, he had thought he would die during the whole blade tearing the earth asunder. “Seems antithetical still.”
If Asher didn’t know he wasn’t remembered; if Asher hadn’t steeled himself to the fact that he who sat opposite Asher wouldn’t have the same reaction he used to, Asher would have barked his deepest, head-tilting-back laugh. He chuckles instead. “You’re not wrong.”
The silence that doesn’t so much spread through the space but is the space—the silence and space Asher is intruding on—finishes his implication.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
Asher shrugs, palms up and held wide. He drops them behind him and leans back, disarming the whole concept of ‘shackled in a dungeon’ with a relaxed pose and the most sardonic smile on his face.
He who is not at all more or less shackled down here itches with the faint recollection of that sardonic smile, but he’s not sure if he remembers it or he’s seen it just now and is retroactively applying what is clear and in front of him now to all the memories of all the faces he doesn’t quite remember the exact shape of the smile he thinks was on them. It’s a familiar, uncomfortable feeling. “And what? Do I have to pass some conversation with you to be released?” His response to Asher’s repose is hiked shoulders of suspicion.
“Nope.” Asher is holding back so much and he’s doing a very good job at it. He knows this because the squint his answer earns isn’t calculating something that can be read—he’s not giving anything to read. “I just wanted to talk before you go.”
The squint squints harder.
“Assuming you’ll disappear into the world and all.”
The squint squints so hard that his eyes appear closed and, for a brief moment, Asher closes his eyes and transports himself to another time and place—several other times and places—where there was silence and conversation and just sitting with no animosity. When he opens them, he’s still opposed with tired and distressed but somehow less distrust and suspicion.
Asher is trying not to dwell on why. He’s supposed to being doing a very good job at holding back, which involves an air of uninvolvement. He’s sure he’ll be spending the rest of his life dwelling on this entire conversation and everything that lead to it, everything that will have lead to the disappearance of the person in front of him now.
“Naturally.”
“Right.” Asher had never thought it made sense to just leave everything behind after tearing it all asunder, but he’s holding back.
Hesitating from just getting up and leaving, he asks, “It’s really better out there?”
Asher looks up, at the supposed direction of out there. It hadn’t been easy sorting and settling things. After this conversation, he’s planning on helping sort and settle things in other locales—which, he belatedly realizes, is a type of disappearing into the world. “It’s a work in progress, but yeah.”
As though the wind were knocked out of him, he wheezes, “Fuck.”
They sit there like that, for a while, in the silence. Asher maintains his relaxed uninvolved composure while disappointed in himself for prematurely enjoying sitting together in silence and missing the change of attitude. He who is about to disappear into the world is clearly processing and coming to terms with the alleged better world enough to get up and face it.
When he does, he brushes himself off and does that thing that always bothered Asher, with the neck cracking. He holds out his hand for Asher to shake.
He knows this hand. These calluses, the crick of the thumb as it grips him, the particular fit of the shape and size in his own. He doesn’t remember why, he just remembers a hundred moments and a thousand more connected to them—some false, some real but misattributed, and most of them making enough sense to create the net of an impression of a person he could maybe remember.
So he pulls.
Asher isn’t expecting it. His stance is broken with a step forward that is immediately pushed back by an uplifting embrace. He chokes. His hold on holding back breaks and tears well in his tightly shut eyes. “Did you remember?”
“No.”
Asher exhales a shaky, confused sob.
“But that’s okay.”
Written to the prompt by Making Up A Villain — Villain who can’t remember why they started this
Content warning: memory loss
Originally posted on cohost on May 23rd, 2024.
Not because the reason isn’t important. Not because the reason isn’t catastrophically, life-changingly, personality shiftingly important.
It is catastrophically, life-changingly, personality shiftingly important and that was what was so frustrating about not remembering. And distressing.
He’s never not in a state of distress. Part of him wonders if it’s from the personality shiftingly part, but then he remembers being distressed before. Another frustration, added to the ledger he forgets. “This isn’t even the worst part.”
