you're too young & eager to love

Happy Halloween!

If anyone sees a clown in a rain gutter, run. Do not approach it. It will eat your arm.

(I've been watching IT.)

I can't decide what to write for Halloween. I was thinking vampires, of course, or sci-fi but I'm not so sure. In the process of trying to get inspired, I was reading some Russell/Talbot True Blood pieces. One in particular is just fantastically done. The characterization is spot-on. I admire writer's who get the voice of fandom characters perfectly, not only in dialogue, but also throughout the entire narrative.

I would post the whole thing, if I could. I wanted to post a snippet that just highlights why vampires are, ultimately, tragic.

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From Dollsome's "I think clapping is how hands mourn"


Meanwhile. Language has not done much to pull missing out of mortal terms. A shame, but what can you do? The consequences of a history of great poets who are either human or masquerading as. And so perhaps it can be best transcribed thus: Talbot was his heartbeat. (Speaking, of course, figuratively.) His heartbeat, his bones, his lungs, his brains, the flick of a hand and the curve of a smile. He was as unacknowledged and as necessary as a limb or a blink or a breath. To be without him is to be chopped in half by a shaky-handed dilettante, the best laid plans of King Solomon, it is lobotomy and castration, for here is something that the poets never could find out—if bodies join for long enough, then so do minds and souls. Not in the maudlin mortal sense, transient and darling as a Hallmark card. Simply and cleanly and truly, inextricably. He is half alive, and fuck the centuries of fools who have wielded that sentiment without even beginning to imagine its meaning, who have cheapened it in sonnets and song lyrics and poorly punctuated text messages. It is not romantic. It is not poignant. It is one endless guttural scream, it is the twist of guts, it is the watery overwhelming weakness that eats you up before you vomit. It is, quite frankly: I am forever and you are gone.

Now, think about that.

This didn't come out how I wanted at all. I blame my attention being spread thin. I wanted to work on Priam's back story some, and how she's probably been transferred to a variety of ships since she's so old, but ... yeah. It just wasn't really working for me.

Still, it counts!

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Afterwards, Priam feels relief. It’s familiar, cynical, comforting.

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This man, Talin, knows who she is. What she is. He is more accepting than the others and a weary exhaustion she’s been fighting for decades, a pressure in her chest built from witnessing too many untrusting stares and cautious preliminaries, lifts a little. He has rough hands from working with boilers and a mouth that is hard but friendly. A shadow of beard across his jaw making him almost beastly.

“You are aware that this means nothing?” Priam says, and he grins a crooked self-deprecating smile.

“I know.” His hands are big on the small of her back and his mouth is wet and close.

It is a strange act, she thinks. Strange because he finds her desirable, this shell that she wears, and because she is unsure. She understands the anatomy of many species but not this fake one, not when it applies to this solitary act. But the monastic, anguished grieving routine makes no sense to her, and she guesses that Talin does not care. That it is less about conquering and more about exploring. Her skin ripples, like sheets wrinkling, or scales turning over because what could have been tactile clothing is now the star-white skin of her body. Exposed, synthetically fresh.

It’s easy to slip into an intimacy that’s comforting despite its lack of meaning. It’s harder to excise their less shallow ghosts, to get over what they’ve left behind from crumpling worlds, what they’ve lost with the expansion of time.

Talin doesn’t look at her with adoration, and she wouldn’t know what to do if he did. But he is good, she presumes, in the way human women would need him to be. Practiced, solicitous. When she thinks to look in his eyes, she sees that he’s not thinking about her exactly as much as she isn’t about him.

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When they find him dead in the mess hall, his blood already drying on his mouth, she performs an autopsy. A perfect, clean inspection, but she cannot locate a reason.

An unsatisfactory response, she finds.