In front of him is the array of helpless people who tried stopping him. One of which he swears he knows, he just can’t remember.
“The worst part, is not knowing if I’m remembering right what I don’t remember.” If over time, the things he’s told himself he’s been telling himself wrong and more wrong each time until he’s not even doing the right thing anymore. If over time, he’s deviated so far from the original intent that he’s failing or betraying the reason he’s done this.
He looks over the faces he can’t recognize and the one he swears he ought to. There’s various levels of screaming involved, but he hefts what is truly an imposing blade without any mind to the ‘no’s and the sobbing and the glare from that one. The weight is unfamiliar but weight in his hands is familiar. It almost feels right and—not remembering much most of the time—feels is all he has to work with most of the time.
So he hefts the blade and, with the force of someone so unsure but so sure, he plunges the whole of it into the solution he hopes he’s remembering right.
Content warning: memory loss
Originally posted on cohost on May 23rd, 2024.
Not because the reason isn’t important. Not because the reason isn’t catastrophically, life-changingly, personality shiftingly important.
It is catastrophically, life-changingly, personality shiftingly important and that was what was so frustrating about not remembering. And distressing.
He’s never not in a state of distress. Part of him wonders if it’s from the personality shiftingly part, but then he remembers being distressed before. Another frustration, added to the ledger he forgets. “This isn’t even the worst part.”
In front of him is the array of helpless people who tried stopping him. One of which he swears he knows, he just can’t remember.
“The worst part, is not knowing if I’m remembering right what I don’t remember.” If over time, the things he’s told himself he’s been telling himself wrong and more wrong each time until he’s not even doing the right thing anymore. If over time, he’s deviated so far from the original intent that he’s failing or betraying the reason he’s done this.
He looks over the faces he can’t recognize and the one he swears he ought to. There’s various levels of screaming involved, but he hefts what is truly an imposing blade without any mind to the ‘no’s and the sobbing and the glare from that one. The weight is unfamiliar but weight in his hands is familiar. It almost feels right and—not remembering much most of the time—feels is all he has to work with most of the time.
So he hefts the blade and, with the force of someone so unsure but so sure, he plunges the whole of it into the solution he hopes he’s remembering right.
Written to the prompt by Making Up A Villain — Villain who started studying healing magics for nefarious purposes.
Originally posted on cohost on April 23rd, 2024.
The sharp inhale when all the functions of a body starting up again coalesce into a living again is his least favourite part. It’s dramatic. It’s unpredictable and therefore a shock every time. He doesn’t jump at it, but it’s still a bother. He snaps his book shut—an unpredictable shock to the freshly reinstated mind that had just started breathing again—with its series of incantations, and trades it again for the knife.
Originally posted on cohost on April 23rd, 2024.
~~~
The sharp inhale when all the functions of a body starting up again coalesce into a living again is his least favourite part. It’s dramatic. It’s unpredictable and therefore a shock every time. He doesn’t jump at it, but it’s still a bother. He snaps his book shut—an unpredictable shock to the freshly reinstated mind that had just started breathing again—with its series of incantations, and trades it again for the knife.
Written to the prompt by Making Up A Villain cohost prompt account — Villain who whittles using the oldest trees available.
Originally posted on cohost.org on March 30th, 2024
Decimator is sitting against a nurse log, his leather roll of tools unrolled down the leg stretched out on the soft earth of decades of decomposition. He only really uses one knife 90% of the time, but the roll was a gift from his minions and they had embossed his name into it with their infernal talons. The bit of branch fork in his other hand had fallen some time ago from the massive old growth in front of him.
Decimator is taking advantage of the fork shape to carve a bird.
Some hundreds of yards away—that Decimator can still hear, because super hearing—the hard-to-find actual quiet for miles—because super hearing—is broken by what even someone without super hearing would call a stage whisper. "What is he doing?" The voice is elevated, which means it's one of the flying/floating superheroes or one of the ones that can't resist climbing tall bodies. If it's the climbing kind, Decimator has opinions that they will share at a later date about disturbing the forest.
"Just sitting there?" This is a more ground-level voice, letting Decimator know the earlier sound of pressure on the soft earth out of nowhere was truly out of the nowhere of being flown in by another hero. If there isn't a third voice, this would mostly rule out any tree climbing and Decimator won't be sharing those particular opinions in the future. "What did you think he was going to do?"
"I don't know. He bought this whole region. Maybe build a lair?"
"He's already got a lair."
"You can have more than one lair."
This is starting to annoy Decimator, who exhales long and deep while securing his knife in the personalized roll. He puts the unfinished carving in the breast pocket of his flannel, attaches the closed roll to the strap of another leather minion item this time labelled Butch Bag—a joke a high minion had to convince the other minions was indeed funny and would not mean death by long, drawn out incineration (it takes just short of forever for infernal minions to properly incinerate)—by way of carabiner, and makes his way away from bothersome heroes with nothing better to do.
"What's he doing now?"
"Uh, leaving? Wait, he stopped. He's writing something in a notepad, he's holding it up—"
Decimator can hear the palm make contact with face.
"What is it?"
"He says we're trespassing on ancestral land and that your lawyer alter ego should do better due diligence when reading into land trusts."
Alongside a very nice stream where if he's followed at least there's something to drown out the "whispers" of nosy superheroes, Decimator finishes carving the bird. Back at the lair, he gifts it to the minions who carefully—so as to not singe or set blaze—place it amongst the growing altar of carvings in the central chamber of their dovecote cave abode.
Originally posted on cohost.org on March 30th, 2024
~~~
Decimator is sitting against a nurse log, his leather roll of tools unrolled down the leg stretched out on the soft earth of decades of decomposition. He only really uses one knife 90% of the time, but the roll was a gift from his minions and they had embossed his name into it with their infernal talons. The bit of branch fork in his other hand had fallen some time ago from the massive old growth in front of him.
Decimator is taking advantage of the fork shape to carve a bird.
Some hundreds of yards away—that Decimator can still hear, because super hearing—the hard-to-find actual quiet for miles—because super hearing—is broken by what even someone without super hearing would call a stage whisper. "What is he doing?" The voice is elevated, which means it's one of the flying/floating superheroes or one of the ones that can't resist climbing tall bodies. If it's the climbing kind, Decimator has opinions that they will share at a later date about disturbing the forest.
"Just sitting there?" This is a more ground-level voice, letting Decimator know the earlier sound of pressure on the soft earth out of nowhere was truly out of the nowhere of being flown in by another hero. If there isn't a third voice, this would mostly rule out any tree climbing and Decimator won't be sharing those particular opinions in the future. "What did you think he was going to do?"
"I don't know. He bought this whole region. Maybe build a lair?"
"He's already got a lair."
"You can have more than one lair."
This is starting to annoy Decimator, who exhales long and deep while securing his knife in the personalized roll. He puts the unfinished carving in the breast pocket of his flannel, attaches the closed roll to the strap of another leather minion item this time labelled Butch Bag—a joke a high minion had to convince the other minions was indeed funny and would not mean death by long, drawn out incineration (it takes just short of forever for infernal minions to properly incinerate)—by way of carabiner, and makes his way away from bothersome heroes with nothing better to do.
"What's he doing now?"
"Uh, leaving? Wait, he stopped. He's writing something in a notepad, he's holding it up—"
Decimator can hear the palm make contact with face.
"What is it?"
"He says we're trespassing on ancestral land and that your lawyer alter ego should do better due diligence when reading into land trusts."
Alongside a very nice stream where if he's followed at least there's something to drown out the "whispers" of nosy superheroes, Decimator finishes carving the bird. Back at the lair, he gifts it to the minions who carefully—so as to not singe or set blaze—place it amongst the growing altar of carvings in the central chamber of their dovecote cave abode.
